This tiny, 240-square-mile island nation at the tip of the Malay peninsula is an oasis of prosperity and order beside its larger, less wealthy, and sometimes chaotic neighbors. In Singapore, everything works ––too well, for some people’s tastes. Singapore has an educated populace that almost universally speaks English. It’s Asia’s largest port and Southeast Asia’s financial center. Orchids here are used as profligately as daisies, your ice cream may be topped with exotic durian fruit, and you can dine outside under the stars on chili crab. No wonder Singaporeans have been accused of being as smug as the Swiss.

But Singapore is also a crossroads representing all the continental and island nations of Southeast Asia. This is reflected not only in the cuisine but in Singapore’s recent rise as the center for antiques from Southeast Asia, one of the world’s last great undercollected areas. Like Hong Kong, Singapore is open, with no anti-export regulations. Many of its neighboring countries have strict laws against the removal of antiquities, though they lack the resources to put an end to the drain of artworks across their borders. "But in Singapore," as Rachmat Tony Yang of the Cony Art gallery says with a big smile, "just come, enjoy your time, and take home whatever you want."

THE SPOILS OF PEACE
"We’re a young nation, so we started collecting late," explains Dr. James Khoo, a prominent neurosurgeon on the board of Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum. We are sipping café latte in the sun-filled courtyard of ritzy Mount Elizabeth Hospital, which attracts well-to-do patients from all over Asia. "So far, there are not many collectors of Southeast Asian antiques," Khoo adds. "I think that should be our niche." Khoo himself collects large ceramic spice jars from Burma, which usually cost between $100 and $300. The truth is, there is so much to be found in Singapore’s antique shops, it can be a bit bewildering.

The elaborately decorated white facade of the colonial-era boy’s school that’s now the Asian Civilisations Museum is a mix of European inspiration and concession to tropical heat. Arches, rectangular columns, and balustrated breezeways surround interior classrooms that are now windowless galleries. Inside, a knot of schoolchildren is staring, nose to glass, into a vitrine filled with colorful Chinese snuff bottles. In the smaller gallery at the rear of the building where changing exhibitions are housed is a beautifully mounted show of Southeast Asian tribal jewelry. The museum’s annex, due to open in two years across the river from the city’s financial district, will concentrate on Southeast Asia. Thanks to the cessation of wars in recent years, it is once again safe to visit the Khmer and Cham ruins of Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, and archaeologists have returned to the region. People are becoming aware, as never before, of the richness and beauty of Southeast Asian antiques.

"I would definitely tell people to collect antique textiles," Irene Lee, managing director of the Singapore branch of Christie’s International, tells me. "Most of the countries have a tradition in textiles and they’re very varied, very high quality. Indonesia especially," she adds, adjusting the gray silk shawl with which she is warding off the arctic air-conditioning Singaporeans seem to require. Christie’s main Asian house is in Hong Kong, but this eight-year-old branch on the tree-cooled grounds of the colonial-era Goodwood Park Hotel is doing quite well. "Also silver—ceremonial or decorative silver—and ceramics. Ceramics are very high on the list. Each country also has its own type of ceramic ware. All these are still available and still affordable."

Later, when I mention Lee’s recommendations to Dr. Khoo, he reacts with enthusiasm. "Antique textiles are like paintings," he says. "They’re both art and history. You should meet the woman who owns Tatiana. Go see her," he chuckles. "She’s quite brave. She’s traveled alone in all sorts of remote places, even among the Dayaks in Borneo’s interior."

FABRIC(S) OF HISTORY
Georgia Kan, Tatiana’s owner, smiles and shakes her head. "Twenty years ago," she sighs. "Now I just sit and read."

She watches as I look up from a case of gold and silver tribal ceremonial jewelry and catch my breath. Hanging on the wall just above eye level is an exquisite piece of handwoven fabric made of naturally dyed threads with a wide gold border that’s stunning.

"Oh, you like that?" she asks, pleased. "It’s a turn-of-the-century wedding skirt from the south of Sumatra." She stares thoughtfully at the skirt, which carries a $1,750 price tag. "They’re highly sought after," she murmurs, more to herself than to me. I get the feeling Kan cares more about the objects in her small, two-room gallery than she does about selling them. Tatiana is on the third floor of the once gray-and-shabby, now spruced-up Tanglin Shopping Centre. Most of Singapore’s antique shops are in clusters, from the colonial arcade at the legendary Raffles Hotel to the hilltop former barracks at Dempsey Road. But for sheer dizzying variety, the best of them all is the Tanglin Shopping Centre just off the end of Singapore’s glittering main shopping drag, Orchard Road.

In this warren of shops on several escalator-connected floors, you can buy anything from antique Chinese furniture to 17th-century wood Burmese Buddhas, from painted Tibetan cabinets and trunks to antique textiles from Java. The shops are reliable, and you will pay somewhat less than you would in the United States, but this is Singapore, a sophisticated international city, and in one shop when I ask about a sixth-century Chinese Buddha, the clerk whips out a list of the winning bids from a recent auction at Sotheby’s in New York to demonstrate that a comparable Buddha sold for $80,000.

TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE
I am eyeing a rectangular sandstone bas-relief that can only be a lintel from a Khmer temple. The shop owner is eyeing me, none too pleased to see me scribble in a notebook.

"Excuse me. Where did this come from?" I ask.

"Cambodia."

"Yes, but where?"

"Cambodia," he repeats, his eyes narrowing.

"Yes, I understand, but where?"

"I know the general region, and I know how old it is." His voice is stone-cold. "But I don’t know exactly where it came from." He turns abruptly and pretends to be involved in some paperwork. But I can feel his eyes still following me as I move about the gallery, so I beat a retreat, thanking him at the door.

I don’t know exactly how I’ve antagonized this man, but I realize that in this elegant sunlit gallery I have suddenly stumbled into the dark side of Singapore’s antiques market.

For centuries, people have been plundering Southeast Asia’s temples. Think of André Malraux, the late writer and former Cultural Affairs Minister of France. As a young man in the 1920s, he was nabbed trying to make his fortune by smuggling antiquities out of Cambodia. Should you buy something you know has been hacked from a temple by looters?

"In a sense, you can argue that every piece of antiquity on the market is stolen," Dr. Khoo says thoughtfully. "The fact is, they’re already out. It’s a fair purchase. I think you should consider giving something back if it’s found to be from an important heritage site. There has to be a dividing line over what can be bought and sold." 

In the past, an argument could also have been made that collectors saved many Southeast Asian antiquities from extinction. Neglect, time, weather, and warfare all contributed to the destruction of many sites. "More antiques were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution than in 5,000 years of Chinese history," Khoo points out.

I stand in Exotica, a beautiful gallery in the Raffles Arcade, and look with a mixture of awe and misgiving at a medium-sized sandstone male torso identified as 12th century from Angkor Wat. A few steps away is a guardian head from Angkor Thom priced at $50,000. They are truly magnificent. I really don’t know what to think. We live in a world where the authenticity of the Getty Museum’s Greek kouros is questioned, but not its right to own it. Is this so different?

BRAVE NEW WORLD ORDER
It’s my last day in Singapore. After a lunch of Peranakan chicken flavored with lemongrass and turmeric, and a couple of hours of browsing in an art book- store, I decide to take the subway back to the end of Orchard Road for another visit to the Tanglin Shopping Centre. In the immaculate subway station I find a partition separates the platform from the tracks. The train pulls up, the perfectly aligned partition and train doors slide open in smooth, silent unison and I step on. For every element of Singapore’s orderliness that seems extreme, there is an equal amount to admire.

It’s late afternoon and the cafés are full of people-watchers sipping cof- fee, waiting out the moments until the day’s heat begins to abate. The sun-dappled sidewalks are nearly empty in the pause before rush hour gears up. Two dark-haired women walk head- to-head, talking and laughing as they share a red parasol. I step into the Tanglin’s cool shelter and wander around from gallery to gallery, floor to floor. There truly is no end of extraordinary things to see and to buy in Singapore, some of them still quite undervalued.

"The market for Southeast Asian ceramics has actually fallen a bit lately," says David Mun, of Tiepolo Gallery. "People still prefer the more refined imperial Chinese porcelain. See, these 15th-century Khmer bowls have a rougher look, but they’re really wonderful, aren’t they?" I handle the bowls, which can cost anywhere from $500 to $2,000, carefully.

It occurs to me that the antiques dealers of Singapore are on the edge of some-thing big, whether they know it or not. But it’s not just that Southeast Asian antiques are the next new wave—it’s the beauty of the sculpture, the textile, the ceramics that counts.

I remember what Lim Sew Yong, the managing director of Raffles Fine Arts Auctioneers, told me so emphatically: "Don’t buy to make money. Buy because you love it."

Museum Events
Singapore's Chinese heritage is showcased at The Asian Civlisations Muesum. The museum’s permanent collection has a wide range of Chinese antiquities, including ceramics and Ming Dynasty paintings. A new wing, focusing on Southeast Asian art, will open in 2002. Until then, special exhibits will showcase the art of several cultures, including a celebration of the life of Krishna and a display of Chinese paintings (39 Armenian St.; 011-65-332-3015; $1.75).

Bargain-Hunting
You’ll be able to find antiques stores no matter where you go in town. While Tanglin Road and Orchard Road are two famous enclaves, savvy shoppers go to Dempsey Road. If you stop by the Renaissance Antique Gallery, you can find old textiles from Thailand ($55), bronze Buddhas from Cambodia ($70), and furniture from China (as little as $350).