Travels (2012)
“Nor did it get better driving through Singapore itself, a city that has systematically destroyed every vestige of its own exoticism in a period of ten years. When I first went there, in 1973, Singapore was magical—part modern business center, part sleepy British colony, and everywhere beautiful, hot, green. Wherever you turned, it revealed tantalizing glimpses of its own history, like the barbed wire around the balconies of the colonial houses, reminders of the Japanese occupation. It was a cit...y of distinct quarters: the Indian quarter, the Chinese quarter around the river, the Malay quarter, each with its own feeling, faces, architecture, and smells.
But all that is gone now. Even its innocent pleasures, the vast chili-crab palaces along the coast, have disappeared. Whatever its modern virtues, and they are many, Singapore has chosen to destroy its unique face, and replace it with skyscrapers and giant shopping malls so it looks like everywhere else.
It took an hour to drive north, across the bridge into Malaysia, and then to find the road to the east coast.MoreLess
But all that is gone now. Even its innocent pleasures, the vast chili-crab palaces along the coast, have disappeared. Whatever its modern virtues, and they are many, Singapore has chosen to destroy its unique face, and replace it with skyscrapers and giant shopping malls so it looks like everywhere else.
It took an hour to drive north, across the bridge into Malaysia, and then to find the road to the east coast.MoreLess
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