But Disneyland wasn't built atop an equally peculiar 19th-century theme
park - something constructed to meet both the romantic longings and purely
mercantile needs of the British Empire. Modern Singapore was - bits of the
Victorian construct, dressed in spanking-fresh paint, protrude at quaint
angles from the white-flanked glitter of the neo-Gernsbackian metropolis.
These few very deliberate fragments of historical texture serve as a
reminder of just how deliciously odd an entrepot Singapore once was - a
product of Empire kinkier even than Hong Kong.

The sensation of trying to connect psychically with the old Singapore is
rather painful, as though Disneyland's New Orleans Square had been erected
on the site of the actual French Quarter, obliterating it in the process
but leaving in its place a glassy simulacrum. The facades of the remaining
Victorian shop-houses recall Covent Garden on some impossibly bright
London day. I took several solitary, jet-lagged walks at dawn, when a
city's ghosts tend to be most visible, but there was very little to be
seen of previous realities: Joss stick smouldering in an old brass holder
on the white-painted column of a shop-house; a mirror positioned above the
door of a supplier of electrical goods, set to snare and deflect the evil
that travels in a straight line; a rusty trishaw, chained to a freshly
painted iron railing. The physical past, here, has almost entirely
vanished.