Singapore: The Fine City

Well it sure is humid in Singapore. We decided to start exploring really early today to avoid afternoon heat so went out at nine o'clock in the morning but after ten minutes our heads dripped with sweat...oh well, this is almost on the equator.

The transport in Singapore was brilliant and subway (MRT) really easy to use, took only about ten minutes to get into the city. The MRT has annoying but funny little tunes playing to remind you of how to act. Imagine music from a 1950's American television ad with a catchy tune. While waiting for the train, it was "The train, the train, the train is coming......love your ride!". When on board it was either "Move, move, move aside. Love your ride!" or "Give up, give up give up your seat. For those in need. Love your ride!" hahahaha!
Apparently one third of Singapore's population is foreign, and it looks like Indians make up a large part of that, followed by Malayan and Chinese but we are told there are plenty of jobs to go around and there are hardly any homeless people... not bad for a city of five million.

Singapore definitely stands out compared to its poorer neighbours. It is so clean, organised, modern and probably even more developed than a lot of western countries.

One reason why it is so clean is probably to do with so many fines they have. Singapore its known as "One Fine City" because there are fines for almost everything, jaywalking, littering, chewing gum, spitting etc and the big one, having or selling drugs....that's the big one. They actually wont fine you for that one, the punishment is death. So we were on our best behavior....apart from almost taking a can of coke onto the train......that could have cost us $500sd. The local people joked that there will soon be a fine for even farting in a lift!

Our first day we caught the bus to the Esplanade Theatre on the waterfront, a strange building that looked like an armadillo. The waterfront had a great mixture of brand new skyscrapers like the new Marina Bay triple towers and old colonial buildings like the Fullerton hotel.

Next day we started off going to the National Museum of Singapore which was intensive, beautifully put together and a real pleasure to view. It's not like so many other museums where it's laid out and you read every tab, they give you an audio piece so that you can listen to the tour as you go along, but you choose where you go and what you listen to. We were guided through the ages of Singapore right from the ancient civilisations to the British invasion.

In the evening the waterfront skyline was quite impressive. Singapore unlike other compact large cities like Hong Kong, had a lot of green open spaces, squares and waterways.

That evening we went on the search for a curry, and headed to little India. Coming out the MRT station all you need to do is follow your nose. To our surprise, little India, like the rest of Singapore was really neat and tidy with no little or blocked pavements. The government, in an effort to keep the place clean built large warehouse sized buildings to house all the street hawkers, so instead of pushing a cart and selling on the street, they have their own little mini takeaway. Down the main street there was a few really colourful, shiny Hindu temples and the remains of some street decorations from a recent celebration.

We visited the temple of 1000 lights on the day that they were having an important ceremony, people were praying and offering food and there was music and a lot of candles and incense, we were the only tourists there!

We spent our last day at Sentosa island, a separate island connected by a monorail. The island has been turned into a family playground and has two theme parks including Universal Studios, theatres, a Luge, a large stretch of man made beach, shops and loads more. We headed to the beach and to our surprise it was actually quite good. You almost couldn't tell it wasn't real apart from the fake rocks. It was exactly what we needed after a few days exploring the big city.....next stop Australiaaaaaaaaaaaa.