Singapore
June 1 through June 4, 1997
Things often don't turn out the way you expect. We expected to really like Hong Kong and were then let down. We didn't expect to like Singapore, but were in the neighborhood, and mostly because it was supposed to be so different than the rest of southeast Asia, we thought we should go there. Then we got there and liked it much more than we thought we would.
Culture Shock/Arrival in Singapore
Earlier, we'd written that we though that there couldn’t be a bigger culture shock than Hong Kong after Kathmandu and Nepal. It turned out that there was, which was Singapore after Cambodia. The arrival was also very different, with welcoming and friendly immigration officials.
After getting through immigration, it was late and we had trouble finding a place to stay. We ended up at Travelers Nest, which turned out to be one of the worst places we stayed on the entire trip. It had tiny rooms with paper thin walls and way too many people crammed into too little space. In spite of how tired we were, it was still tough to sleep through one couple having pretty loud sex and many others farting through the night. The next morning, we found a better place and Singapore started to look much better.
Impressions
The thing that was most striking about Singapore was how modern it is – more modern than anywhere we'd ever been, including the U.S. The second was how clean and how well maintained everything is. If possible, even better than Switzerland. Still, in spite of how modern it is, many old colonial buildings remain, and unlike in Hong Kong, there more of a mix of old and new.
The city is also more western than Asian, even though 75% of the population is ethnically Chinese (English is also the first language). And unlike Hong Kong, the food is great. There's food from all over the world, and everything we had was really good – one night we even ate at a Caribbean restaurant.
One of the knocks on Singapore is that it is too modern, and too sterile. Some of this is true. There's a squeaky-cleanness that is almost Disneyland-like. Beautiful old colonial-era buildings are in such perfect condition it seems that must be modern imitations. And like Disneyland, there is virtually no trash anywhere and everything has been freshly painted. And, as the local t-shirts proclaim, "Singapore is a Fine City:" $200 fine for possession of chewing gum, $500 fine for smoking in public, $500 fine for carrying flammable liquids on the subway, etc.
Coming from our backgrounds, the laws in Singapore seem too strict. But unlike most places, including home, where many laws seem like government overreach, in Singapore, the benefits are visible and tangible. That’s not to say that they need all of the laws that they have, but it does seem to work.
Singapore is small, and in the two and a half days we were there, we saw about half of it. Although in some ways it seemed too perfect, it was nice to be back in the First World for a few days. And we would have seen more if Internet access wasn't so easy. We spent too much of our time in cybercafes updating the web site, which took much longer than we'd hoped. We wonder how much of Singapore we missed because of the web site.
Singapore Map
Singapore Links
For more information on traveling to Laos, the following are particularly good links:
Lonely Planet The best online source about Singapore for general information for independent travelers.
Visit Singapore A Tourist Board site that actually contains useful information for independent travelers.
The Straits Times Daily news about Singapore.