Slimy. Noisy. Not well-maintained. Neither cheap, nor expensive. Mediocre food. Mediocre women. Traffic jams as far as the eye can see. A concrete jungle. A classist society. Corruption so thick you could cut it with a knife. Calm down - these words aren't describing Singapore, rather they're describing Bangkok, a city I have lived in for the past two and a half years. So why am I talking about Bangkok in a Singapore trip report? Well, because I want to show how deep the contrast can be between two neighboring Southeast Asian countries.
Clean as a whistle. Calm. Everything's well-kept. Moderately expensive. Good and diverse food. Good-looking and diverse, yet "modernized" women. Not a traffic jam in sight. The "garden city." A diverse society that makes an attempt to tear down prejudices and classicism. The least corrupt country in Asia, and one of the least corrupt in the world. Obviously, I'm now talking about Singapore. Most of this sounds good, right? If compared to Bangkok, Singapore wins nine times out of ten. But of course no place on Earth is the land of milk and honey - and I plan to tell you all, the good, the bad, and the ugly - in this trip report.
I'm going to break this trip report down into the following categories: cost of traveling, food, the women and the locals, environment and scenery, and things to do. As always, all of the photos you see in this trip report were taken by yours truly. Enjoy!
Note: As of October 2014, 1 US dollar equals 1.27 Singapore dollars (S$).
Cost of Traveling
Let me be frank with you: Singapore ain't cheap, but it's no Tokyo either. I would say prices are largely comparable to that of a major American city such as New York City or Chicago. People on a tight budget should definitely think twice before going to Singapore. Of course it could be done, but with lots of inconvenience, discomfort, and little to no niceties. I stayed in Singapore for ten days and eleven nights, and I spent those eleven nights in two different hotels in two very different parts of the city. Both of my hotel rooms were two stars and the size of a shoe box, and neither provided free wi-fi or breakfast. Each one cost me about S$90 per night, and that's after booking months in advance and using a coupon. That's roughly 2 to 2.5 times the price of a two star hotel in Kuala Lumpur, and my Singapore rooms were roughly half the size of my KL rooms. The price you pay and the value you get is very poor. That's one major strike against Singapore.
Singapore has a nice and mostly efficient MRT subway system running all over the city. As of October 2014, it has five different lines and over 100 stations. I was all over Singapore, and it seemed like I was never more than a 10-minute walk from an MRT station. I would say the average cost per ride was around S$1.50. Really not that bad at all, maybe 1.25 to 1.5 times the price one would pay in Bangkok. Even my initial MRT trip from Changi Airport to my hotel only cost me S$2.40. One thing worth noting is that the subway trains in Singapore are about 1.5 times bigger AND longer than those in Bangkok. Though the trains did get full at peak hours, I never once felt like a sardine packed into a tin can like I often do in Bangkok, Beijing, and Shanghai.
Bus stations are also anywhere and everywhere. They cost about 10-20% less than taking the subway, but often they're a more suitable way around. The bus maps are clear English and easy to understand. The whole bus system has a tiny learning curve. None of this map-less, hard-to-figure-out nonsense like in Bangkok. Bus drivers will actually patiently answer any questions you might have, and they'll also wait for you to be seated or ready before they continue driving. Imagine that happening in Thailand or China - not a chance! I really have no complaints about the bus system, and it's definitely the best bus system I've ever seen in Asia. Also, I didn't take a single taxi on my ten day trip, so I can't comment much on that. I really don't think you need to take taxis at all, unless you're just feeling extra lazy. The public transportation is totally dependable.
If there's one thing that is cheaper in Singapore than surrounding countries, it's got to be the shopping. If you're coming straight from the United States, one of the best places to shop on Earth, then Singapore's shopping won't seem all that special. However, if you're coming from a neighboring country like Thailand or China, then Singapore will seem cheap in this regard. The only other Asian country I've been to with comparable shopping prices would be Malaysia. I'd say on average, goods are about 20-25% cheaper than Thailand, and 30-35% cheaper than China. The key words there are on average. Shopping malls are anywhere and everywhere in the city-country, and just like the MRT stations, it felt like I was never more than a 10-minute walk from a shopping mall, regardless of where I was. The malls also didn't seem nearly as pretentious as those in Bangkok. They were more about shopping, and less about trying to oooo! and awe you.
Food
This one kinda goes hand in hand with cost of traveling. Singaporean cuisine is basically borrowed cuisine from other Asian countries. The primary cuisines are southern Chinese, Malaysian, and Indian. Nevertheless, one can still find many of their other favorite Asian dishes - whether they be Thai, Japanese, Korean, or whatever - in Singapore. One thing I respect about Singaporeans is that they're actually open-minded about food. This is very much unlike Thais, and almost the polar opposite of mainland Chinese. I've noticed Bangkok Thais will generally only eat food from developed countries that they respect, such as Japan, Hong Kong, or Italy. Yet they turn their noses up to food from other developing countries like India. The mainland Chinese, at least those in northeast China, treated all foreign food, with the exception of some Korean and Japanese food, as alien food. Taking my mainland Chinese friends to eat "foreign" food was like pulling teeth. They were very hesitant try anything new, they would constantly claim that China "already has" certain foreign dishes, and they would constantly boast about how superb Chinese food is, which is very far from the truth. I was paying close attention while in Singapore, and I saw people of all different ethnicities and races eating all different kinds of food. Ethnic Chinese at Indian restaurants and vice versa. Anyone and everyone in Western restaurants. Such a breath of fresh air!
The food of Singapore was neither cheap nor expensive. I ate 90% of my meals in Singapore's many clean open-air food courts, and my meals averaged to about S$5-10. Not exactly cheap for food court food, but not insanely expensive either. Sure, you may be able to get a plate of Thai food in Bangkok for 30 baht, but I damn near guarantee you that your portion size will be small and your food will be strongly lacking in the meat department. Portion sizes in Singapore were decent. None of the tiny serving size nonsense like in Bangkok, but none of the gigantic dishes I got accustomed to in the United States and northeast China either. Singapore fits somewhere in between.
The food was mostly delicious. Indian food is some of the world's best, and it puts Thai and Chinese food to shame. I tried a few of the Chinese and Malaysian dishes in Singapore, but not that often. If you put Chinese, Malaysian, and Indian food side by side, then nine times out of ten I'm going to take the Indian food. Absolutely no contest! I've been to countless Asian countries by now, and none of the local cuisine in any of those countries can even come close to the awesomeness of Indian cuisine. Anyways...enough about Indian food. I found the food in Singapore to be satisfying. Indian was the best, Malaysian second best, and Chinese the third best. My favorite non-Indian dish was curry laksa, which is a noodle dish also widely available in Malaysia.
On a side note, food from any region of China (except awesome Xinjiang cuisine) can be found all over Singapore - Shanghainese, Cantonese, Sichuanese, Hunanese, Northeastern - it's all there. Even some of the most obscure Chinese dishes like glazed sweet potatoes (拔丝红薯) were available at the local restaurants. Lovers of Chinese food will definitely be happy in Singapore. All in all, the food of Singapore is pretty damn good and the value is pretty decent (albeit not cheap). Food from all over Asia can easily be found, Western restaurants are plentiful, and tipping is pretty much non-existent. It would probably take a while for the food to get boring due to the wide variety of cuisines available.
Women
I'm going to be blunt again: there was a lot of eye candy in Singapore! I had heard from somewhere that there's not many physically attractive women in Singapore and that couldn't be further from the truth. Most of the women are ethnic Chinese (just my type), but plenty of women from other Asian countries, particularly Southeast Asia, are also plentiful. If there's one thing I HATE about women in Bangkok, it's that they overdo everything regarding their appearance. Sure, this may be a generalization, but it often holds true. Thai women wear way too much make-up, they dye their hair more often than not, too many wear ridiculous colored contacts, and they overdress. I'm not saying dressing nicely is bad, but dressing up like you're going to the evening ball when you're just out shopping is a bit too much. Of course plenty of women in Singapore wear lots of make-up, dye their hair, or overdress, but no where near the amount you would see in Bangkok.
Call me biased because I have a Chinese girlfriend, but I just find ethnic Chinese women to be so much prettier than most other Asian women. They have just the right skin tone, generally very attractive facial features, and they often have just the right amount of sophistication. Many Singaporean women look similar to the ethnic Chinese of Malaysia, Taiwan, and southern China. If you like women with that kind of appearance, then I'm sure at least your eyes will be pleased in Singapore. Pretty much no Singaporean women have that rural, uneducated look you often come across in developing Asia. I would say that's mostly a good thing.
Now let me tell you what I didn't like about Singaporean women. I had little to no interaction with them, so all I can mention are superficial things. For starters, a large number of them smoke cigarettes. Go outside any office building, and I almost guarantee you there'll be more women than men smoking. Women smoking cigarettes were anywhere and everywhere in the city. This is very rare in both Bangkok and northeast China. Also, it seemed like damn near every woman in the 20 - 40 age range had at least one tattoo. Sometimes it would be very small and not very noticeable, while other times it would stick out like Santa Claus in July. I'm not a tattoo fan by any stretch of the imagination, so I found this to be a huge turn off. Some Singaporean women also have that smug, cocky look that women in big cities are so prone to having. It didn't seem as bad as Bangkok in that regard, but it was still there.
During my trip, I turned on an app called Skout on my smartphone. It's an app that shows you who's near you, and you can send them messages. It's pretty popular in many Southeast Asian cities. I turned it on just to see what kind of interest I'd get from the local ladies. I'd say each day I received about 5-10 unsolicited messages from local girls, and I'd say 66% of them were in Singapore but not Singaporean, while the other 34% were born and bred locals. I'd say I found about 50% of the women sending me the messages to be at least moderately attractive. I'd say I get about the same amount of unsolicited messages in Bangkok, but I only find about 20% of the women sending them to be attractive. On a side note, I also got TONS of unsolicited messages from some pretty damn hot women in Indonesia. I occasionally get those in Bangkok too, but I was getting them left, right, and center in Singapore. I also got about 1 30-50% response rate to my initial messages, which is also about the same as I would get in Bangkok. Anyways, I didn't meet any of the women from Skout, as I was traveling with my Chinese girlfriend, but it's always interesting to see how the local ladies will react to you. If Skout and looks on the street are anything to go by, it seems I would have about the same success dating in Singapore as I would in Bangkok, albeit with women more to my own personal tastes in SIngapore.
Note: for what it's worth, I'm a Caucasian American male in my upper twenties that's in decent physical shape and regularly goes to the gym and eats well.
Locals
Although 90% of my interactions with the locals were business-oriented, I didn't notice any red flags during my ten day stay either. I didn't get any of the obnoxious staring or any of the psychos who tell me to get out of their country like I do in China. I didn't notice the smell of pretentiousness and extreme judgementalism in the air that seems to permeate so much of Bangkok. I also didn't feel any of the racism or classcism that's so obvious in both China and Thailand. It seemed like all the ethnicities mostly get along well. I know I could be speaking way too early, but that was the impression left on me.
People were polite and mostly minded their own business. They were orderly and well-mannered. I didn't see hundreds of people just lollygagging and being nosy on the sidewalks like I so often see in Bangkok. I didn't see the aggressive, frowny-face looking people I so often see in mainland China. When on escalators, all the people line up to the left, so people can pass on the right...this could never happen in Bangkok! Just forget it! And even though Mandarin is one of the most common languages spoken in Singapore, it was spoken in a normal voice with a normal tone, completely unlike the harshness that is often heard in mainland China.
English was seemingly spoken by anyone and everyone. I can't think of a single situation where I had communication problems. Many Singaporeans have a goofy accent that is kinda hard to understand at first, but it's not too bad. It just takes some getting used to. They sometimes blend their local words with English words, which makes it unintelligible to most outsiders. Nonetheless, you'll probably understand at least 80% of what is being spoken. I occasionally spoke Mandarin to the local ethnic Chinese, and coming from my white ass, that always seemed to surprise them. It wasn't necessary at all, I just did it to be polite.
One thing that could be considered a negative is that there's lots of pretty good-looking guys in good shape in Singapore. I'm not saying ALL of the guys were like this, but you're definitely going to have a fair amount of decent men to compete with over women if you ever live in Singapore. Just having a white face probably ain't gonna be nearly enough. Singapore is the only Asian country I've been to where I saw plenty of guys who clearly lift weights. This is rare in Bangkok, and almost non-existent in northeast China, so having some muscle and tone to your body gives you a great advantage in those locations. In Singapore it will just level the playing field for you. I also didn't see nearly as many metrosexual looking guys in Singapore as I do in Bangkok. So many young guys in Bangkok just seems like totally sissies who would rather make their hair look nice than do a masculine activity like weightlifting. This is definitely not the case in Singapore. On the other hand, if you do enjoy sports or weight-lifting, I bet you could easily find other like minded guys in Singapore. I've found this very hard to do in both in Thailand and China. Generally speaking, the men in Singapore actually seem like men I might like to get to know, completely unlike Thai men, and only like a fraction of Chinese men.
Since this post is getting so long, I'll finish the other half in another post on another day. I hope you enjoyed part one!
if your using up vacation time for that youd be better off saving it for when you can utilize it to something better. Nepal? I saw some guy on youtube checking it out but i think its very backwards I heard maybe not as dangerous as india though im not sure dont know about it. dont know why you wantt o go there if its anything like india. I sort of agree with you about thailand the language issues and all the Farang make it not that appetizing my main curiosity is actually vietnam and indonesia for various reasons but since thailand is so closeby id like to check it if im gonna do a complete circle.
