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Born and raised in Singapore, Jemimah Wei uses her hometown as the backdrop to her new novel, The Original Daughter—a story of sisterhood and family drama set in the turn of the millennium. But as well as it being a great source of inspiration for the author, she also believes it to be a great destination for solo travelers. Lale sits down with Wei for her tips on how to plan a trip, navigate its vibrant hawker centers, and make the most of its 24/7 culture.
Lale Arikoglu: Hi there. Welcome to Women Who Travel. I'm Lale Arikoglu. Today I'm excited to talk to author and journalist Jemimah Wei, about her home Singapore and about how exploring the city, the beaches, the green spaces, and the 24/7 culture is the perfect solo travel expedition. Yes, for many travelers, the airport itself is a destination, but the island state with its diverse array of communities and cultures is compact, safe and easy to explore.
Jemimah Wei: This is the story of five million people that exists nowhere else in the world. We are a very young country, we turned 60 this year, and already we have established ourself very quickly. Singapore is an island everywhere, so you walk long enough, you hit the water. There's so much to do. There is so much to eat. There is so much to see. And I think something that people are always a little surprised by is Singapore's language of administration is English, so everybody speaks English and that makes us a very attractive location for global investors, which is also why it's so safe and wealthy, but also makes it very accessible just linguistically for tourists coming in.
LA: Jemimah, is so lovely to have you in the studio. Just before we started recording, I was saying that I have been to Singapore but only for a few hours when I pass through the airport. It is kind of famously a stopover city, but there is a lot to explore. I don't want to fall onto a very predictable cultural reference, but Crazy Rich Asians really put it on the map as being a destination unto itself. What do people miss out on when they just fly through Changi?
JW: Well, firstly, thank you so much for having me on the show. I am so excited to talk to you and I could yap all day, so we are going to have to edit me down for sure. If I talk too much, just snap at me.
LA: We can do like a three-parter on Singapore.
JW: Oh, let's go.
LA: Yeah, just run with it.
JW: Fun. Okay, wait. Let's talk about the airport first though because you mentioned us being a stopover city.
LA: A few weeks ago, Jemimah wrote for Condé Nast Traveler about Changi Airport, which has been voted one of the best airports in the world in our Readers' Choice Awards for many years. She grew up 15 minutes away and it's where she actually wrote most of her debut novel, which we'll talk about later. There's a lush retreat at the core of the airport called Changi Jewel.
JW: So Changi Jewel, which is kind of this multi-use entertainment shopping dining complex. It's a giant glass donut and the terminals kind of orbit this jewel. And in the middle of it is this giant indoor waterfall which falls from the top of this donut and it's the world's tallest indoor waterfall and it's circled by a massive rainforest sponsored by Shiseido.
LA: They're like beauty brand?
JW: Yes. Everything I think in Singapore does kind of have a corporate sponsor, but that rainforest is really incredible because even though I am Singaporean, every single time I go there, I'm still kind of awestruck. It's just that impressive. I think it's made out of 22,000 shrubs and the experience is designed by teamLab in Tokyo. And so you go in and there is this sound that is swelling and simmering and it's supposed to mimic the feeling of a rainforest breathing. And so the idea is that traveling is stressful and you can sit down in the rainforest in all these hidden benches and just relax. It's extremely calming.
LA: You know Singapore very, very well. It is, I'm going to say at home.
JW: Yes.
LA: What does it feel like when you touch back down in that airport?
JW: It's really emotional. During the pandemic when we couldn't travel, there were all these things going around online where people would then imitate what the air stewardess would say to Singaporeans when they touch down and people—
LA: These are people from Singapore on the internet.
JW: From Singapore. They would be like, "Welcome back to Singapore," or, "Thank you. We know you have a choice of airlines. Thank you for flying Singapore Airlines and for Singaporeans welcome home." And that familiar sound…
LA: I get the same thing with the British Airways music.
JW: Oh, yeah.
LA: I always know I'm on my way home to London when the little string music starts on the plane.
JW: And the thing about touching down Singapore is there's this feeling of immense nostalgia, immense familiarity, and that is by design. Changi Airport smells a type of way, it's a created scent.
LA: Wait, that's fascinating.
JW: Yeah, it's an orchid scent and it's created for Changi Airport. It's sprayed throughout the airport. It's very subtle, but when you land all your senses just know it's Changi Airport. You know because it smells like Changi.
LA: Why is it an orchid scent?
JW: It's our national flower.
LA: Okay, yeah. When you step outside of the airport, it's hot. Does it smell of orchids?
JW: No, it smells so hot. It smells like sweat is what it smells like.
LA: Describe it to me. You leave the airport.
JW: You leave the airport.
LA: And then you are, I don't know, you getting a taxi, you're getting a train.
JW: You can get a taxi, you can get a train. It's very efficiently connected to the rest of the country and you basically are in shock because you've come into this lovely airport, you smell like orchids and then you're slapped in the face by humidity and heat because we do sit on right off the equator and so it's extremely humid. We are a tropical country and you're just trying to adjust to being hot.
LA: When you get home, what are the first few things you do and things that you would also recommend to a traveler who's maybe going to Singapore for the first time? When you hit the ground, it's like, I feel like when I go back to London, it's always like there's the one place I want to eat at. There's the park I want to be in, the walk I want to take. There's those things that you want to do when you get home. What's that for you in Singapore?
JW: First you shower and then you go eat. I always go to my favorite coffee shop nearby and get chicken rice because near my place there's like an amazing chicken rice place.
LA: Okay. I love chicken rice. Can you describe it for people who might not be familiar
JW: Okay, so chicken rice is basically steamed or roasted chicken over rice. The rice is steamed in the chicken fat, so the rice is very aromatic and it's three to four dollars, which is emblematic of most meals, most everyday meals in Singapore.
LA: And you can find these plates of chicken rice all over Singapore?
JW: All over Singapore, but as any Singaporean, they'll have strong opinions on which is the best chicken and rice to go to. They will fight you for it again. So I think it's easier for tourists to bookmark specific stores, but bookmark types of food you want to eat and then just populate your Google Maps with stars and when you're roaming Singapore, just see what's nearby and go eat there because there's so much good food.
LA: I feel like countries and cities that are sort of ingrained with an inherent food culture and a pride in their food, always have those places that all claim to be the best at this one thing. When I was in India over Christmas, I was looking for mango lassis and we ended up going to the street where there were five mango lassi places all next to each other, all with the same name, all with their different owners yelling at you that they were the best and it was overwhelming and I don't even know if we chose the best one, but it was delicious. How do you navigate that if you're a first-timer? That scene, it's kind of overwhelming, like I said.
JW: Well, if you're not shy, just grab a local and be like, "Hey, what do you think about this versus that down the road, check it out." And then they will probably have an opinion. Singaporeans are very opinionated about our food, but otherwise honestly we are very competitive as a culture. You can't really go wrong. I think the statistic is 300 new restaurants open a day in Singapore, and so to last because we have limited land space, they have to really prove their worth.
LA: Singapore's food scene has such a vast global reach. I mean even here in New York, I can try all different types of foods like Malaysian satay and my favorite Indian curry puffs. You've got such a range of people and chefs and types of food. What should people order in the hawker centers? I know some hawker centers have Michelin stars.
JW: Oh, yeah.
LA: I mean it's like a whole scene unto itself. What should people be ordering?
JW: So chili crab is part of, it's our culture, so you'll want to go to a hawker center that does have a sort of specializes in that, and you don't just have to do chili crab—you can do black pepper crab, you can do steamed crab, you can do garlic butter crab. There's just so many types. It's so, so good.
Other dishes that are really popular in a hawker center would be laksa. I really love that. It's like a kind of noodle soup. Prata is basically kind of light bread, carrot cake, which is not the same as an English carrot cake. It's really just like stir-fried turnip and egg. It's really, really, really good.
It's impossible to kind of narrow down what you should try because for any taste palette, if you wanted something peppery, for example, you could have bak kut teh, which is kind of pork bone and pepper soup, which is amazing. If you're feeling a little under the weather, you could have herbal soups, you could have, oh, I love congee, I love fish soup, which is really amazing. I think really the limiting factor is not where to find food, but your stomach space.
LA: I think often you think if you're going somewhere on your own, you have to be on your own. But actually part of the joy of it is having time to connect with new people and finding some locals to be like, "Is it weird if I sit at your table and can you tell me what to order?" And then next thing you are getting to try everything.
JW: As a solo traveler, it's so enjoyable to really just get to meet other solo travelers. I really recommend trying to make friends or look for other solo travelers and be like, "Let's split a meal," because it is common when my friends come and visit that we go to a hawker center and three people go out and get five different things each and come down and put them family style at the table, so you get to try as many things as possible because otherwise you're just not going to be able to finish eating.
And the other thing about Singapore is that we are incredibly safe. So when you talk to somebody, a stranger, they might be a little shy and be like, "how are you?" But you're not going to be in danger physically, you know what I mean? It's an incredibly safe country. Crime rates are really low and part of that is because it's not worth committing crime. In Singapore, you will get caught. It's too small. There are too many cameras everywhere. We do have a really strong surveillance culture, so make that what you will, but it's not really worth it to do crime. And there are a lot of rules in Singapore that make it really safe. So crimes that happen in Singapore tend to be crimes of passion and if you're a tourist, nobody's that passionate about you, so you'll be okay.
LA: After the break, Jemimah suggests wandering off the tourist tracks and exploring these covered public spaces under apartment buildings where you might come across anything from a Malay wedding to a Buddhist tourist funeral and even grab lunch with locals.
In her novel, The Original Daughter, Jemimah describes Singapore from the mid-'90s all the way to 2015 and the continuous redevelopment of the city and these unique Singapore spaces called void decks where you might just get to know the real Singapore.
JW: This novel is called The Original Daughter. It follows two sisters and these girls, they live in public housing, and one of the things that features strongly in the novel is the sense of void deck culture. So just for context, what that means is because most of us live in high-rise apartment buildings that are government housing, the first floor of these buildings tends to be empty, so it's literally a deck that is void and sometimes that gets filled out with retail spaces like coffee shops or hangout spaces or cafes or laundromats or bird shops. So 70% of people who live in government housing in any particular block have to be Chinese ethnically. And then you have a quota for Malays, for Indians, and for other people and that's really unique to Singapore. So as a tourist, if you wanted to see it, I would just look up housing districts and go walk there because every housing district is organized around having those community amenities for the locals that live in the area.
And I wanted to have a lot of that put in the novel because I don't think people talk about it that much. I'm not sure that I've seen it in popular culture or in any discussion of a visit to Singapore. But if I were a tourist in Singapore, I would totally schedule just random existential downtime where I went to a neighborhood where people live and just walk around and experience it or explore the variety of things you could see at a void deck. It's like nobody talks about the bird shops, but you go to parts of Singapore, and it's just birds.
LA: So it is just shops of birds?
JW: It's a shop with a ton of birds because it's not as common in my generation, but it is a really common hobby in the previous generation to keep some birds. So there are these shops where there are all kinds of birds and there are also bird singing corners, bird singing gatherings. You can go for a bird singing pageant if you really wanted to and there will be doing activities like that, like ultra specific activities that are catered to a kind of local hobby. It's a way to meet locals. You go to a bird singing pageant, you have to talk to a local, otherwise you're just sitting there listening to birds. So some areas in Singapore you go and it's just birds. And I think people are generally very welcoming of tourists and excited to hang out with new people. And so I think it is the kind of destination that can be accessible for everybody.
LA: Coming up, Singapore's 24/7 culture.
If you're traveling on your own, how do you spend a night by yourself? I mean it sounds like actually it's quite doable and actually would be pretty enjoyable.
JW: Yeah. One of the things I think people don't really talk about when it comes to Singapore is the fact that we truly are a city that never sleeps. We have a really strong 24-hour culture. You could get food at any time and you could also go to the mall anytime. There are malls that stay open 24/7. There are grocery stores like mega stores that stay open 24/7.
So I would recommend after dinner in Singapore and after doing whatever after dinner activities you want to do like watch a show or go and see some nighttime attraction or something, you can get supper or you can go get drinks somewhere and drinks stop being served at a certain time, so then go get a massage. There are late night massages. One of my favorite things to do is get a body massage at night after a long day of walking and traveling. And then after that you can watch a midnight movie or you can go get supper at 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 a.m. And then if you forgot your phone charger for example, you could be like, "Let's go to the superstore," and go to the mall and you could get literally anything from a Halloween costume to a phone charger to some microwavable snacks to skincare.
LA: It's so funny, like New York has its reputation of its 24-hour culture and I'm like, "You can't get half of what you're describing in New York or most international cities." This feels unique.
JW: Yeah, yeah. We are really overnight, an overnight city. When friends come to visit, they're really jet-lagged all the time. So there was this, everyone came to Singapore to visit for my wedding, and at 2:00 a.m. my friend was like, "I'm up." And I was like, "Let's go to the mall." We went to the grocery store. We had 500 types of Japanese snacks. It was great.
LA: And what I've heard is that we think of it as this metropolis, but it's very green and actually has a lot of outdoors experiences. There's lots of ways to kind of feel in nature.
JW: Yes, and that is by design. When the country first started, I think they decided it was too hot and they didn't want people to labor and then get heat stroke and faint. So they imported a type of tree. No, I'm serious. They imported the trees that we have along our highways that specifically branch out like rain trees so that they provide shade to the road so that when you're driving or walking you don't stand in the sun. So a lot of Singapore is designed around understanding the weather and yes, it's extremely, extremely green. We have green corridors, we have a lot of constructed green spaces.
We have a really strong workout culture, fitness culture. There are a lot of those boutique and specialized classes that imported from all over. I personally like to go biking, so Singapore is interconnected by a lot of highways, but also by bike paths. You can really bike or run from one end of Singapore to the other. So we also still have spaces that are green by nature and that we've left alone.
The beach for example, there are many beaches in Singapore. It's one of my favorite things to do because a water baby, but there's also the more elevator beaches. Sentosa is this artificial island that we have.
LA: I have heard about this island.
JW: It's really interesting. It's specifically a tourist island that is satellite Singapore. You can get that by monorail, and there's just a lot of touristy things to but also cool things to do. There's a lot of water bodies where you can go sit and cool off. We have a lot of design spaces for lounging and chilling out. There are a lot of public pools. There are a lot of really fancy pools and hotels that are super wonderful, and there's this new thing that's really popular called the ice bath. You could go somewhere and just sit in ice water for ages. It's supposed to be really good for muscle recovery. And then you also have onsens like mimicking the onsens in Korea and Japan.
Because Singapore is small, I think our big benefit is variety and accessibility. You could go to one mall and see 200 shops in there and so basically hit all the shops just in one afternoon. You could do very high end luxury shopping in a specific mall or the more mid-tier luxury shopping. And I think something that's interesting is we have this thing called the Boutique Fair that happens two times a year where small businesses just get together in the F1 pit building because we also host the F1 races. And when they're not being raced about, you can go standing there and look at shops and they do pop-ups for the weekend and you can go and experience hundreds of local businesses.
LA: So you're standing on the F1 race course going shopping essentially?
JW: Well, you're moving through the F1 race course and then going to this indoor air-conditioned hall.
LA: Okay. Very, very important. You've got Marina Bay Sands.
JW: Exactly adjacent to the F1 pit, and you can look at all the different local businesses and discover new ones there.
LA: I feel like when I'm trying to get souvenirs, and obviously I'm just speaking from my perspective, but I kind of want to bring home things that do feel indicative of the place and the people I've met. So if something feels touristy more than local then don't?
JW: You could. One of the things that I never find anywhere else in the world is kaya, which is a kind of coconut jam, and I always, always buy tubs of that to gift to people.
LA: Oh, you mean when you have it on toast. kaya toast.
JW: Oh, yeah. We have it on toast.
LA: My God, it's so good.
JW: It's so good. I tried making it. It's so hard to make. You have it on toast and you dip it in soft-boiled eggs. Anyway, you can buy that from all kinds of brands and just kind of gift them to people.
LA: Amazing. For listeners who are now sold on going to Singapore or want to follow along with your life in Singapore and your travels and also find the book, where on the internet should they go?
JW: I'm available on socials. I'm @Jemimah Wei on everything. And the book is called The Original Daughter. It's available for pre-order or purchase in any bookstore online or your local independent bookstore. And there is a different cover in Singapore and in the US, so you could buy here and then go there and collect another edition. It would be great. Buy two. Buy two, buy all of them so we stay in print.
LA: Okay, great. Thank you for listening to Women Who Travel. I'm Lale Arikoglu and you can find me on Instagram @lalehannah. Our engineer is Pran Bandi. And special thanks to Jake Lummus for engineering support. Our show is mixed by Amar Lal at Macrosound. Jude Kampfner is our producer, Stephanie Kariuki, our executive producer and Chris Bannon is head of Condé Nast Global Audio.
