When I told you that the city was just secondary to me, you did not believe me. Singapore was the last thing on your mind, but it was the first one on mine. Two years into what I’d normally call the Year of the Plague, the city in a garden finally reeled from its retreat, ready to peek out into the sun.
It wasn’t in full bloom yet, no. Its trees and shrubs were as green as I remember from two years ago, but they are still in this catatonic state that requires more movement and more people in order to grow back into the usual pace of the world.
After all, everybody is still moving slowly, distancing themselves a little apart from each other and wearing masks even at the pristine edge of Marina Bay and the open spaces of Pulau Ubin.
In the morning papers being read by uncles and aunties at our favorite hawker place, the city records a whopping 18k new COVID-19 cases. Of course, you hesitated. But I insisted this was our time. We might not get the chance again, I said.
And just like that, on a cold March morning, I found myself boarding a red eye flight to the empty halls of Singapore Changi Airport, where, as soon as I stepped out of the arrival gates, I was
welcomed back by wide and open roads that would lead me back to this.
The bare essentials: a black backpack, a medium sized-luggage, hand sanitizers, a tube of sunblock, Trace Together app, a COVID-19 self-testing kit.
The scene: Next to Bugis Junction, the famous Intercontinental Singapore hotel stands proudly as the surrounding roads are marked with vehicles and pedestrians moving towards all directions. look out from my window and see the Marina Bay Sands structure towering over the skyline. The National Library stands directly in front of me, empty with its façade of glass windows.
You said you wanted a meal fit for a visitor’s welcome. Had I argued I wanted the creamiest laksa or the hottest congee on the first day, you probably would have given in. But downtown had made its plans known the moment I stepped out of the hotel doors.
Walking past the underground mall, you settled for a Malaysian barbeque meal at a nondescript eatery along North Bridge Road. It was not fancy dining material, but the simplicity of the tender boneless chicken, peanuts, coconut rice, and eggs was all I needed to recall the confluence of flavors that the city had to offer.
The heart of it all was a little room in Bugis yet I stretched the pathways towards the usual attractions to savor the cityscape anew amidst a pandemic. The city itself was already a familiar sight to me: the financial district coming alive with pedestrians walking around towards the next mall entry or taking a turn towards a quaint café or busy hawker place hidden in small alleyways.
At Suntec City, you opted for taro milk tea from Milksha. I scoured the long and winding hallways of the shopping center to look for the place, only to be welcomed again by the sight of the Fountain of Wealth, its silicon bronze slanted columns emerging from the ground, cascading water into its basin.
While wealth was not something I wished for at its base, the abundance of experience I was in for was already enough. It was the same feeling I harbored as I strolled along Kampong Glam, Singapore’s Muslim Quarter. It had just finished drizzling when you decided to take refuge with me to a stretch of boutique shops, funky restaurants, and colorful wall art along nearby Arab Street. From a distance, the Masjid Sultan, a mosque with a golden dome, emerged from the low-rise structures, its slender minarets pointing towards a grey sky.
At Dempsey Hill, everything else was a muted affair. I found myself tucked in a green enclave of fancy restaurants and cafés, with trees sprawling over a wide outdoor space. How peaceful it was to be in the embrace of the greenery, a welcome reprieve from the honking cars and the inquiring eyes of the locals.
I swore you complained of the sweltering heat as you ascended the walking trail towards PS Café along Dempsey Road. You offered me their sticky date pudding, a warm cake on a plate filled with toffee sauce.
“It’s my most favorite dessert in the world,” you said. I had no reason to believe otherwise.
On a different day, we would return to the foot of the same hill, only to climb up and dine at Candlenut, a Michelin-starred restaurant serving the best Peranakan cuisine. The table was topped with plates of Rojak Buah, mackerel and Shrimp Otah Sayur Lodeh, Tiger Prawn Yeye’s Curry, and Bakwan Kepiting Soup, among others.
You would jokingly bring up the steep price of their tasting menu, every time I would compare it to the much cheaper treats of chicken satay and pineapple fried rice at Lau Pa Sat or the xiao long bao and kuchay dumplings at this cheap hawker place in a village. But I digress, your signature smirk at the end would give away all uncertainties about Candlenut’s food and affirm that every dish was worth the price.
When I said the city was just secondary to me, I meant that the buildings, the people, the gardens, and the perfectly manicured fields around were just white noise.
Never mind the fact that this was my 6th time in the city state. Or the fact that I’ve gone from coast to coast, as far as the industrial plains of Tuas in the Western region to the hidden parks of Woodlands up north.
Never mind too, that we’ve been out and about Downtown Core years before the pandemic, strolling along Orchard Road and finding ourselves back to Old City Hall. And never mind too, that no matter how much we wanted the old world back, we were still in the middle of a health crisis.
To me, Singapore had become a fixed point in time – a place that evoked a strange familiarity in which I would probably not be surprised anymore. And in true city fashion, I asked if we could climb up to the topmost floor of Marina Bay Sands to survey the financial district from afar.
At sundown, the skyline’s silhouette stood against an orange backdrop that faded into a gradient of yellow. There was an elation that came over me as I watched the city transforming itself for the night. It was the same thing that I felt when we crossed Southern Ridges Walk to reach Telok Blangah Hill Park the other day, where we saw a fraction of the same skyline on a cloudy day.
In a way, I thought about how Singapore had become passé in my mind, but not quite so. The city is best seen in the cracks, in the unexpected encounters between schedules, the subtleties unfolding from within—according to our imaginations and appointments—everything is happening for now.
From the top of the building, I kept looking for the perfect angle and time to capture the skyline in a photo. I kept moving. I had already promised I would come back another time despite an intense yet short-lived doubt that hit me.
In little Lion City, it is difficult to imagine where the city ends and nature begins. The country felt wildly familiar now, but would it be different tomorrow? That moment, you asked me if I have ever tried the wide selection at Gluttons by the Bay. I said no. And in that moment, I knew could relive the entire city experience over and again.
Drag and Drop Website Builder
