Beautiful Singapore - Jewel of Asia

I first visited Singapore in 1955 with my parents enroute to my father's new job with a tin mining company working out of Kuala Lumpur.

The only recollection I have from those days is the Raffles Hotel with ceiling fans that got my attention as I had never seen ceiling fans  before, and monkeys that hung about in the nearby trees.

I recall a story about the monkeys getting into someone's room and pulling their clothes out into the trees. If it's true, I can imagine how delighted the owners must have been.

Go forward six decades and Singapore is the model of a perfect city. With a mere four million local inhabitants, expat workers from all over the globe, and we tourists, it's no doubt changed significantly.

It's one of the neatest, cleanest cities I have seen only degraded by Little India that smelled and looked just like Big India. By comparison, Chinatown is much better kept.

We stayed at Robinson Quay and managed to do a Lot of walking with several inexpensive train rides and a tour. Near to us was the nightclubbing area filled with dozens of expensive restaurants, offers of high priced, but said to be discounted, buckets of beer. A 330ml bottle of local Tiger beer cost me $10 AUD. Later I bought a couple of tins of beer - 500ml for just over $5AUD each - Anchor, another local 500ml. A huge difference.

Wine is expensive in restaurants but cheaper bottles are available in specialist wine outlets and 7 Eleven stores. I bought two bottles to take on, the ship, a Jacobs Creek and a bottle from Chile.

So, the long and short of this is that it's expensive there for many things, but there are options to buy cheaper if one looks around.

It was more humid than we prefer and that goes with the territory so no use complaining about it. One just has to grin and bear it with frequent fluid intake, showers and change of clothes. Isn't that what the locals do?

If I was still young enough to work, spending a couple of years teaching something within my disciplines would be a high consideration because Singapore is so close and central to the rest of Asia. And such a nice place.

Needless to say, I took numerous photos of Singapore's iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel, the three towers with a ship-like structure supported on top. It was also part of our tour.

Unfortunately, I've been unable to place them in the blog, but am working on a way to do so. See my related post.

Robin