alien corn

So I’ve seen a bit of Singapore now. People I’ve spoken to say what a naive society it is, how immature it is politically and I haven’t really seen anything to the contrary. Signs everywhere tell you how to be a good citizen (or just avoid breaking the law): the building site of a major casino development is plastered with safety tips on huge banners – ‘A spill, a slip, a hospital trip’ and so on – and toilets have helpful ‘how to use’ guidelines with cartoons to help the hard-of-reading. With London Underground’s recent ‘Be nice to each other’ campaign, I see the same happening at home.

Best of all are the anti-terrorism adverts playing on the screens in the metro system. In the fully-fledged drama, a suspicious man gets on the train with a large bag which he places under the seat and, inevitably, leaves it there when he gets off a few stops later. But we actually see him entering the kill code into his mobile phone, and the train exploding. Wait, though, because to add suspense to your journey, there’s another version where a concerned passenger follows all the correct guidelines and informs the driver that a great big bomb is on the train. She doesn’t appear so much a dutiful citizen as a vicious nosey-parker who no doubt goes home to indulge in a feverish bout of curtain-twitching.

I also spent a few days back in Indonesia on Pulau Bintan for a beach break. My helpful taxi driver (so helpful he offered to arrange a hooker for me, something he has in common with virtually every taxi driver I’ve had on this trip) took me to was perhaps the most ramshackle guesthouse I’ve seen but my room was suspended on stilts over the lapping waves so that was worth the price alone, even if the floorboards were somewhat bendy. But then the family running the place (Traveller’s Lodge past Trikora Beach, if you’re in the area) clearly have no money to do the place up and the gulf between them and wealth-generating Singapore (even the magazines in the hotel lobby are all business-orientated) couldn’t be greater. Yet only about forty miles of water separate the two.

It was brought home with real guilt-stricken clarity by Asep, the cook at the guesthouse. He was keen to know whether I was married, which I deflected with the usual ‘not yet’ line, but then he switched tack: why wasn’t I married? He wouldn’t let it lie, and eventually asked if I preferred boys. It turns out he likes boys too and the extra food he kept giving me (on top of the already generous portions) was probably a bit of a come on.

Before he left, he asked me for some money in Singapore dollars or euros. I wasn’t particularly surprised, but my initial contribution obviously wasn’t enough. He asked how much I earned a day and I’m ashamed to say I lied – I have no idea how much it is in rupiah but it’s a lot, lot more than I told him. Even so, he was gob-smacked and said he earned 15,000 rupiah a day, less than £1. So not quite below the poverty line but given he only works when there are guests there (and, apart from a Singapore TV crew making a reality show about ghosts and exorcisms, I was the only one staying), it’s as near enough to make no difference. So I was guilt-tripped into giving him more which again I didn’t really resent, but what I did resent were his half-hearted attempts to turn me into a sugar daddy. That really hurt.

The food was great, by the way

Last night and back in Singapore, I accidentally ended up on the roof of VivoCity, one of the hundreds of shopping centres here (there are more malls marked on my free map than bone fide tourist attractions), and this is what socialising in urban Asia revolves around. Even more so than in Europe, it’s about going shopping. And next door, the SuperStar Virgo, a colossal cruise ship lit up brighter than the vulgar Christmas tree on top of the shopping centre, was being boarded. Everywhere, there’s excess and over-consumption which is no different from Europe (and we’re one of the world leaders in squandering resources) but somehow it seems more exposed here. Or maybe it was seeing the two extremes within the same day which really slammed it home. But then it would have taken Asep two days to earn enough for the G&T I flung down my neck when I found the nearest bar.

And so suddenly, it’s all over. As we plunged into a week of action, time telescoped in both directions – crawling while waiting for something (anything!) to happen, but also hurtling forward to the abrupt end of my time on the Esperanza. Where the hell have the last six weeks gone?

A few brief snatches from the memory banks: dashing across Dumai harbour in the inflatables to scrawl slogans on the side of palm oil tankers; the agonising waiting, first for our ship to come in, and then for the big finale to kick off; eyeing up the blackboard in the mess for news, some news, any news!; the pervading smell of rancid palm oil which coated me for hours after hauling the mooring lines into place and being plastered in rancid palm oil mud; standing on the bridge deck watching our ship battle two tugs to return to the dock, while a huge tanker was moved into place, a real race against time and all I could do was watch.

There was also a growing realisation that, on the ship, we’re pretty much isolated from what people on the ground really feel. But a couple of incidents – one of the land team based in Dumai being threatened; a man on the dockside standing on one of the mooring lines to prevent the ship from moving, and being extremely angry in the doing of it – brought it home. I’m an outsider and, while I get caught up in the excitement of being all daring on a Greenpeace ship, I’m just here for the duration of the campaign. I have a grasp on the situation as seen through the lens of reports and press releases, but no on-the-ground experience.

And so to Singapore. As someone said to me, it’s like a theme park, or one of those alien civilisations the Star Trek crew beam down to with immaculately manicured lawns and no litter. We’ve been stationed in Little India which is great from an eating and drinking point of view, and it actually smells like India. But along with the incense and spice, now I know what to look for the sweet waft of refining palm oil still comes through.

Leaving the ship was, for a few hours, like having a limb cut off. Along with the realisation that I was no longer encased in a floating steel bubble and had the freedom to do whatever the hell I liked (in accordance with Singapore’s many legal codes, of course), I’d also lost the social circle I’ve had for the past six weeks. It was made worse by working in a chilly, air-conditioned hotel lobby on my lonesome all day Monday (not to mention the cack-up with my immigration papers, or lack of them, causing endless fun when I tried to get into Singapore), but one last bout of shore leave had some of us reuniting in a dingy backpacker pub.

(Technically, I was the only one doing the reuniting, but it’s my perspective that counts here.)