Nova’s Singapore Trip Days 6, 7 and 8 – Imma Chargin Ma Laysia

I might have already exhausted myself at AFA both physically and financially but there was no rest for the wicked, next up was a one-day visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Trying my best to fight off the temptation to sleep a bit longer, I left for Changi airport at 5am and boarded a bargain flight to KL. One really good thing about this trip was that I got a chance to see Singapore from the air, thanks to a window seat and having enough sunlight to actually see outside. It struck me how small SG really is, you could really see the whole nation in one glance. The thing is, out in the streets Singapore doesn’t feel that small at all because the rather flat topography and tall buildings blocking your view.

I didn’t get to see KL from the air though as the airport is rather far away from the city itself – instead I only saw endless fields of palm trees. After touching down at the LCC terminal I immediately proceeded to the McDonald’s where I met my rather well known blogger colleague Kurogane. I was sort of hoping I’d cross paths with Owen as well but unfortunately he was out of town.

On the way to KL.

The Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs was quite negative in their report on Malaysia and strongly advised against moving around alone. Malaysians, especially cab drivers, are notorious for their habit of screwing the pants off of foreigners who don’t know what they’re doing, so having a local to show me around was definitely helpful. We checked out the usual tourist spots in the Golden Triangle area in the heart of KL, such as the Petronas Twin Towers, KL Tower and the huge malls that were scattered all around. What Kuro said about the difference between Malaysian and Singaporean malls was indeed correct – Malaysian malls are much more spaceous and in that sense I actually liked the Malaysian ones better. At this point of my journey I was already pretty much broke but it didn’t stop me from checking out the Kinokuniya book store in the mall next to the Twin Towers and grabbing myself a couple of manga volumes (Higurashi no Naku Koro ni vol 5 and Ikigami vol 3, roughly 7 euros each) and a science fiction novel from my favorite author (House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds, barely 6 euros, about 1/8th of its price in Finland). After some window-shopping at a big home electronics mall (wish we had at least one of those back home) we left back for the KL airport.

On the way to airport I happened to mention that I thought Malaysia was much better than what I had expected. And oh the irony, as after parting with Kuro and entering the international side of the airport I noticed that my wallet was missing. I remember a barely 4 year old kid dicking around us and touching my shorts while I was BSing with Kuro. I noticed him and even said “Hurr look he’s picking my pockets.” I got pickpocketed by a tiny kid. Hell, maybe I was his first exam in the Snatcher Academy of Malaysia or something. Oh well, I don’t keep the habit of using wallets so my credit card, passport and other valuables were safely lying around in my other pockets and the kid’s reward was a 5 SGD bootleg Lexus wallet with a half-spent Singaporean EZ Link card and about 3 ringits in various coins. And of course my flight back to Singapore got delayed by an hour, giving me a great excuse to acquaint myself with gin & tonic and a jug of Tiger at the bar next to the gate.

I hope I don’t have to tell you what these are.

On the following tuesday I took off for Jurong to check out the military museum and then joined Xak, jin, senti and Brian for dinner, a walk around the town and EVA 2.0 – my first time actually seeing anime in a movie theater. I was quite impressed at how Gainax managed to dodge most annoyances of the original series in EVA 2.0. All in all the movie was excellent and I can hardly wait for its continuation. Deredere-Rei, a hot psycho girl, tsundere Asuka and GAR Shinji, what more can you possibly ask? Afterwards we went out for a few beers and then called it a day.

Finally wednesday was at hand, my last day in Singapore. Leaving the heavy luggage to the hotel, I joined Xak on a stroll around the city and went to the army market one last time. I swear, for a military nut and an airsofter that place is heaven on earth. Modern issue-grade modular LBV gear for sale at prices for barely 1/10th of what you’d have to pay for them in Finland. I had already acquired me a Singaporean Force 21 LBV on the first week and it came with sufficient amount of pouches, but I decided that a little more couldn’t hurt. I got me two additional SAR ammo pouches, one general utility pouch, a small grenade pouch and a canteen pouch, all together for barely 20 euros! Just a single decent quality first hand modular ammo pouch can cost anything between 30 and 60 euros on European markets – and here I got a whole set of pouches for less than that.

Some downtown KL seen from KL Tower

It was a blazing hot day outside for me and I could barely walk for longer than 15 minutes at a time before becoming very thirsty. Of course, the locals seemed to regard the day as completely normal – I wonder if they even call anything below +40 C hot. After sipping some iced latte at a cafe we got my stuff from the hotel and headed over towards Changi. First stop was the beach where I witnessed one of Singapore’s trademark characteristics – and endless fleet of cargo ships queueing up for the harbor. Literally hundreds of them floating around, some so close that it felt like I could have actually swam over to them. As an interesting fact, Xak added that the ships always face the ocean current so you can tell which way the current is flowing by looking where the ships are pointed at.

The beach was very nice, as the ocean seems to have a bit of cooling effect around it. The water felt very pleasant too, warm in itself but cooler than the air. I wasn’t packing any swimwear but dipping my tired, aching feet in the cooling seawater was already half the pleasure. After chilling around for a bit we took a cab to a local tactical gear store Black-Tec, which had a booth at AFA. It was very small and the selection wasn’t all that huge but they stocked some interesting stuff such as EO Tech holo sight replicas, tactical flashlights and laser sights. The green laser sight was greatly tempting but in the end I picked the cheaper red one.

Whatever this was, it sure tasted better than what it looked like.

The sun was setting and it was time to proceed over to the Changi airport. I still had all the time in the world, so we toured around all the three main terminals and made some rearrangements to get my bloated piece of hand luggage below the 10kg limit. Senti and Brian joined us for dinner and some last minutes of chatting and hanging around til my boarding time was at hand. At 22:10 I bid farewell to my companions and soon after boarded the flight for Frankfurt. Good bye, Singapore.

The returning trip was about as eventful as the garrison priest’s 4-hour lectures in the army, with the usual annoyances like having a German kid sitting next to you whose favorite pastime was digging his nose and then wiping the stuff on his sleeves. 5-hour wait at Frankfurt bored me to the point of insanity and at the Central Railway Station in Helsinki I was pretty much reaching my breaking point. The toilet at the station required 1e payment and the fucking thing wouldn’t open up when I put the coin in. A female staff member noticed the situation and tried to help, asking if I dropped the right coin in. This made my blood temperature suddenly surge up to the boiling point, having me curse quite a bit straight to her face and then just marching out. Almost instantly thereafter I realized that I really need to get some proper rest soon before I end up strangling some poor bastard out of pure senseless RAGE. This soon would be, of course, no less than after a 4-hour ride on the train.

One of Singapore’s landmarks – an endless fleet of cargo ships queuing up for the harbor.

All in all the trip was very exhausting but a great success. I met pretty much all my friends from IRC and got acquaintained with modern Asian culture and lifestyle. I’ve rarely had as great time as this and it was definitely something completely different from the usual tourist traps of Southern Europe. And the food was great; like Justin Sevakis wrote in his ANN article, I’d come back anytime just for the food. For an European the place is a shopping paradise – as Xak put it, you can find almost anything in Singapore if you look around hard enough and the general price level was ridiculously low for those of us blessed with the euro. SG was also the most aesthetically pleasing city I have ever been to, being an excellent example of how big difference efficient urban forestry plan can make in the city image. The city was far greener than for example Finnish capital Helsinki, which is about the same size but less than a 5th of the population – and I hardly even need to mention the general cleaniness the country is renowned for.

Of course, I might complain about the surprising language gap as the local accent tends to be extremely hard to understand due to a Chinese-ish pronounciation and very fast speech tempo. The locals of course could perfectly understand my slow and somewhat staggering American-Finglish accent but especially for the first couple of days I’d have to ask people to repeat themselves enough to make me feel like an idiot. But nevertheless, I loved Singapore and I really hope to be able to make another trip there next year. Big thanks to my Singaporean hosts for their excellent hospitality, the AFA organizing crew for granting me a media pass and of course to Kuro for a great tour around the central KL (dude, you could seriously make a living as a tour guide).

But it doesn’t end here (unfortunately) as next week Nova goes to St. Petersburg, Russia. Also, in February I will be visiting the United States for a few weeks so if you live around Florida and feel like a couple of beers and a chat, you know who to call.