Dodgy Adventures in Singapore

It’s the end of our first weekend here in Asia, and tomorrow begins the regular schedule of class Monday – Thursday followed by a long weekend to travel. We’ve been here since Wednesday evening, and we’re getting a lot more comfortable walking around the campus and navigating our way into the city.

We had class Friday morning and afternoon as well as Saturday morning, so school is already in full swing. This study abroad is sponsored by the school of Industrial and Systems Engineering, which means we are all ISyE students. While here in Asia, we are taking four classes, one at a time for a little more than two weeks each. The time table is very intensive, but hopefully taking the classes in Asia will take the edge off. Our classes are

• HTS 2602: Asia in the Modern World


• ISyE 3039: Quality Systems


• ISyE 3103: Supply Chain Models – Logistics


• ISyE 3104: Into to Supply Chain Modeling

These ISyE courses are good ones to take in Asia because we get to study some of these concepts in a real world environment, such as the port of Singapore and Chinese factories.

After class on Saturday, we had the rest of the weekend free to explore whatever we wanted. We had gone into Orchard Road the previous evening to try and see The Da Vinci Code, but it was sold out until the midnight showing, and I was too tired to wait up to see it then. There were four of us who decided we didn’t want to wait up, so we went for a drink before heading back to NUS. On Saturday afternoon, most people relaxed for awhile, just taking care of the little things around campus that needed to be done. I joined the gym that is part of our dorm complex, so I went running for awhile and caught up on reading. Mainly, we started planning out our weekend travels and such as well as planning our big evening out. We aren’t anticipating being in Singapore on another weekend because of travelling, so we wanted to take advantage of this one weekend here.

After reading through our guidebooks, we discovered that Singapore is the home to the premiere club in southeast Asia, Zouk (http://www.zoukclub.com.sg). This is a massive dance club, encompassing three different clubs, each with multiple rooms, as well as a wine bar. It attracts world-famous DJs and is the place to see and be seen in Singapore. We got all dressed up, determined the many transfers we had to take to get there on public transportation (bus – bus – train – walk), and headed out after hanging out with the rest of the group. When we finally got there, it definitely lived up to our expectations. This is a really cool club with great everything. It probably would have been even better if we could have gotten in! 4 of the 7 in our group didn’t bring any ID with them, so they couldn’t get in. We didn’t want to stay without them, so we all caught a van back to NUS after much deliberation and arguing to get in. In hindsight, it seems quite obvious that a country who hangs people for drug trafficking is fairly strict on letting people into a club, but at least now we know!

Even though we went out, I still woke up as early as on a normal day here. Our big plan for Sunday was to go to the zoo and the botanical gardens, but unfortunately for us the long forecast scattered thunderstorms showed up this morning. It poured until about 1pm. While it did stop eventually, none of us was too sure if it was going to start again (we are in the tropics after all), so we decided to head into Little India and the neighbouring areas to visit the temples and mosques and check out the shopping stalls. We took taxis to the Sultan Mosque, the largest mosque in Singapore. We had to cover up with floor length long sleeve robes provided by the mosque, and we weren’t allowed in the main prayer room. We could see inside, however, and it was a neat experience to see all of the floor mats laid out for the prayer times. I hadn’t been to a mosque before, but Islam is more prevalent here than in other areas I have been before. After leaving the mosque, we wandered around the surrounding streets and shops, particularly Arab Street. This street is known for its wide array of vendors and shops, and everything is brightly coloured and ornate and fabulous. The fabrics that we found were incredible. Once we all (we being the girls) decide what we want made in China, we may return to buy our fabric here.

After wandering down Arab Street, we had decided to walk over to Little India to see the Hindu temples and an important Buddhist temple in that area of town. This was actually the dodgiest walk I have ever taken in my life. We followed the map from Point A to Point B, but our map failed to indicate that we were walking through the ghetto. We were the only white people around. Singapore is in Asia, but there are still a fair amount of white European ex-pats and tourists everywhere. Just not here! I have never felt more out of place in my life. It’s a good thing we were in such a large group (eight people) because a few of us swear that several groups of men followed us around, most likely pickpockets who never got the opportunity with our group. The temples were really cool, and we survived the trip, but man, it was dodgy.

After that experience, we came back to NUS only to turn around to go back to town for dinner half an hour later. One of the group members turned 21 today, so we all went into town to have dinner on the water. There are a lot of birthdays on this trip, at least four, and we only have about 24 people total. It was a gorgeous night because the rain from earlier had cooled off the air and humidity, and it was fun being at dinner with the entire group. We walked around the waterfront for awhile longer before getting cabs back. This city is really very pretty at night with a lot going on all the time. I also found out today that there is a 24hour shopping centre not too far from where we were, so we may have to be checking that out soon.