Singapore trip review

The 3 days in Singapore were my last stop of my Southeast Asia trip. I went there to visit my friends Kay and Emilia and I did not expect the city itself to be very interesting after all I have heard from other people. Accommodation is quite expensive, so I was happy that I could stay in Kay’s appartement. Unfortunately my friends were rather busy at that time, so I had to spend the daytime alone. But Singapore proved to have to have easily enough to offer to keep one entertained for much longer than a few days.

I started my days with breakfast together with Kay at a branch of a chain founded by the owner of one of the original old hawker stalls. Kaya Toast with Kopi has quickly become one of my favorite breakfast dishes. Kaya is kind of a coconut/egg jam and Kopi is a coffee brewed very strong and whitened with condensed milk. The coffee is so strong that the color after adding the milk is still dark brown. Sometimes sugar is added during the roasting of the beans, this gives the coffee a slight aroma of caramel.

After breakfast I went exploring the city on my own. I visited Chinatown with its Chinese temples and the South Indian Sri Mariamman Mandir, its small alleys stuffed with market stalls catering mainly for tourists. I took in the atmosphere of Little India, tasting Indian sweets and stocking up on Bollywood movies. A visit to the Mustafa shopping center was also on the program. This is an amazing place, in a way it feels more Indian than a shopping center in India! They claim to stock about 75000 different items and on weekends they have 15000 customers. I was there on a Sunday and the lanes were so packed with people (no need to say that the vast majority were Indians) that it was difficult to get through. I also visited the biggest mosque of Singapore, the Masjid Sultan, with its innovative donation machine, and of course I had to take some pictures of the Singaporean skyline. The picture at the top shows the financial district, it has been taken from the Esplanade bridge near the “Durian” (the Esplanade Theatres).

I am generally not a fan of museums, but I was genuinely impressed of the National Museum of Singapore. It is easily the best designed museum I ever visited. The main exhibition shows the history of the island of Singapore from ancient times (they show a fragment of the oldest found stone inscription made in a yet undeciphered script), to the sultanates, the arrival of the Europeans, the invasion of the Japanese, finally the independence. Several of the old professions are explained like the chinese street hawkers, the rickshaw drivers or the money lenders from India. The political tensions of the years before and after independence are explained, and the plans for industrialization and modernization that made Singapore to what it is today. The quality of the museum comes not only from the well chosen exhibits, but also from the clever use of technology there are many video presentations and the visitor gets an audio player which plays the audio track in his own language. There is a good balance between reading, looking at exhibits, and watching/listening to video presentations. This assures that the museum visit does not get boring even after hours.

I also visited some shopping malls and I used the opportunity to shop for electronic gadgets at the Sim Lim Square. I was able to resist the temptation to buy one of those nifty mpeg4 video players and got instead a Wifi Detector. It is actually a usb wifi adaptor, but can be used standalone (with integrated rechargeable battery and lcd display) to show all detected wlan signals with details as speed and encryption. I hope it will prove useful on my travels to find open wifi access points that I can use with my laptop.

In the evenings I met again with Kay and we went eating in one of the many food courts where you get dishes from all over the region for a low price.

So far Singapore would be my favorite city if I ever would want to work in Asia. There you can have all the western comforts, you can eat out cheaply. Very important for foreigners, I think one gets easily accepted. Thanks to the many ethnicies that compose the Singaporean population, tolerance for other people is very high.

After 3 days it was already time to say good bye again. When looking back I’d like to have had more time for Southeast Asia, but as I booked a low cost flight, it was not possible to change the date and I was forced to leave. I hope it was not the last time I visit that region.