Life in Disneyland, Part 2

Unruly schoolchildren, unwary travelers, and a naive diplomat

Last time I introduced readers to my paradise-like Foreign Service posting in Singapore—after the dreadful hellhole of Suriname. It all sounded too good to be true—and at first, looked really good. But like Disneyland, the comfortable life in Southeast Asia’s glitzy city-state that is available to expats, whether for business, pleasure, or government service, has hidden costs and a few well-concealed pitfalls. In the early 1990s, it was appreciably more expensive to live in than even Washington, D.C.—the other “Disneyland” on the Potomac, as one friend of mine once described our nation’s capital—and life there had its own peculiar quirks.

Even after the famous chewing gum ban—many folks started wearing T-shirts with red-circled slashes over Spearmint chewing gum packs—many folks will remember the famous caning incident, where a misbehaving U.S. student at the large and pricey American school was disciplined for his transgressions (vandalizing cars with a spray-paint can, as I recall) by being caned across his bare buttocks. [I had left Singapore by then, but was later assured by a mutual friend that however brutal it sounded, yes, that student deserved every lash he got!]

We had a large Embassy staff in Singapore, all traveling on diplomatic passports—but unlike in most postings, the list of the truly privileged was much shorter, due to a long-running dispute between the two governments over reciprocity: Singapore insisted, by the letter of the law, that numbers of diplomats allowed to bring in a private vehicle duty-free, for instance, be equal. So only a handful of the 100-plus Americans got to import a car, the same limit imposed on Singapore’s embassy in Washington—I think, under 20. My position was theoretically entitled to one, as a regional officer, but by the time I arrived, my slot had been reassigned to one of my fellow staff members, who actually needed it for his work, at least more than I ever would. [That he rarely used it—but his wife did—was what most rankled my wife.]

The alternative—importing a car “off the list”—would have required us to pay a stiff import duty, roughly doubling the cost, and I declined to do that. Plus, selling the car when we departed—a simple procedure in almost all other countries—was more complicated; we were allowed only to sell our automobiles for no more than the exact purchase price with transportation costs added in (another curse for the shoulders of the late Senator Jesse Helms), but exorbitant import duties were not included, as I recall.

Now you may think that I am grousing—that a diplomat’s life is so cushy, at government expense, that we sit around complaining about any obstacles, no matter how small. But I tried hard to be objective about such challenges. In truth, since most of my duties as Regional Personnel Officer duties requiring any travel on regular trips to the two other Embassies I served—in Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia, and Bandar Seri Begawan, in Brunei—required an airplane, not a car, I never needed a car for business. Taxis were plentiful, the subway was a dream (even with chewing gum under the fastidiously-cleared cars), and except for the extreme heat and occasional monsoon rains, walking was usually a pleasure. And I paid no gasoline surcharges.

No, it was more the pettiness of the system that irked me—the seemingly arbitrary regimentation of private life, like living in a Communist system (if without the stupid Communist party). Not being on the diplomatic list, for instance, meant I was subject to all local taxes (‘tho not on income). For instance, I had to pay $100 a year to the Singapore government for every TV in my apartment; we had one. Burned me up. We did not have a pet—importing dogs was complicated and expensive, as in most former British colonies, requiring lengthy quarantines—and we decided not to acquire one, preferring to babysit our U.S. neighbor’s two Yorkshire terriers instead. There was a rule—and a cost—for almost everything.

I once asked one of my foreign-national employees at the Embassy why she did not object to all those rules—like the fine for forgetting to flush toilets. She looked at me for a moment, shook her head, and said, “But Ben, if we did not have those fines, we might actually do some of those things.” To her, it was all perfectly sensible. The benefits of life in Singapore far outweighed any disadvantages. She was well educated and had traveled outside the country on several occasions; I attributed her attitude to the time-honored Oriental willingness to accept decrees from above—public order was paramount, obedience second, individualism a far third, if that high—and shrugged it off. Maybe I was just being too stubbornly American, too contrary, after all: If this overbearing, semi-authoritarian system worked, and the capitalist economy was booming, why argue with success?

As a historian and former journalist, I was troubled, of course, by the lack of any public opposition to the government’s sillier rules—I think the government’s People’s Action Party (PAP!!) allowed appointment of a token handful of non-members to parliament, for appearances—but the political risks of dissent were many, and the rewards, few or nonexistent. In Suriname, you would have disappeared after taking on the government. In Singapore, you were simply ignored and marginalized—disdained and reeducated until you learned the error of your ways.
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Life in Singapore, however regimented and mind-numbingly rule-heavy, was at least fun, for the most part. The offshore entertainment island of Sentosa—a family-friendly amusement park with a marvelous aquarium and other enticements—was a big hit with tourists and residents alike. There was a large zoo. Frequent fireworks displays were awe-inspiring—rivalling the tropical thunderstorms with ball-lightning that occurred during monsoon season—and there were many cultural events reflecting the country’s exotic ethnic blend: majority Mandarin Chinese, with smaller populations of Malay and South Asian/Tamil/Hindu descendants. English—one of the four official languages—is widely spoken, if with many borrowed phrases and words. [The inserted interjection/emphasis syllable “Lah” is ubiquitous—as in “You are American, lah?”]

We socialized a lot with the extended American and Caribbean communities—my favorite “club” was one we called the “West Indian Wives Club,” one whose membership was composed of men (U.S. and other expats) whose spouses, like my Jamaican-born wife, hailed from Caribbean islands—St. Lucia, Trinidad, and anywhere in between. (As I may have mentioned before, many U.S. diplomats had naturalized foreign-born spouses—one of the perks of living abroad—which often made for lively and entertaining dinner parties!) Margaret also acquired an affinity for mah-jongg, the endlessly entertaining game popular in Oriental countries. We ate out a lot—the food in Singapore is among the best in the world, from public food stalls to endless restaurants. We bowled—popular with Embassy employees, who had their own teams—and traveled as much as we could, easily and cheaply.

Of course, you had to stay prepared for brief weather events, and steamy heat. Like its neighbors, Singapore is very near to the Equator—less than 100 miles north of that imaginary line, which passes through Indonesia—and the climate is appropriately tropical. The island itself, like the U.S. state of Florida, is largely reclaimed and drained swamps—but unlike Florida, where I now live, islands are still being built offshore. Chinese engineering ingenuity—thousands of years old—is still much in evidence. What was once a largely uninhabited rocky swamp 200 years ago—when the British claimed it—is today among the world’s most carefully reimagined environments.

Malaysia, next door, is far larger—more than 30 million inhabitants on land roughly the size of New Mexico in the U.S.—and Brunei, with fewer than half a million inhabitants, sits on a Delaware-sized corner of the large island of Borneo (shared by Indonesia and Malaysia). Both countries are majority-Muslim, with some of the familiar resulting cultural restrictions—on sale of alcohol, for instance—but rules vary; under sharia-style laws, Brunei forbids the sale of alcohol, but foreigners may import a limited amount (for their own consumption only). Malaysia regulates alcohol sales but because it encourages tourists, enforcement is less punitive. All three countries frown on public drunkenness and drunk driving, which carries stiff penalties—another excellent reason for using public transportation!

But be warned! Possession of illegal drugs, as noted earlier, can lead to life-altering penalties—or even execution for selling drugs!—so travelers often encounter large warning signs in airports. And beware of another less obvious prohibition—against transporting the smelly but far less dangerous fruit, durian—which can result in civil penalties or even being tossed off an airline flight (before takeoff). Durian’s processed flavor is actually pleasant, if an acquired taste—it is used in ice cream, for instance—but the smell can be overpowering in an enclosed area, such as in an overhead aircraft bin, where some travelers attempt to carry it.

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The pleasant, cosmopolitan atmosphere and luxurious hotels of Singapore—and to a lesser extent, Malaysia—lure a steady stream of tourists and even official travelers. On one CoDel—a congressional delegation visit—during my stay, I met a large group of members of Congress, in Singapore ostensibly for official business but more interested, as it turned out, in shopping—that included my only encounter with an American Samoan delegate in “business attire”: a jacket and tie atop a kilt-like “skirt,” or lavalava. [In Suriname, I remember only one CoDel in all of two years—after enduring what seemed like a dozen or more in Copenhagen in a similar period!]

In my first year, we also had frequent VIP visits to Singapore, including one by then Vice President Dan Quayle, and a second, more memorable one by President George H. W. Bush in early January 1992. That called for a beefed-up staff—including advance teams—and locally-recruited volunteers (mostly among Embassy staff spouses) to manage the myriad of logistical details. Unfortunately for President Bush, that trip soon took him onward to Japan, where days later, after a stop in South Korea, he became violently ill with gastroenteritis at a state dinner in Tokyo—what we indelicately referred to as the ROWF heard round the world. (Thank goodness that was not on my watch—I can hear the orders now, clean-up in Lap Two, Justesen!)

But most memorable, personally, was my short-term assignment to the Embassy staff in Kuala Lumpur during the July 1991 ASEAN foreign ministers’ gathering, when Secretary of State James Baker came. I never met him, though I did once meet the Department’s spokesperson, Margaret Tutwiler, whose suite was next door to the Bakers’ suite. He had experienced discomforts in Southeast Asia on a previous visit, similar to my Kyiv-Tbilisi affliction (Montezuma’s revenge), and his staff put out the word that ONLY U.S.-prepared ice cubes from purified water were to be brought to the Secretary’s suite, daily or more often. Staff spouses prepared the ice in their homes, and brought it to me at the hotel. My assignment, believe it or not, was to be the ice-man: Safeguard and transport the containers of ice cubes personally to his suite—especially around cocktail hour—whenever they ran out. (Try putting that on your resume!)

And then there were the other celebrities, who all flocked to Singapore, whether promoting their movies, new recordings, or simply their new-found wealth and fame. Most of them frequented the world-famous Raffles Hotel, which was generally beyond my pay scale. But once, Margaret and I did have a Richard Dreyfus “sighting” at the country’s then-tallest hotel—with a bar on the 72nd floor balcony, where we had gone for high tea, overlooking the main floor restaurant, where he walked by—and did a double-take. Our eyes locked for a moment; Mr. Dreyfus, of course, did what most fan-shy celebrities do when they don’t want to sign an autograph: disappear before I could get up from our table and down the steps to be certain!

All good things come to an end, however, and after only a year in Singapore—a third of my tour—I was ready to move on. I found it a bit like being wrapped in a cocoon—safe, but confining, and not the right kind of challenge. (My job had its own difficulties, and I was fresh out of solutions.) The major international news of 1991, of course, after the end of the First Gulf War, which started just as we arrived, was the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union—and that meant dozens of new jobs for Foreign Service personnel to bid on. So I bit.

Next time: Part 3: Leaving Disneyland early, for the chaos of the post-Soviet Union