Shopping-tastic! A weekend on the malls

Tanglin Mall and Vivocity


Tanglin Mall at the end of Orchard Road is a little piece of the Caucasian kingdom, a relic from British colonial past, complete with faux-Tudor black and white frontage. I honestly feel out of place here, with so many westerners floating around buying over priced merchandise.


It makes me feel uneasy, like I’m segregating myself from the real world, because it isn’t the real world. It’s like the Epcot Centre in Singapore, where a little piece of every country is crammed into the purpose-built dome for the benefit of those who can’t bear being away from Mother Country.


Apparently the coffee is very good; Caffe Beviamo is the best of the best if you’re after a really good latte. But coffee does not a shopping experience make, and this place just feels wrong.

Vivocity, the newest and largest mall in Singapore, is the perfect example of how to build a mall, if you’re in the business of designing malls that is. Down by the new Harbour Front development, overlooking the causeway to Sentosa Island, Vivocity is an absolute playground for Singaporeans on the weekend.


There’s every department store you’d want, there’s every designer shop you’d ever need to be down with the kids (of ANY generation), there’s equipment stores, food stores, cinemas, a paddling pool on the roof, a gym and when you’re bored with that, walk into the older Harbour Front Centre, adjacent, and book a boat trip to Indonesia. What else do you need for entertainment?

Alternatively, Vivocity can be used as a viewing platform for Sentosa Island's Resort World!

Resort World's rides still aren't working...

 but the Casino is raking in the money.  Some CEO lost S$26M in a weekend's binge-gambling.  He's trying to claim the Casino was irresponsible. 
Answers on the back of a S$2 bill, addressed to "Big Loser"




If you’re not content with seeing the same stores over and over, I find it interesting to spin myself around three times and try to find my way out. The mall has been designed with disorientation in mind and zig-zag escalators, randomly placed elevators and confusing signposts make for a slow getaway! It’s a perfectly designed mall and I take my hat off to the engineers and architects. I take it off to them until I just want to find a toilet NOW and then I lose my rag and just WISH there were some signs!

 

The hilarious moment of the day came when we ate at JPOT Hotpot Steamboat restaurant in Vivocity and found the attached notice on our table. Highlighting the importance of good hygiene when sharing dishes, it is important to use the tongs for raw food. Tongs, or THONGS? Too funny!

Shovel

Help! I’m being held in a captive market!

We’ve been figuring out for the last few months how much things cost. The obvious price-hikes we’re now painfully aware of: anything Western comes with a double digit mark-up, anything Local is dollars and cents. My cup of coffee in the morning, a regular filter coffee, nothing fancy, is S$4. Malay Kopi in a bag? One dollar thirty (and that’s if you want milk, black it’s 80 cents). Six inch Subway sandwich, turkey, 6 grams of fat, very healthy, weighs in at a hefty S$5.50. My noodles and veggies at lunch are a dollar eighty. The expats are a captive market, one that, for convenience sake, continues to pay the bucks.


One market that is infinitely more ruthless in its pursuit of elastic pricing, a real slave to supply and demand, is the world of maternity paraphernalia. Good grief have the owners of Mothercare and the competition figured out that Westies will pay top dollar for the smallest little thing that ensures their overall pregnancy experience is just like their Mum’s or their Grandmother’s.


Maternity chairs, perfect for rocking your baby into a dreamful feed, seem to be only sold by Mothercare. Given that there are only three versions from one supplier, the price is about four times that of a US or AU supplier that you could buy on-line...if you could only ship it here! A colleague from work with many frequent-flyer bonuses managed to fly a cot and a chair from the US to the UK a while back in his bonus weight allowance. A very smart solution if your job takes you back ‘home’ every few weeks.


An even more extreme example that penalises all mums is the maternity bra. A two-pack is a staggering S$80 from family friendly (but profit hungry) Mothercare but in sunny Sydney we picked up the same for S$20.


It’s as uneven a pricing table as I think I’ve ever experienced. It’s like one of those old-time hawker centre guys with a pole across his shoulders; on one side high in the air is a box of noodles and on the other, scraping the ground, is a cast-iron stove complete with coal. I used to moan about the inflated commuter tickets on the British Railways, but this is painful.


Another place where pricing could do with a little help is around this whole specialist maternity hospital construct. We selected Mount Elizabeth, a shiny place with an exotic fish-tank in the lobby, just off Orchard Road, where no one seems able to give us a straight answer on the cost of anything to do with the birthing experience. We have a ‘quote’ for the birth, which I accept, given that no one knows what we’ll need from the point of “it’s coming” onwards. But no one can put a dollar figure on any part of it. We were referred to the special ambulance service for the hospital, but even they couldn’t tell us how much it was to get us to the maternity ward in case we needed the emergency ride.


Another friend of ours who gave birth recently at the same hospital experienced a 60% increase on her budgeted delivery but to this day cannot tell us what exactly the increase is for. As a result, we’re scurrying the cash away in these last few weeks to ensure we’re covered for the birth.


Having kids over here, without the safety net of good private medical, which mostly considers pregnancy to be a pre-existing condition (unless you’re insured before hand) is an expensive life-style choice.


Shovel