Closing Time- Singapore and the Long Journey Home- August 13-18, 2007

Singapore, like many places, has a loaded name. Its mention conjures up images as vastly different as can be, evoking two different worlds and two very different times. Perhaps, upon hearing it, you think of the colonial splendor of Raffles Hotel, sultry equatorial Asian summers, and all the vice that accompanies a thriving, exotic port. Or perhaps you think of the last big time Singapore made American news, when a teenaged American tourist was sentenced to be caned for chewing gum in this excruciatingly clean city. The interesting thing about Singapore is that these two worlds co-inhabit one geographic place, sharing both their rich history and rich (literally) present with travelers.

We had two days to see Singapore, the last two days of our six-month experience. To be honest, we were tempted to spend them sleeping. We checked into a hostel in one of the residential districts, strikingly suburban and upper middle class. It was also strikingly expensive. Singapore enjoys, by far, the highest income levels in Southeast Asia. Its citizens regularly travel to paradises like nearby Tioman Island, or enjoy their own stretches of beaches and parks. At the end of our funds, we were ready to faint at the prospect of western prices for restaurant meals, no matter how posh said restaurants might be.

Singapore was originally one of the British Empire’s colonial ports, distinguished from most other colonial Southeast Asian ports by its tax-free status. This, of course, made it quite attractive to fledgling capitalists the world over. The “Lion City,” like most of Southeast Asia, soon found itself hosting an incredibly large community of Chinese immigrants. This would prove to be quite a crisis in 1965, when, after briefly residing within the fledgling Malay Federation, Singapore was essentially booted from the nation due in large part to its majority Chinese population. Ethnic Malays simply didn’t want to risk losing more political power to an already substantial Chinese minority. Since then, the enigmatic little city-state has carved out quite a niche for itself as a strategically located, politically stable (if not authoritarian), and unabashedly market-friendly center for technology and manufacturing. Along with Taiwan and South Korea, Singapore was the vanguard “Asian Tiger,” with per capita income rising to nearly $15,000 (absurdly high by Southeast Asian standards) by the 1990’s. This is great for native Singaporeans, but not so great for road-weary travelers with an even more fatigued bank account. The exchange rate between the U.S. and Singapore dollar was nearly 1:1. No more six dollar massages or three dollar meals for us.

Fighting off outright depression, we had a difficult time finding “touristy” things to do. Being located so far from the city-center also lowered our enthusiasm for exploration. We did take an evening to explore downtown Singapore’s famous Orchard Road, a cosmopolitan conglomeration of high priced shopping malls, high-rises whose exteriors glisten like polished mirrors, and streets so impossibly clean they seem made more for surgical procedures than driving. Pigeons fluttered aimlessly through skies surprisingly devoid of smog, while we pensively and silently ambled along the crowded sidewalks, seemingly the only two people in the city not in a hurry to get somewhere. Night fell rapidly, darkness bringing only slight relief from the sticky, oppressive heat of the equatorial city. We had to content ourselves with a contrived, urban lightshow rather than one of a more natural variety, as high rises negated our last chance to witness one of Southeast Asia’s gorgeous sunsets. This is not to say that the city lights weren’t brilliant. They were. The bustling city just seemed a rather unfitting place to end our journey. Mentally, we were done on Tioman.

Riding home that evening in one of Singapore’s predictably spotless taxis, we had an interesting conversation with our talkative driver. “We are surrounded!” he exclaimed excitedly, as if the commander of a besieged island fortress. “The Malays to the north, the Indonesians to the south, they are all Muslim, all crazy, and all buying military equipment! From the Russians and the Chinese! We have to be strong in Singapore. We also buy military hardware- from the United States.” He had a point, if only a vaguely accurate one. On Tioman, we’d heard several radio broadcasts describing Malaysia’s recent acquisition of several Russian-made Sukhoi fighters, unarguably some of the most formidable aircraft in the world. Indonesia too seemed interested in bolstering their military might. Singapore has a fairly reputable military, and often trains with counterparts from the United States. We’re not sure this a credible indication of some kind of brewing Southeast Asian arms-race, but you know what they say in journalism circles: If you want to know something about a place, just ask your taxi driver.

We spent much of our time in the neighborhood around our hostel, wandering down the broad suburban avenues with their gated homes and preppy kindergartens to a row of buildings that contained both a sumptuous Javanese massage parlor and several restaurants that showed the true breadth of Singaporean culture. While Chinese influences are certainly dominant, Indian and Indonesian food are popular, as is sushi, Mediterranean fare, European bakeries and colorful bistros. We also did lots of laundry, not wanting the colorful smells emanating from our packs to present a problem with airport security. It was in the midst of one laundry session that we had one of the most encouraging conversations with another traveler of the entire trip. He was in his late fifties, a real estate agent from Florida. He wore shorts, flip-flops, a tank top, and a gold cross around his sun-bronzed neck. And he loved Vietnam and Indonesia with a passion equaled by his wife, so that they spent most of their money on long trips to Southeast Asia every year or two. Amazing! Other Americans who were traveling in countries that are Communist and Muslim and loving it all as much as we did. While they were two of less than ten Americans we met during the entire adventure, their appearance as we prepared to head back home was immensely encouraging.

The morning of our departure arrived with unexpected suddenness. We were ready to go. It was like saying good-bye to a loved one you knew you’d not see for a long time. We couldn’t bear to drag the farewell out any longer and wished, with reluctance, to get on with the next phase of our lives. Our hostel slept as we silently tiptoed down the steps and out the door with packs significantly less cumbersome than the ones we arrived in St. Petersburg with almost six months before to the day. Two teenage boys sat on milk crates across the alley at an adjacent gas station, talking quietly in the dim, yellow light offered by the street lamp. Otherwise, the streets were empty. The air possessed a chill not felt since we’d ascended the mountains to heavenly Sapa. It was half-past four a.m. on August 15, 2007 when the taxi sped around the corner and lurched to a halt in front of the gated doors of the hostel, signaling the end of the Eurasian Adventure. Two hours later, our Boeing 777 operated by United Airlines lifted off from Singapore’s international airport bound for smoldering Tokyo. Closing time had finally arrived.

Nine hours later, we touched down in Tokyo. It was late afternoon and over 100 degrees outside. It didn’t matter. We didn’t have the time or the energy to add one more country to our itinerary. We stayed in the airport, gorging on easily the best sushi we’d ever had and mentally preparing for the 14-hour marathon ahead of us. As the sun mercifully set on the Land of the Rising Sun, we boarded another 777 and lifted off for San Francisco, USA. America. Back to America. It seemed a strange thought, an even stranger reality.

Somewhere over the mid-Pacific, at almost exactly the halfway point of the flight, we ran headlong into the remnants of a tropical storm drifting northward from Hawaii. The jumbo-jet thrashed about the sky like a tiny fishing boat caught in a hurricane. With bug-eyed horror, we clasped each other’s hands and pled with whatever heavenly ear might care to listen to get us somewhere, anywhere, safely. After three hours, it stopped. We slept like weary children for the rest of the flight.

Fog rolled across the low hills surrounding San Francisco Bay as we de-boarded and marched obediently through U.S. customs, obscenely annoyed by the terror warnings placarded on the walls and blaring through the loudspeakers overhead. We had nine hours before our flight to Anchorage was scheduled to depart, and we’d planned to venture out into the Bay City for a while to help ease our adjustment back to life in the States. We fell asleep on the floor instead. Jet lag had arrived with un-tempered ferocity, and we’d not readjust to Alaska Time for well over a month.

Naturally, we were wide-awake when we touched down in Anchorage sometime just before midnight. Familiarity struck like a baseball bat upside the head. With a pair of brooding sighs, we emerged into Ted Stevens International Airport and embarked upon the unthinkable: the return to normalcy. We had one more trick up our sleeves, however. After spending so much time on Asia’s most famous railways- the Trans-Siberian, the Trans-Mongolian, the controversial train to Lhasa- we felt like we needed to finish everything off with one last train ride, and see Alaska like we’d never seen it: as tourists. It turned out to be a better idea in our dreams than in actuality.

After arriving in Anchorage, we took a taxi to an exceptionally nice hostel and tried in vain to sleep. Instead, we indulged ourselves with free food leftover in the hostel’s kitchen and long-missed pop-culture. Comedy Central was showing reruns of that evening’s Daily Show and Colbert Report. We were shocked and disturbed at how easily we fell back into old, familiar routines. That night, and over the weeks that followed, our souls seemed to be locked in desperate civil war, one side clutching desperately to the lifestyle we’d left behind in Asia, the other striving to reengage with the place we reluctantly called home. Six months later, as we finally put the finishing touches on this blog, similar skirmishes are still taking place. We’ve found no way to quell the Asian insurgency wracking our spirits.

We met our friend Michelle the next afternoon and went for a short hike at Anchorage’s Kincaid Park. The crisp, early autumn air seemed at once incredibly foreign and disturbingly familiar. We felt alien. Nothing was out of place, and that made everything seem wrong. We were struck by the volume of large trucks and SUVs aggressively plying the streets. Where were the rickshaws, tuk-tuks, busses, and bicycles? Why the hell couldn’t anyone drive something slightly smaller than a battleship? For the first time in months, we were experiencing culture shock.

We banished ourselves to the hostel, not quiet ready to face reality. A smattering of intrepid foreigners milled about the hostel’s lobby, and we felt more at home eavesdropping on their unintelligible conversations than we did outside, amongst our own. The place we’d called home for years seemed to us a prison built on a foundation of the habitual.

That night, we endeavored to stay up until morning, and then resiliently push on through the day’s train ride without snoozing. We accomplished the first half without difficulty. At 8 a.m. we boarded a polished blue and gold passenger car aimed north, and chugged slowly towards our final destination. Our heads hung heavily over our shoulders, eyes drooping like those of a worn hound dog. Faye was asleep by Wasilla. Ben fought longer, but fell himself sometime after Talkeetna. We awakened to find Denali cloud free and utterly magnificent. It was a fine day to be a tourist. We spent much of the journey hanging our heads out the opened frames between cars, finding an odd satisfaction in the fresh air of Alaska’s interior. We sprinted through Nenana sometime around dinnertime, our hearts fluttering in anticipation of reaching Fairbanks. We had no idea how we’d react to “home.” It seemed such a strange concept. Home.

Fittingly, it was UAF that we passed first. The evening sun glinted off the Butrovich building, perched stoically half way up West Ridge. It seemed to be winking at us, welcoming us back to the institution that had so graciously sent us forth on our journey. The train had already begun to slow when we passed beneath the bridge on Thompson Drive. For some reason, we both broke into nervous, yet broad smiles. Finally, we lurched to a stop outside the train station. For several seconds, we stared at each other in disbelief. What are we doing here? With shaky, tired legs, we descended the stairs, heeding the conductor’s warnings to watch our steps. Ben’s parents emerged from the crowd, and with giant bear hugs and a few weary tears, it was over. Six months, nine countries, uncountable experiences, all of them priceless, over. We did what anyone in our situation would have done. We went for ice cream at Hot Licks