Singapore

I expected Singapore to be sort of a capitalist North Korea, totally regimented and rule based, with tall buildings but no charm.  To my delight I found a beautiful area, a lovely mix of old colonial architecture and soaring new buildings all co-existing delightfully together.  The river that bisects the city has cute water taxis and party boats and the riverbank has been developed with tons of restaurants and shops—any cuisine you desire and mostly pretty wonderful.  The subway system is efficient and clean and serves most of the city.  Everything is clear here, but not in an intrusive way.  We were in the business center during lunch time and the streets and restaurants were filled with thirty-somethings who looked like they were having a great life. In the evening, having dinner along the river there were scads of well dressed people, locals and ex-pats, eating in the riverfront open air restaurants and the bars off the river were spilling into the streets with cafe tables and chairs.  A very lively scene.

There is a plethora of museums and art galleries and seems like a lot of artistic and literary stuff going on.  People here seem to take their culture seriously and it looks like the government encourages and funds some of this.

There is, of course, the death to drug traffickers notice and the extremely hefty fines for eating or smoking on the subway, and people clearly know the rules and obey them.  We met a delightful young Canadian on the subway who is here getting his masters in business and then plans to stay and work in Asia.  He waxed on about the opportunities here and the lack of same in Vancouver where he grew up, although he wanted to return to Canada at some point in the future.

Our hotel was nice but seemed to be a mecca for tours so huge busloads kept pulling up and disgorging hordes.  But we were only there for two nights and were out most of the day.   The pool was really nice, also.

Flew back to Bangkok to change planes (fortunately the airport isn’t flooded today) and we’re on to Kolkata.