First World on Steroids

I planned a vacation from the ice covered cobblestones of Korca for a 9 day visit with my niece and her husband in Singapore. He is working there for two years on a temporary assignment from New York City and she is teaching at an international school. I thought it would be nice to spend some time with them and the fact that Singapore is on the equator with average temperatures in the mid-80’s would provide a pleasant mid-winter opportunity for me to thaw out. There was a week at the end of January when my students would be having exams and classes would be cancelled, so I called the Peace Corps office to tell them of my plans. There was a mandatory in-service training conference planned in mid-January so I booked my flight.

As January approached, the dates for the conference moved later in the month and, when finalized, overlapped with my departure date. I was told my leave would not be approved. At first, I was pretty angry. I am a volunteer, after all. However after some consideration, I went to the Turkish Airline office in Tirana and paid the fee to change the ticket. I wasn’t happy about that either, but, I figure if I divide the cost over my term of service it is less than 10 cents a day.

The meeting in Durres, the Adriatic port city for Tirana, was actually pretty good. It was held in a hotel that used to be a children’s recreation center under the communists. It has beautiful grounds and the food was good. It’s always good to get together with my cohort and hear about their activities. I got some good ideas for classes, projects and potential funding sources.

I took a bus to Tirana and then another to the airport. I arrived with plenty of time, actually more than plenty of time as my departure was delayed about 6 hours. I was facing a long wait at the airport in Istanbul, but as it worked out I just made my connection for the long flight across South Asia.

Singapore is impressive. Most American cities look underdeveloped by comparison. It is a crowded, Southeast Asian city, but is clean and safe with well maintained infrastructure, and, despite its exotic multicultural population, almost everyone speaks fluent English. I ate Indian food off of banana leaves, Chinese noodle dishes, Indonesian, Thai, Malay, and, even American specialties. Nice break from the healthy, but relatively bland Albanian diet (I still can’t taste the difference between lakror and byrek- but, then, I still can’t hear the subtle difference in the pronunciation of the “u” sound of an Albanian “y” and the “u” sound of an Albanian “u”, although my efforts at producing what sounds identical to me continue to confuse my Albanian listeners).

I walked along the river walk and crossed the pedestrian foot bridge to the Asian Cultural Museum. It was fascinating, and the West Asian section had special relevance for the Muslim heritage of Albania. They use computers to effectively augment the experience. I especially enjoyed the “virtual guides” that “waited” on monitors around the museum. You were even able to ask them questions about themselves. I took the bus to the Botanical Garden which is immaculate. There are even specialty gardens within the large park for orchids, rain forest, evolution and more. I then walked down the trendy Orchard Street shopping district to the international school where my niece works and got a chance to read with some of her 3rd grade students. There are almost as many languages as students in her class.

Just strolling through the various neighborhoods of Singapore is fascinating; Little India, Chinatown, Downtown, Arab Street, etc. Old churches, mosques, old Hindu, Chinese and even Jewish temples, and colonial buildings contrast with the hundreds of high rise office and apartment buildings that locals call the “concrete forest”. Singapore has more shopping malls and restaurants than any city I have visited. Escalators and stairs go over and under streets connecting one to another. You can almost walk across the island city without leaving a mall.

My hosts have a large circle of ex-pat friends. We met a couple from England and Canada to go bicycling in East Coast Park that fronts the waterway between Singapore and Indonesia. It was filled with bicycles, skate boards, roller blades, and pedestrians. Picnickers sat on the grass or barbecued and ate in gazebos. There are lots of restaurants along the strand (you can buy a “Megaprosperity Burger” at the McDonalds to help celebrate the Chinese New Year). A large pond with an overhead tow ring pulled wake boarders rapidly through the water. There were hundreds of cargo ships among which a few sail boats tacked in the breeze, under blue skies and cottony puffs of cloud, in the Straits of Malacca.

I had the opportunity to visit Singapore General Hospital and talk with a few of its doctors. It is more than a thousand-bed, modern, multispecialty hospital that provides everything from heart-lung transplants to traditional Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture. All Singaporeans all covered for health care for about a fifth of the cost as a percentage of the economy compared to the US (which, of course, still leaves 40 million uninsured). Maybe Singapore would consider sending health educators to America.

A few of my Albanian friends had asked me to buy things for them in Singapore. I went shopping (not my favorite activity) but was lost among the malls and the prices were not as good as we anticipated. The cell phones and cameras they wanted are actually less expensive in Tirana than Singapore. I was especially reluctant to buy cell phones since, if the connections don’t work, there is no way to return them.

My last day there was a special treat. The Singapore Air Show, the largest in Asia, was open to the public. There were aerobatics and static displays. There were lots of military and large civilian aircraft, but only a few small planes. The Singapore Youth Flying Club, which is for high school students and is subsidized by the government, had their Piper Warrior on display. There were several members in their sharp, navy blue jump suits standing around it. I talked with them about their training and activities. I wish the kids at the Aviation Interest Club of Korca could have been there.

The ex-pats told me that the reason Singapore is so safe and clean is that it is essentially governed by benevolent, conservative, one party rule. Sounds a bit like Idaho. They cane violators for minor infringements of the law. That is something I am sure would appeal to many of my friends back home.

The late night flight back to Albania also went through Istanbul. Turkish Airline offers free city tours for passengers with long layovers, but delays, weather and lines conspired against that again. I spent a night in Tirana so that I could meet with Peace Corps staff, some people at the Ministry of Health and also with Frederiko Tashko, head of the National Aero Club of Albania. I really enjoyed talking with him and will tell more of his story in a future post.

I finished my meetings earlier than I expected and was able to catch an afternoon furgon back to Korca. I chose a newer one with good tires since I had heard the road over the pass to Lake Ohrid was worse than usual with snow and mud. The trip was long, but uneventful. I am getting accustomed to it and, jet lagged, I slept most of the way home.