Bargaining Is The First Lesson In Singapore

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31071, 28 May 1966, Page 5

Bargaining Is The First Lesson In Singapore

(By RICHARD NEVILLE and MARTIN SHARP, who arc hitch-hiking round the world Reprinted by arrangement with the “Sydney Morning Herald.’’)

\T first you think all the high-school cadets have part-time jobs. Little green men hug their rifles at the airport, bank customers are patronised by uniformed adolescents with shelters behind a sentry-box and its Administration behaves as though a coup d’etat is just about to pop out of y our briefcase.

This garrison-town atmosphere is confirmed by a crisply dressed police force of 30.000. Recruiting advertisements specify that “all applicants must be at least 4ft. Bin.;” so to Australians, after a diet of giant Bumper Farrells, they appear hyper-friendly.

The cab-driver didn’t turn his meter on for the trip from the airport to the hotel and billed us five dollars Malay. Magnanimously, he accepted two dollars Australian. The legitimate fare is about two dollars Malay (60 cents Australian).

This driver was not a solitary exploiter. He epitomises commerce in Singapore.

The travel pamphlets coo, that the custom of overcharging is just a happy game. “You’re expected to bargain.” j It doesn’t always seem that' way. Sometimes, when you slash a rickshaw driver’s fee down to double the specified rate, his face swings into a pantomime of tradewy. The j working rule for shopkeepers and restaurateurs is to multiply by four for Europeans and reduce this multiple progressively for Malays, Indians and Chinese.

Often the local personality compensates for the national habit of dishonesty. When you tear away the windscreen cloth covering the taxi meter or pay five cents instead of 20 for a fresh lime juice, they respond with a Gallic shrug of their shoulders and giggle. Prompted by history-book memories, we spent the first night at Raffles. It’s superluxurious, dreary and safely insulated from the city. There are more anxious porters per square inch than the total number of bouncers; at Sydney’s Latin Quarter. The next night a Chinese hotel a few hundred yards away accommodated us for half the price. The next night another Chinese hotel a few hunderd yards away took us for exactly half that. The night before we left we heard of two American girls paying exactly half our rent at another Chinese hotel.

Double I se Ours occasionally doubled as a brothel—which provided more colourful co-tenants than Raffles—the shower was a cold tap and a saucepan, the air-conditioning was an exhausted whirly-fan which the proprietor sneaked up and turned off at midnight—but it was clean. Take Sydney’s Dixon street, crowd it with Easter Show stalls jumbled with exotic foods and magazines, divert peak hour traffic through it. swell this with a few thousand tri-shaws, add some aromas of decay and you have Singapore. Your first reaction to the rows of skewered skinned dogs, onion weed and greasy carbonado substances is one of thankfulness for that emergency supply of Entero-Via-forra tablets and Marmite. A few days later you’re enjoying gastronomical orgasms at these food stalls three times r day while recovering from constipation due to unneccessary drug intakes. Censorship in Singapore achieves the same ludicrous inconsistency as the Sydney brand. “Playboy” is banned, but not the English equivalent "King,” or "Evergreen Review.” or the “Kama Sutra” which are all prohibited in Australia. Films are viciously butchered—“ The Collector” suffered

worse here than in Sydney, crucial scenes of violence were sliced from “The Hill” because of racial overtones, the print of "Hiroshima Mon Amour” released to a local film society was virtually a trailer. Language Trouble The prudish hand of Lee Kuan Yew's Administration does not extend beyond the cinemas or bookstalls. “Johnny want a girl?” echoes

from Raffles to China town. If Johnny does, it’s about Sl5 Many Europeans make unfair assumptions about bar girls. The professional charmers swarm around your table at most night clubs and bars. You are expected to buy them drinks and tip them a few dollars on departing. You’re also expected to converse and somehow that Collins Malay-English dictionary falls flat. This practice is not normally a front for prostitution. It I is Oriental custom for men to drink without their wives, and the girls’ duty is to act as temporary social replacements. Singapore’s youth, though statisically significent, are not especially catered for and are barely discernable by their activities. The numerous bars and cabarets, including Singapore's first discotheque, Gino’s A-Go-Go, are popular more

among tourists, affluent expatriates and successful Chinese businessmen. The teenagers (a label that jars here) spend most of their spare time at the island's 20-odd picture theatres or a sparkling new bowling centre. The entire population seems addicted to spy films. The “Loved One” lasted two nights, “Spying over Bangkok,” “Spy in Your Eye,” “The Spy Who Went to Hell,” “One Spy too Many,” “The Man Mightier than Bond in Istanbul” m' to mention the Chinese titles run for an eternity. Genuine Bond Unsurprisingly Singapore is producing its own James (007) Bond type of film with an all-local cast, tentatively titled: “Jefri Zain in Gerak Kilat.” The “Straits Times” says that the film is being produced “with the full co-opera-tion of Singapore’s army, police, harbour authorities and security services.” It’s sure to break all records for cast casualties. Some theatres specialise in Indian and Chinese movies, which are usually sub-titled in two languages. The Indians enjoy a basic formula of melodrama, music and surrealism rolled into an almighty cardboard spectacle. Cabarets feature Chinese

rhythm-and-blues groups who deliver perfectly articulated Beatles and Stones numbers with a langour that would have made Lazarus envious. The spacious dance floors stay deserted until, at a signal imperceptible to us, the audience rises en masse floats cheek to cheek for one number, then retires. Perhaps a trend-setting pair will ChaCha.

The management of Gino’s A-Go-Go are anxious to break this tradition and they sweat for news of Sydney's latest dance crazes. Gino’s in an incubator for Singapore’s avant-garde in another respect. Its co-owner, Gordon Craig, is launching upstairs from the discotheque the island’s first professional art gallery, to be managed by Shirley Davis, the island’s first agent. Their art seems no less derivative than their cinema. The gallery’s prolific and talented exhibitors have forsaken their own traditions in favour of Western fashions and thus their art imitates not life but New York and Paris.

Vast Gaol Singapore’s most deceptive characteristic is its size. On a map you half expect to tour it on foot. Yet the bus to Changi, for instance, takes about 45 minutes (and you know how those Chinese drive). This area crawls with British based soldiers. Officers have sprawling houses, two servants and educate their children in Sydney or London. The men’s quarters are less luxurious and they school their children locally. When these kids grow up to be Alfs. they accelerate social Westernisation by teaching natives the Twist and delinquency. The historic P.O.W. camp, now a civilian prison, is semiaccessible to tourists—especially if you tell the guard that

Andrea sent you. The to warden, incidentally, was war-time inmate who is entei tainingly garrulous, a cynic; criminologist and constant! amused by the irony of hi present occupation. More than half th prisoners are “detainees. They are suspected of belong ing to secret societies —viciou fraternities responsible fo most of the serious crime oi the island. They have n< chance of legal representatior or appeal—redundancies any way, since their imprisonmen' side-steps the law court.

There are also hundreds of inmates classified vaguely a; “political prisoners” and their future depends similarly on police intuition.

Scared Of Govt. No-one is much concerned by these anomalies: least of all law students have a blind faith in police efficiency. Actually, Government authoritarianism seems as natural as the monsoon to Asians. Some talkative adolescents expressed amazement that the Australian Government actually allowed long hair—come to to think of it . . . and the management of the innocuous Gino’s are scared stiff of Government disapproval. After 10 days in Singapore we hitched to Malacca. Inspired by young Germans and Frenchmen at the Sikh temple, who’d roughed it from Saigon to Singapore and were en route to Australia to make quick money at Mount Isa before continuing. These professionals are walking guide books and can instantly detect the cheapest sources for everything from porridge to pot.

Because of bad timing we were trapped in the tiny, onerickshaw town of Tampoi and resorted to a night in the police station. With the help of British soldiers —“these locals hate us . . . they’d kick us out tomorrow if they could . . . wish we were back in Germany”—and a Chinese truck-driver we reached Malacca the next night. We were immediately plunged into homesickness by the greetings of Aussie soldiers: “Look . . . bloody poofters."