So….Singapore….green and clean and a prevailing sense of well-.being. The architecture is wonderful and varied and loved. People are unfailingly polite.
Orchard Road is block after block of Prada, Gucci, and Cartier, like Newport Beach with a modern subway system instead of traffic.
Neighborhoods like Kapong Glam and Little India celebrate the city’s cultural and religious diversity. Quiet parks, fragrant produce in street stalls, and herb shops and bakeries. Hawker kitchens with halal foods and curries and ginger tea.
Yesterday, I ate a $4 noodle dish that I could eat every day for the rest of my life.
Singapore is remarkable.
The iconic famous sculptures are freakishly large and dramatic.
Part of the lobby of the Parkview, an art deco masterpiece in the center.
It’s remarkable and there is something here you don’t believe. A city of 5.6 million people with no bad smells (except the durian), no bugs, no scabby dogs. No one is going to steal your phone and the public art never asks you to think hard. In five days, I have not heard laughter or anger or music. I suspect everyone flosses.
I am sitting on that mural’s “chair.” Get it?
I didn’t visit a single museum because I think I won’t believe them.
I visited the temples and mosques, with their messy ideas and acknowledgement of pain.
Singapore is like a production of something real. It’s too clean. It’s too quiet. It’s not even a powder keg! I shouldn’t have tried to hug my tour guide!
The food is awesome though, no doubt about that.
The aftermath of my chili crab lunch. You should have seen the other guy!
Camino Milagro 
It’s the Orange County of the Orient.
Makes me read between the lines, Kim!
I couldn’t survive without laughter and music.
To an outsider at least, it’s a serious place.
thank you for taking me along … via photos and text!
🙂
Sounds like you saw Singapore the best way, Kim! My son’s college roommate was from Singapore, and he got to go home with him for two weeks one break. He loved the food, too, and also the plant wall in the airport.
The airport is quite amazing. It’s very high-tech but, unlike Haneda in Tokyo, the technology is not in your face and it doesn’t create a dehumanized environment. I never waited for anything and I had a great experience with the airport officials after I lost my carry on. They found it before my boarding started!