Rotterdam enters Singapore just after sunrise

We visited the National Orchid Garden in Singapore . . .

. . . which was overflowing with beautiful orchids

The Vanda Miss Joaquim was Singapore’s first orchid hybrid (1893)

Squeekie loved the beautiful and colourful flowers in this garden

Squeek and Moss in Singapore’s National Orchid Garden
The Sultan Mosque with its golden dome . . .

. . . and the ring of bottles sold to raise money to build the mosque.

Even the older sections of Singapore are clean and safe

Singapore’s famous Raffles Hotel as we saw it . . .

. . . and as it appeared around 1900.

Making a “Singapore Sling” for us at the Long Bar—what a tradition!

Squeekie found this hippo at a store in Raffles

Moss checks out the 120 year old lobby of Raffles Hotel . . .

. . . while Squeekie checks out Raffles’ famous Punjabi doorman

This Billiard Room is where the itinerant tiger was shot in 1902!

The elegant dining room where we ate dinner at Raffles

Moss and Squeek dine at Raffles

Stephan making Moss’ Lobster Bisque at our table

Alexander, Squeek, and Stephan stand in front of the silver carving trolley that was buried to hide it from the Japanese in World War Two

The lights of Singapore offer us a warm ‘good-bye until we meet again’ as Rotterdam departs


Fifty-sixth Day (Monday, March 16, 2009)-- Today we discovered Singapore, a city long known as a “mysterious gem of the Orient.” The town is clean, comfortable, nicely but not overwhelmingly Westernised, and dynamic. The Rotterdam quietly came through the Middle Channel of Singapore Strait and docked shortly before eight am at the Passenger Terminal in Keppel Harbour.

A bit of history and commentary-- Singapore is located on a small (38 square mile) island at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, just 90 miles north of the equator. Today over 3 million people live on the island, but two hundred years ago it was just a tiny fishing village. The Portuguese arrived in the Malay Peninsula and established a fortress and trade centre at Melaka (Malacca) in 1511; the Dutch took this over in 1641, and the British in 1795. In 1819 Sir Stamford Raffles, who had been the British governor of formerly Dutch-ruled Java, and who was angry when Java was returned to the Dutch at the end of the Napoleonic War, landed on the island of Singapore and claimed it for Great Britain. Over the nineteenth century Singapore grew from a small fishing village to a major centre of commerce and trade. In 1867 she became a Crown Colony and the focal point of Britain’s control and defense of her Far Eastern colonies. Still, unfortunately, until the early 1930s Singapore was continually plagued by bad sanitation, water supply problems, man-eating tigers, and piracy. After World War One Great Britain decided to make Singapore a military stronghold as well as a commercial centre, but the big guns that were installed all pointed south and west into the Singapore Straits; this would cause problems later.

When the Japanese attacked Britain’s Asian colonies at the start of the Pacific phase of World War Two (Americans remember the date as December 7, 1941, but east of the International Date Line it was December 8th, and all of the attacks—on Pearl Harbour, Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, Manila, and Batavia [Jakarta]—happened at the same time.) Japanese troops, who had occupied French Indo-China and allegedly neutral Thailand earlier in 1940, landed near Kemaman in Malaya and quickly flowed down the peninsula toward Singapore. The British, overwhelmed by this new invasion while still trying to deal with the Nazis in Europe and North Africa, fell back into Singapore. The British battleships sent to help were sunk by Japanese aircraft, and the big guns installed in Singapore pointed the wrong way and could not be turned against the Japanese coming along the railway line through British Malaya. The British garrison in Singapore surrendered abruptly on February 15, 1942, after most of the Australian soldiers suddenly returned to Australia from fear that the next Japanese attack would be on Darwin.

Singapore returned to the British in 1945 with the Japanese surrender. When the British gave the Malay states their independence in 1960, Singapore was part of the new nation called Malaysia. But the Singaporeans, mostly third-generation Chinese immigrants or Chinese-Malay creoles, did not want to remain a part of this new nation, and under the leadership of British-educated Lee Kuan Yew (known as “Uncle Harry” to many Singaporeans), broke away in 1965 to form the Republic of Singapore.

Although Singapore is a multi-party nation with a government structure similar to the British model, the People's Action Party (PAP) has been the dominant force since independence. Under the leadership of Uncle Harry as Prime Minister, Singapore created an economic and institutional miracle from the ashes of the post war and post-colonial confusion; today, tiny Singapore is usually known as one of Asia’s economic “tigers.” Its economy is driven by electronics manufacturing and financial services and has weathered regional crises, including the 1997 Asian markets slump and the 2003 Sars virus outbreak.

On the other hand, Singapore, despite the mask of its British-style governance, has an Orwellian-esque strictness to force its citizens to “play by the dictated rules.” The country has rather unkindly been referred to, by the writer William Gibson, as “Disneyland with the death penalty.” It is true that Singapore has strict rules for many things. On the day Rotterdam arrived in Singapore our “Daily Program” information sheet told us, “Singapore Customs regulations prohibits the following to be brought ashore: chewing gum, chewing tobacco or imitation tobacco products, pistol or revolver-shaped cigarette lighters, controlled drugs or psychotropic substances . . . firecrackers, obscene articles or videos, and reproductions of copyrighted materials. Offenders are subject to severe fines and/or incarceration.” Singapore argues that its use of capital punishment, which is applied mostly for drugs trafficking offences, has stopped the growth of narcotics syndicates; but this has been achieved at the loss of the basic personal freedoms which are the foundation of both the British and American legal systems. Rights groups have accused some politicians of using defamation suits to silence their opponents, and there is no doubt among residents and visitors alike that Singapore, despite its cleanliness and safeties, is NOT a truly FREE society. I was horrified on this cruise to be told by many of my fellow cruisers that they loved Singapore and would enjoy living there with no worry that the loss of freedoms was a bad thing. Are Americans politically declining? Are the joys of un-inscribed walls, trash-free sidewalks, and free-flowing traffic worth losing one’s basic right to freedom at all levels, supported by your government? I must add to this question the statement that even what I have just written in this paragraph would have been enough to have gotten me thrown out of Singapore had I been living in it at the time. I called this country “Orwellian-esque” for a reason. It is at once clean, safe, and nice to live in (if you follow the rules) and at the same time a carefully masked dictatorship. OK, enough of my thoughts. . . .

Back to our day of adventure-- We began our day in Singapore—and it was a rainy day—with a highlights tour. I have suggested to Squeekie that these are usually a good way for us to become familiar with a new place we have not visited before, and this certainly was true here in Singapore. Our first stop was at the National Orchid Garden. Normally I would have little interest in this because gardening is not a hobby of mine, but this proved to be of historical interest. As we were walking through the garden, which bloomed with colours of all descriptions, we came upon a cute display featuring a small purple-pink orchid bloom (see picture appended). This very small blossom, named the Vanda Miss Joaquim for the woman who raised it in her garden in the British colonial residences on the island, was Singapore’s first orchid hybrid, classified in 1893, and is now the national flower of the Republic of Singapore. The garden contained many thousands more of hybrids along its walkways; there was one path (see picture) through a tunnel of tiny yellow flowers that seemed to be something out of a dream. Our tour guide told us that this garden is the largest display of orchids in the world. Remember, Singapore is just 90 miles north of the equator, in the heart of the tropics.

As we left the garden the rain began to fall rather heavily, and this cut in to our planned visits. We did, however, stop to see the Sultan Mosque, which has a golden dome ringed by a layer of glass bottles (bottoms sticking out to the outside) which, we were told, were sold by members of the Muslim community to raise money to build the mosque in the first place.

Although we did not make as many stops as we would have liked we did see many of the colonial-era buildings which still survive, especially in the area known as the “Colonial District.” It is interesting that, although Singapore is proud of its growth into an economic tiger, as reflected by the many high-rise towers lining its streets, it still seems to want to hold on to elements of its British past. The best connection to that past seems to be the Raffles Hotel on Beach Road in the heart of the Colonial District. To our surprise, for it was not listed on our tour itinerary, we stopped at the Raffles and that was a good thing for it made possible an exciting event later in the day.

The hotel was opened in 1888 and is named for the founder of Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles. Last year they celebrated their 120th Anniversary, and I must say that the hotel is beautiful in a special way. I would certainly class Raffles with the Del Coronado in San Diego, the Fairmont in San Francisco, the Huntington in Pasadena, and the Peninsula in Hong Kong, all of which Squeekie and I have enjoyed in one way or another in our time together. We really were not dressed well enough to explore all of the hotel on our tour, but I took the opportunity to make a reservation for dinner later in the day. Meanwhile, Squeekie explored their gift shop.

The last stop on our tour was in Chinatown, where there was a Hindu temple, the old Opera House which was recently restored from the damage done to it by Japanese bombing during the war, and several old “slop houses,” some of which once upon a time had been opium dens. After the tour bus brought us back to the Rotterdam, we visited the shopping mall inside the cruise terminal building and bought Starbucks locality memory mugs for Jerry and Jim, which they had asked us to do. Then we took a short rest in our stateroom before showering and getting dressed up for our evening at the Raffles.

We took a taxi to the Raffles and were welcomed by the staff at the front door. Squeekie, who was dressed in a nice dress somewhat similar to what women might have worn before the Second World War, posed with the hotel’s famous Punjabi doorman (see picture). I wore my blue suit. Fortunately, the rainy weather made Singapore’s air cooler by a bit so we did not sweat in these more formal clothes. We were able to explore much more of this fine old hotel than would have been possible earlier in the day in our less fancy clothes. We visited the Raffles Bar and Billiard Room (picture appended) where, so the story goes, the last tiger ever seen on the island of Singapore was shot in 1902 after wandering in unexpectedly. I think that it was nice that the hotel’s gift shop offers cute little tiger cub stuffed animals in remembrance. We bought one—his name is Raffles (as you should expect). There was a Jim Thompson silk store which drew in Squeekie, who had visited their main store in Bangkok with Iris Stuart in 2006. I found an interesting biography there and purchased it. Another store in the Raffles complex had some very interesting household furnishings; we saw a nice leather hippo that Leslee would have adored (see picture). We also visited the Raffles Hotel Museum—something which ALWAYS attracts me!

At six o’clock came the first of the special events of the evening. We went over to Raffles’ Long Bar to do something Squeek had always wanted to do on this trip—have a Singapore Sling in Singapore. This bar felt a great deal like the “Adventurers’ Club” at Disney World in Florida. People of all nationalities were drinking beers and Slings while chatting (loudly I thought), eating peanuts and throwing the shells on the floor, and being cooled by circulating ceiling fans. This did seem like something out of the 1920s and 1930s, and it was a great deal of fun. The Slings were good, too; sweeter than I had expected, but strong enough to affect he or she who partook! I did find it difficult to believe, however, that these drinks once were thought to hold off Asian tropical diseases. I liked the Long Bar especially well. As an historian, I knew that many famous (and infamous) people had drunk and eaten here over the years. On this very floor, Robert Louis Stevenson had drunk and written poetry and part of a novel. Winston Churchill had drunk brandy here (one of his paintings hung on the wall in my sight!). And of course, W. Somerset Maugham had drunk, conversed, and written here as well. I was so moved by this very historic site and moment that I got out my own writing notepad (which I have used upon occasion during this cruise) and wrote my feelings just so I could say that I, too had written in this historic place.

At seven o’clock came the next exciting event. We left the Long Bar and walked through the hotel, taking a few pictures as we walked, and came to the Raffles Grill to sit for dinner. The grill is today the hotel’s formal dining room, and it was elegant in the extreme (see picture), with lovely brass chandeliers lighting the room with a lovely yellow glow. We were seated at a lovely table for two at a French Window overlooking the hotel’s Palm Court. Prominent in the Grill were several large pieces of silver, the largest and most prominent of which was a four legged carving trolley.

We were served by two men, Stephan Lym, our waiter, and Alexander (lost his last name) from Hanover, Germany, who was the maitre‘d. Stephen prepared a lobster bisque tableside (see picture) that was the finest such I have ever tasted (even if the lobsters were from the Pacific not the Atlantic). We shared an entrée of prime rib of beef carved tableside by Stephen on the beautiful silver trolley we had seen earlier. This trolley has an interesting story itself. When Singapore was captured by the Japanese in 1942, they commandeered the hotel as a rest place for their senior officers. The hotel’s employees dug a deep hole in the Palm Court and buried the trolley and much else of the hotel’s finest silver to prevent the Japanese from seizing it, and this is why much of the Victorian- and Edwardian-era silver remains in the possession of the hotel to this day. We finished our delicious dinner with a crème brulee and tea in the British style.

Our servers were not just courteous, they were friendly and willing to share stories and opinions with us over the course of the meal. Thus we heard the story of the buried silver from Stephen Lym, and also learned about a piece of silverware previously unfamiliar to us, the gourmet spoon, a flatish spoon used for eating fish in sauce or thicker desserts (like the crème brulee we enjoyed).

I must say that Squeekie and I had a WONDERFUL evening at Raffles as we added another of the World’s finest hotels to our experience list. With some reluctance we took a taxi back through Singapore to the Rotterdam. Despite the lateness of the hour (we were among the last passengers to reboard the Rotterdam before she departed), Singapore remained alive and lively. Rotterdam set sail for our next port (Phuket in Thailand) at eleven o’clock pm, and Squeekie and I stood out on Deck Six forward watching (and photographing) the lights of wide-awake Singapore as we gently glided away from the Tiger of Southeast Asia. I think we both really liked Singapore and would like to return for another visit, although I must add that I would NOT ever wish to live there. Singapore is clean, safe, reasonably friendly, vivacious, proud of its past, and eager to continue to be that way. But also remember, dear friends and family, it is NOT a true democracy.