Singapore

Did Pizza Hut at home make this pizza for the Chinese New Year?
I think they mean business. If they put this sign on the Governor's Palace wall, maybe they wouldn't have so many trespassers.

Very trendy.
There is a really smelly fruit over here called durian and this building looks like a huge two huge durian. It is the Esplanade, a concert venue among other things.
This fire station seems kind of small town America to me.
The National Library. Whew. They are serious about their books.
This made me think of Charleston or Montreal.

Last year there was a teacher who would go to Singapore all the time. After visiting there, I can see why. IT IS SO CLEAN! Everywhere is landscaped and manicured, kind of like Disney Land. The way the ultra modern blended in with the colonial architecture was fascinating to see. The men are taller and very handsome, Eurasian. While I was there, it was mainly men who waited on me, in restaurants, Chinatown, even the massage I had was given by a man. Ooh la la! This was a nice change from Thailand where women almost always serve you.

A big plus (as well as a negative) is that most people in Singapore speak English. How can that be bad? I heard people complaining. I never hear people complain in Thailand. I'm not saying that they don't do it but I don't hear it. On a whole though, I think there is much less complaining in Thailand compared to other places because of the Buddhist belief that to want causes suffering so your goal is to not want. Anyway, in Singapore I had more than one person complain to me about how stressful life is there, how expensive everything is, how low the wages are. And yes, it is expensive. Think NYC prices.

And there are a whole lot of fines. You get a fine for not flushing the toilet. A fine for chewing gum which is illegal in the country. A fine for jaywalking. A $500 fine for eating on public transportation. The cops are almost always plainclothes officers so you can't just behave when you see a man in a uniform. It is a very controlled country. But I hear the counterculture is alive and well, even if somewhat underground.

I spent my time eating at lovely restaurants with the handsome male waitstaff, exploring Chinatown and Little India, shopping some but not much because it was crazy expensive, and wandering around admiring the beautiful old buildings and the striking new ones. I had a Singapore Sling at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel, which felt like it was straight out of the Bombay Company. It had those spade-shaped straw fans lazily rotating on the ceiling, the kind that servants would have been manning one hundred years ago, fanning white men in their cream linen suits smoking cigars and sipping brandy. Lots of dark wood. Classic. Colonial.

I went out one night and felt extremely old. The drinking age in Singapore is 18 and a whole table of kids walked into this fabulous club Le Baroque. They looked 15, I swear. And they were ordering bottles of whiskey! I wanted to know where their mothers were.