I'm currently in Singapore, it was a place I'd wanted to visit since............forever I guess, and since it's so near to Phils, it seemed a good idea to persuade the missus to make it our honeymoon destination.
Quick word of warning - there seems to be a departure tax for Pinoy passport holders of 1600 pesos. Meh it's just a racket!
Anyway, despite some people saying why come here, it's just a concrete jungle - well that is (IMO) absolute rubbish.
Firstly of course, you have to like cities. After this though, the place is just so amazing. Something you notice as soon as you arrive, is how clean it is. Passport control, they were handing out complementary Fox's fruit sweets.
The taxi drivers seem on the whole honest. The public transport you can almost set your watch by. Even the slightly scruffier parts of town, there aren't any bad drains smells or anything.
There's a jam packed asian covered market street area, all neon and stalls which we like to browse through - but there's no hassle. Stalls overflowing with fruit, or selling freshly made smoothies with ice for about a pound for a large glass. Then dresses or t-shirts at not rock bottom, but very reasonable prices.
Want high end - well there are more shopping malls than I can cope with. We were recommended a Korean barbeque, which had unlimited refills of lemon iced tea (I'm very fond of this) and cookies and cream ice cream.............I sort of waddled out of there.
Nothing is what you could call "cheap", but it ranges from perhaps more "affordable" - say a Chinese, Japanese or Korean buffet lunch for around a fiver, or a bit less if you go to one of the really ethnic food halls, to skys the limit restaurants costing silly money.
Then there are the people. Looking at the faces, I'd say most were ethnic Chinese, with many Koreans and Malay. The most remarkable thing though, is that no-one seems in a really bad or angry mood. Seriously, like many people, I can sense bad vibes in crowds, and of course we can all spot a drunk looking to make trouble. Here - there just isn't any of that (That I've experienced anyway, I'm sure there must be some, but I haven't seen it).
I'm told you can walk here at any hour you fancy, and you will be safe - and it really feels it.
Spanking clean malls, people working hard and playing hard, an area of the city to rival Disneyworld............what's the catch, what is the secret that say London or Birmingham is missing out on?
Well maybe............just maybe...........it's down to having a mixture of SE Asian work ethics and culture, heavily taxed alcohol so it's a treat to buy a beer not a throwaway thing (Well I don't know this for sure, but it's so expensive, this is surely the case, it must be) AND A CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM WHICH WOULD BRING TEARS TO THE DAILY MAIL!
I better go flush that toilet - $5000 fine for not doing that - and I'm not joking!
A local has told me, we are proud of our city, we do have problems but we are very good at sweeping our problems under the carpet
So could we learn something in the UK from here? Zero tolerance of crime and 50 lashes for littering or something? Or is pointing out an example of hard sentencing - which we are always told by the politicians, would not work and be socially unacceptable - actually working and as proof, somehow un-pc?
No idea, and I'm not really bothered at the moment, I'm too busy enjoying the hol
Originally Posted by Dedworth
