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weating after strolling for half- an-hour under the scorching midday sun, I stopped and grabbed a taxi in Buona Vista, a district that Singaporeans affectionately call an “education hub”, where some of the country’s most prestigious universities are located.

Traveling by cab is fun in this tiny state. Singaporean cab drivers are the most friendly and chatty cab drivers I know. You can practice your Singlish conversational skills with drivers as much as you want while you cruise around this great city.

Singlish is over-simplified English. You don’t have to worry about the grammar and pronunciation. It’s all spoken with a melodious Chinese accent. It’s amusing and is often unbelievably effective for making friends with people in the street.

“You from Malaysia, ha?” the cab driver asked me, pushing the meter button while I was buckling my seatbelt.

“No, from Jakarta,” I replied.

“Ah, Jakarta. Indonesia. Many riots ha?”

I cannot describe how embarrassed I was to realize that “riots” were the first thing to come into the cab driver’s mind upon hearing “Indonesia”. In fact, I would have loved to hear him say something like, “Oh, Indonesia, your wealthy people help make Singapore get richer every day!”

We Indonesians often hear of many wealthy Indonesians making Singapore their second home, a haven to do business, a place to send their kids to expensive schools, go sightseeing and a great place to get sick. Some Indonesians even have private apartments to hide from the anticorruption commission when anything goes wrong at home.

And that’s probably why the affluent neighbor will make up a million reasons to reject Indonesia’s desperate bid for an extradition treaty. Why on earth should you expel super-rich people whose money can turn the world around?

The driver said he knew of the “riots” from television. Then I understood that the “riots” he meant also included any behavior that was considered unruly, such as the routine scenes of protesting college students in Makassar pelting stones on campus, or religious extremists raiding establishments they deem “un-Islamic”.

Many Singaporeans I met still have vivid memories of the scenes of the infamous 1998 riots when Chinese-Indonesians were targeted and many of them took refuge in Singapore, where they probably shared bitter memories with the locals.

“Here no riots,” he said proudly. “Better making money lah.”

“We look chaotic because we have democracy,” I replied. Then I wondered if my absent-minded comment had given democracy a bad name.

He broke into laughter and I didn’t know what tickled his heart. Maybe he meant to tell me that pursuing prosperity is worth more than pursuing seemingly chaotic democracy.

Violence aside, Indonesian visitors are well-known as big spenders in Singapore, and they are omnipresent. They can be found in shopping arcades, casinos, Mount Elisabeth Hospital and anywhere from Orchid Road down to residences as maids and nannies.

Another taxi driver picked me up from Clementi market. When I told him I stayed at the oh-so-expensive Marina Bay Sands, he thought I was a member of the Indonesian bourgeoisie, carrying a lot of money to burn.

“So you play in the casino?” he asked me. “Indonesians come and play in the casino.”

I bought a SingTel SIM card from a roadside mobile phone vendor at Clementi. He treated me like a long-lost friend.

He beamed with joy when telling me about his recent visit to Batam, one of Indonesia’s outer islands, a 30-minute boat ride south of Singapore. Batam is highly popular among Singaporeans as a cheap tourist destination.

The 20-something said that Singaporeans needed a good escape like Batam or neighboring Bintan to enjoy a vast landscape.

He joked it was increasingly difficult to see the horizon in Singapore because everywhere you look, your sight will hit the mighty walls of the skyscrapers built to accommodate the growing number of visitors.

I asked him how he felt to be a citizen of such a wealthy country as Singapore, which can afford to have any amenities that its citizens desire.

“Yes, the government is rich, but not people like me. You see, we have to work the whole day and we are not rich,” he said.

He talked so rapidly that when I asked him to repeat himself, he asked me if I also spoke Malay, which is pretty much similar to Bahasa Indonesia and is one of Singapore’s official languages along with English and Chinese.

“Of course,” I said. “Singlish also can lah...”

— Pandaya