sapijantan: The Singapore Story

Us at the Merlion statue

After six month in the country on a temporary visa, we finally had all papers together for my family to get a resident card for longer stays. A requirement was that this has to be collected abroad. So we needed to go to Singapore for a visa run. An agent is able to arrange it in a day and it costs 100 USD per person; quite a lot considering I would have paid for 4 persons, and they weren’t willing to give any discounts. The official information from the embassy was that there are no any such agents. Fortunately, I knew someone who knew a high ranking person there and I asked whether there is any way to make it faster. I received the reply that we can only ask, but that this is finally the decision of the colleagues at the immigration department, of which he mentioned the name of the head of department. We took the full risk, booked a flight on a low-cost-carrier, with dates that would require us to have it done on just one day. At the immigration department we met a very tough lady, who on my question whether she could help us with our “flight problem” right away said that there was no way to make it faster than three days. So we went for the bluff: I mentioned the name of her high-ranking colleague and that I was in touch with him for the issue. Also, I said that her department head is already informed about our case. She said she would check. We were sitting there, hoping it would somehow work out, with little hope through, as this embassy was in Singapore and did not seem like other banana republic outposts that one could expect. Twenty minutes later she called me again and said we could pick-up our visa at 4pm. I was still anxiously asking whether she means today. I thanked her friendly and when turning around to see my wife and the children just thought “yesss!” In the afternoon when we wanted to take a taxi to pick-up the visa, Hang’s cousin who lived in Singapore, dropped-in with delay. I felt sorry for it, but had to manage the meeting not taking more than 10 minutes. Then, first no taxi stopped for us and I went mental, because I saw our time until the embassy would close was diminishing. Someone then explained to me that taxis are only allowed to stop at the waiting bays. We ran to a shopping mall and waited at the bays. Then, there was the problem that it was the time of shift-change and no taxi wanted to go into our direction. I offered first double the price, then triple, then quadruple, still they would refuse. So I changed my strategy. The next driver was an old Chinese guy and I begged “Sorry Sir, we have a big problem and need to go to an embassy, could you help us please!?” He waived us in the car, I threw the baby stroller in the trunk, and he rushed to the embassy. I gave him a big smile and a big tip. On the next morning we sat in our flight back to the island.

Checking out China Town from a rooftop of an apartment building that we sneaked on

Dumplings being made at a hawker center

“food therapy” for all of us, if one likes Asian and Chinese cuisine, Singapore has so much good food to offer and it comes also at a good value at the hawker centers

Visiting the Buddha Tooth Relic temple in Singapore’s China Town

The sash is just for (and from) the temple, but actually I like it

Atmosphere at the main hall of the temple, lots of offerings

Us at the Sri Mariamman Temple…

…where a ceremony was going on

Above story was on a Monday, and the preceding weekend we have spent some time in Singapore to explore it’s China Town and undergo “food therapy” with all the excellent Chinese dishes in the hawker centers. We had rented a small family room in a hotel located in one of the heritage houses. In the back there was a great Indian bakery, and a huge hawker center that was open early in the morning until late at night. We had most of our breakfasts, lunches and also dinners here, and enjoyed the tom yum soups, the fish cakes, meat ball soups, the freshly pressed juices and ice coffees. We visited the Buddha Tooth Relic temple to pray and to see the museum and the meditation center on one of the higher floors. We witnessed a ceremony at the Sri Mariamman Temple and it reminded us a bit the ceremonies of the Balinese. We had an Indian meal somewhere not so good at the Mustafa Center. We went to the Esplanade to take a picture with the Lion statue, and walked through the parks eating durian-, chocolate-, vanilla- and strawberry-ice cream at 1 Singapore dollar a piece sold by elderly gentlemen out of their carts. We enjoyed the comfort of MRT and the youth culture in the underground stations, with people dancing and doing different kinds of choreography; this included us on those days. We could perfectly imagine to stay in such a city that is clean, safe, and offers such good opportunities for education, has such great food and such a multi-cultural environment, despite the fact that it sometimes may be boring or feel artificial. But the taxi driver told us that a license to buy a car is 70.000 SGD for the license alone, that a small apartment is 2000 SGD a month, and that for a small family one needs at least 4000 SGD disposable per month. We’re a big family, and I believe we will be comfortable in Bali for a while.