Anyone thought about living in Singapore?

[MrMan]

I don't think Singapore would be a bad place to live as far as cities go. It is well-organized and clean. On the down-side it is way too regulated. Finding a decent, family-minded woman might be a bit hard, but there are plenty of imigrants, too. Some of the locals import wives. There are places you could go pay a fee and get a Vietnamese bride-- or at least there were several years ago online according to YouTube videos. I think they still have the businesses to arrange a marriage with a traditional foreign girl there. A lot of women are career minded. But it's kind of like the US where you can look for the proverbial needle in a haystack-- the suitable woman. But with imigrants, some bring their values with them, too.

Shopping is not too expensive, unless you want it to be. They have lots of good food in the US price range or slightly lower, street hawkers, and of course plenty of high end stuff. You can also shop high end.

The problems are expensive transportation if you want to drive yourself, housing, and as an expat you would really have to have a high paying niche job where they have to bring someone in from overseas. The expat assignment might work if you happen to work for the big international company that happens to place you in Singapore.

There is also the possibility of living in Johor across the straight and driving in to work in Singapore, if you can handle commutes. I've never seen horrific Singapore traffic, but there is a bit of distance. I'd imagine at least half an hour to get to the more businessy area of singapore unless you work really close to the boarder.

Singapore is a good relief if you've been somewhere a bit less clean and organized like Jakarta, and if you want a good buffet that has bacon on it for breakfast at the hotel. I've had a really lousy hotel breakfast in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia--lots of food but no flavor and even their 'fresh milk' tasted like powdered milk and water, and a really good one there, too. But Singapore hotel breakfasts that I recall were always at least pretty decent. So it's a good destination for visa runs for creature comfort issues. But I ended up going to Malaysia a lot for variety for my last southeast Asian experience.

I have only been out and about in Hong Kong once. It seemed more exciting to me, maybe because I'd been to Singapore so much and it seemed just a bit boring. Hong Kong is visually more stunning, I think, with the white buildings jutting up out of the mountains and the view of the harbor, and the lights at night. Singapore has some interesting street hawker food, but honestly back before Burger King came back to Indonesia, I'd rather have that than street hawker food in Singapore, since hawker food seemed so similar to the stuff I"d had in Jakarta. Once I sent my wife to the hawker stalls while I got a Burger King burger, which was much better than in the US with the fresh bread. Coming from the US, it would make sense to eat the street hawker food and enjoy it.

I did have a great cullinary experience at a Hong Kong diner once. Those diners may be the only places that serve that Hong Kong diner food, that fushion of east west. I ate a chicken with tomatoe sauce over rice dish and a Chinese dish with a friend there when I visited. It was much better than the fancier looking Chinese restaurant's food that I went out to eat with my colleges, with the steamed chicken that had almost no taste. I didn't try the sea cucumber. The diner food was really good, and I remember it fondly. And I have had lots of really great-tasting food in my life.

[expat79]

Singapore is very developed,clean and not cheap at all. But a beautiful place to live in. And one of the best cuisines I tried. Jobs are not very easy to find though.

[andako]

Well... A month ago, I returned from a trip to Southeast Asia. This is what I can say. Firstly, I was struck by the prices. The same products, goods and services in Singapore are tens of times more expensive than in neighboring countries. First I came to Malaysia, then to Thailand, then to Singapore, and further to Indonesia. In Singapore everything is so overpriced. The cost of living is... something. I've heard local people themselves are actively buying real estate and land in neighboring countries as an investment or going there for vacation.
Considering that many existing housing loans in Singapore are short term adjustable loans and not 30 year loans and are adjusted to western bank rates, the market here is susceptible to increased interest rates which can bring property prices down. Add the stamp duties and other cooling measures, along with a decrease in the ex-pat population for various reasons, and the downward pressure on housing prices in Singapore is increased. Additionally, Singapore real estate has had a huge run up in the past decade. And as mentioned in another post, the rental yield is really terrible compared to other developed markets. In other words, unless you have a lot of money to risk or plan to be in Singapore for a decade, I would not touch real estate here.
Personally, I would buy a house in Vietnam and maybe move in there. Starting a business in Vietnam isn’t very costly. Cost of living is very low. For the same money as in Singapore, I can buy a luxury villa or penthouse. And the price of this will only grow. Housing market is really hot right now, but that's no surprise, is it? Country opened its property market to foreign investors, so currently the market of property in Vietnam is in the beginning of new growth cycle. This is especially true of luxury right now. Also the trade war thing. 82% of companies already have or plan to relocate away from China and Vietnam stands out as the country most likely to benefit. Lower labour cost, tariff risk and environmental standards are key driving factors, with textiles and electronics industries more likely to consider this move.

[IraqVet2003]

I don't think Singapore would be a bad place to live as far as cities go. It is well-organized and clean. On the down-side it is way too regulated. Finding a decent, family-minded woman might be a bit hard, but there are plenty of imigrants, too. Some of the locals import wives. There are places you could go pay a fee and get a Vietnamese bride-- or at least there were several years ago online according to YouTube videos. I think they still have the businesses to arrange a marriage with a traditional foreign girl there. A lot of women are career minded. But it's kind of like the US where you can look for the proverbial needle in a haystack-- the suitable woman. But with imigrants, some bring their values with them, too.

Shopping is not too expensive, unless you want it to be. They have lots of good food in the US price range or slightly lower, street hawkers, and of course plenty of high end stuff. You can also shop high end.

The problems are expensive transportation if you want to drive yourself, housing, and as an expat you would really have to have a high paying niche job where they have to bring someone in from overseas. The expat assignment might work if you happen to work for the big international company that happens to place you in Singapore.

There is also the possibility of living in Johor across the straight and driving in to work in Singapore, if you can handle commutes. I've never seen horrific Singapore traffic, but there is a bit of distance. I'd imagine at least half an hour to get to the more businessy area of singapore unless you work really close to the boarder.

Singapore is a good relief if you've been somewhere a bit less clean and organized like Jakarta, and if you want a good buffet that has bacon on it for breakfast at the hotel. I've had a really lousy hotel breakfast in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia--lots of food but no flavor and even their 'fresh milk' tasted like powdered milk and water, and a really good one there, too. But Singapore hotel breakfasts that I recall were always at least pretty decent. So it's a good destination for visa runs for creature comfort issues. But I ended up going to Malaysia a lot for variety for my last southeast Asian experience.

I have only been out and about in Hong Kong once. It seemed more exciting to me, maybe because I'd been to Singapore so much and it seemed just a bit boring. Hong Kong is visually more stunning, I think, with the white buildings jutting up out of the mountains and the view of the harbor, and the lights at night. Singapore has some interesting street hawker food, but honestly back before Burger King came back to Indonesia, I'd rather have that than street hawker food in Singapore, since hawker food seemed so similar to the stuff I"d had in Jakarta. Once I sent my wife to the hawker stalls while I got a Burger King burger, which was much better than in the US with the fresh bread. Coming from the US, it would make sense to eat the street hawker food and enjoy it.

I did have a great cullinary experience at a Hong Kong diner once. Those diners may be the only places that serve that Hong Kong diner food, that fushion of east west. I ate a chicken with tomatoe sauce over rice dish and a Chinese dish with a friend there when I visited. It was much better than the fancier looking Chinese restaurant's food that I went out to eat with my colleges, with the steamed chicken that had almost no taste. I didn't try the sea cucumber. The diner food was really good, and I remember it fondly. And I have had lots of really great-tasting food in my life.

Mr. Man I would only want to live in Singapore if I had the money. Singapore, along with Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Dubai is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in. However, I would at least like to visit there by arriving on their Airline.

[MrMan]

I have not been to Singapore in a few years. During my last stint in Indonesia, I kept having to take visa runs, but we started doing that in Malaysia instead of Singapore. I think the work visa processing is better in Singapore. The hotel we stayed at in Singapore was nice and had a good breakfast with bacon. The first Malaysian hotel me and my kids stayed at had really lousy food, but the second one was a service apartment with a buffet downstairs and the food was really good. We took a couple of trips to Singapore that I remember the whole time.

As I recall, Singaporean food prices might be about like the US, maybe cheaper for the lower end food. Food selection is pretty good. At least in the 1990's, they had Captain D's, which I appreciated for a change of pace. I also tried my first Indian food, not counting nasty that Ottogi 'curry' pack in South Korea. I went to their India town, whatever the call it, and eaten Pakistani or Indian food there in Singapore.

I have thought about living and working there. When I was an ESL teacher, I did not have an MATESOL or a Cambridge certificate. Experience did not cut it to work in Singapore. English is a national language, so it would probably be hard to get a job there with an MATESOL. If you were a teacher with great credentials in another field, maybe you could work in a private school. I looked at an industry job in Singapore in a related field to what I studied, not exactly my major/concentration, and dumped my resume into the black hole of the Internet with no response.

When I got my doctorate, I looked for academic jobs there. There might have been an opening. I sent out more than 100 CVs. But realistically, I knew I didn't have the publication record. Maybe if I had several A or A+ publications, and that is hundreds and hundreds of hours of work. I did try to see if there was any work in Johor across the straight in Malaysia but found nothing. I'd rather be in the middle-lower end of the income spectrum in academia like I am now with lower publication standards with a decent, if not stellar salary compared to others in my field. I live in a relatively low-cost area. The balance between publication requirements and salary seems pretty good where I am now.

Singapore doesn't seem all that expensive to me. Clothing is more expensive in Jakarta, at least for me in my sizes. You might find some lower end options that wear out quickly. The US is reasonably good for shopping compared to Indonesia. There is one market in Jakarta where, the last I was there, I could get dress shoes for maybe $30, but I could get something comparable at that price at Ross in the US, but there would probably be 1 option instead of 3 or for like at that market in Jakarta. It is hard to find large sizes in Jakarta. Getting suits or clothing tailored is probably cheaper in Jakarta. My employer made me a uniform which included dress shirts the last I was there, and I just bought other stuff off the rack. But nicer stuff is probably just a bit more expensive in Singapore.

Food is a bit more expensive in Singapore than Jakarta, maybe, but it did not seem to be that different. I recall taxis were more expensive in Singapore, of course, but they are not expensive compared to the west.

The big cost, I would imagine, is housing. Poor people in Singapore might qualify for some government help with that. But foreigners living there might have to bear that burden. Expats in high level management jobs would likely rely on their employers. There might be some niche where you would really be in demand in Singapore, maybe some kind of finance or banking or electronics, but in most fields it would be hard to compete in that market.

I found the place exciting at first, but after a while it's kind of boring. A friend of mine explained it like one big shopping mall. I think it's more like a mall mixed with a China town. It's okay, but I'd imagine after a while it would get boring. But Indonesia and Malaysia are short boat rides or drives away.

[publicduende]

Living in Singapore used to be great until circa 2010. After the financial crisis banks and logistic companies started to lose steam and shrunk their operations significantly, firing tens of thousands of workers and not renewing work permits to as many expats. Despite what the "all is good" monoculture government wants everybody to believe, the city state never really recovered since.

I was there shortly before the pandemic and you could see the logistics glut by looking at the sheer number of oil tankers sitting on the bay like lame ducks, hundreds of them. It was not a pretty picture. The government has been throwing billions of dollars into the technology sector, pushing valuation of a few "national champions" (like Grab) to the stratosphere even though none of these companies has hardly made any profit.

I read 30% of the people living in Singapore were below the international poverty line ($2 USD/day), and that was when the going was good. Last two times I was there I could see quite a few old Chinese ladies (probably local citizens) selling worthless stuff on the street for 1 or 2 SGD. Begging is forbidden, so the loophole is to sell small packs of pocket tissues, the ones given away for free by the big companies. They told me Chinese filial piety was gone the moment young families had no spare room for their folks, or had to downsize their apartments because of the recession. So many of these old women could barely walk and it was heart-wrenching to see them. I once gave 2 dollars to one of them and said I didn't need the tissues, but she insisted: she was probably afraid she would be caught receiving money without their counterpart of the trade, which would have been equivalent to begging.

I know a few people who lived in Singapore for quite some time, either for work or pleasure. None of them resisted for more than 2 years.

A single friend, a Frenchman who started his academic career in Singapore and married a local, has been living there for more than 15 years now. When I met him about 3 years ago, he had a lot of sad or awful stories about the state of the populace, stuff mainstream media would never even mention, let alone admit to.

About prices, @MrMan, you probably remember the Singapore of the 90s. Singapore has always been a hub for luxury, but traditionally stuff like street food or goods imported from China used to be reasonably priced. Not anymore now. I was in Singapore before the notorious Little India riots, which were partly fomented by taxi drivers asking for a payrise. Admittedly taxi fares before then were a bit on the cheap side for a place like Singapore. You could basically move anywhere in the city, day or night, for less than 3 SGD a trip. Airport transfer was about 12 SGD.

When I was back 3 years ago, it was impossible to pay less than 15 SGD on any taxi journey and airport transfer was minimum 50 SGD. On the sunny side, on this latest stint I never boarded a taxi which wasn't a latest generation car, impeccably refrigerated and with very comfortable seats.

I also remember eating the famous curry crab at a family restaurant in the old Geylang area. I was a bit surprised at a bill of almost 200 dollars for crab for 3 and 3 bottles of cheap beer.

I think Singapore is still a good short or medium-term destination for young, uncommitted high-flying bankers or managers, maybe technologists, who may take advantage of the good weather, good quality of life, and use as much as their spare time as they can to explore the rest of Asia using the superb Changi airport as a launchpad.

I think one shouldn't set their expectations too high, though: their salaries would be just about sufficient to rent a small condo in a semi-central area, have restaurant meals once or twice a week and travel low-cost to Malaysia, Indonesia or Vietnam once a month.

And speaking about travelling, Singapore is now one of the strictest countries in terms of Covid regulations. Last time I checked, only Singapore resident or those with a valid work permit would be allowed into the country. No tourists allowed, not even in transit.

[MrMan]

@publicduende

I took a taxi three, maybe four years ago from the airport to a hotel. I don't remember it being $50. I would have. I'm thinking maybe $20, but I could be wrong. I can't remember if the office reimbursed. if it did, I might have forgotten or not cared about it. We had an excellent breakfast at a hotel and maybe paid for my wife's once and my employer picked up the rest of us since we were US citizens. She joined us on one trip, as I recall. I think the food court we eat at later was reasonably priced by US standards. Food in Jakarta had gone up, maybe still only 25% less for cheaper food options than the US in malls and places like that, and higher for steak.

Singapore seems kind of boring when you have been there several times. The first few times were fun having lived in Jakarta. It was good to get to some place that felt 'developed.' Drinking icee's, eating at Burger King, Captain D's, and Indian food places was a change of pace back before they had BK and Circle K in Jakarta. Once I went there with my wife. She wanted to eat noodles at the hawker's stalls. I went to Burger King. To me, noodles were noodles and they had them in Jakarta. Burger King was really good in Singapore. I think they have fresh-baked bread, and it's better, IMO, than in the US.


Since we were leaving the country, usually, to extend a visa, we just went to Malaysia. I had some kin who settled in KL who I didn't really know before, but we had a couple of visits, and our kids liked each other. Their names were similar, and two of them had the same mannerisms and we all thought it was funny. Prices seemed higher than Jakarta and cheaper than Singapore.

[publicduende]

I took a taxi three, maybe four years ago from the airport to a hotel. I don't remember it being $50. I would have. I'm thinking maybe $20, but I could be wrong. I can't remember if the office reimbursed. if it did, I might have forgotten or not cared about it. We had an excellent breakfast at a hotel and maybe paid for my wife's once and my employer picked up the rest of us since we were US citizens. She joined us on one trip, as I recall. I think the food court we eat at later was reasonably priced by US standards. Food in Jakarta had gone up, maybe still only 25% less for cheaper food options than the US in malls and places like that, and higher for steak.

I guess it depends where the transfer is. I usually go to the Clarke Quay/Marina Bay area and I remember it was a few dollar short of $50. I actually don't think the fare was unreasonable, only, it went up much faster than any inflation rate, the Little India riots of 2013 being the watershed moment.

Problem is, if taxis are relatively expensive, driving your own car in SG ain't cheap, either. There is a tax on car possession, plus ever-increasing petrol duties and road tolls everywhere. You need to be making north of $500 (SGD) a year to be living comfortably there.

Singapore seems kind of boring when you have been there several times. The first few times were fun having lived in Jakarta. It was good to get to some place that felt 'developed.' Drinking icee's, eating at Burger King, Captain D's, and Indian food places was a change of pace back before they had BK and Circle K in Jakarta. Once I went there with my wife. She wanted to eat noodles at the hawker's stalls. I went to Burger King. To me, noodles were noodles and they had them in Jakarta. Burger King was really good in Singapore. I think they have fresh-baked bread, and it's better, IMO, than in the US.

If you stick to the cheaper kind of hawker centre food, like oyster fried rice or noodles, or soups or simple boiled/fried chicken and rice, prices are still popular, they have to be. It kind of saddens me that other food for which SG is famous, like crab curry, is quite expensive even in traditional family restaurants - the kinds with plastic stools and plastic round tables, so to speak.

Since we were leaving the country, usually, to extend a visa, we just went to Malaysia. I had some kin who settled in KL who I didn't really know before, but we had a couple of visits, and our kids liked each other. Their names were similar, and two of them had the same mannerisms and we all thought it was funny. Prices seemed higher than Jakarta and cheaper than Singapore.

Some places in Malaysia look decidedly first-world. I was quite impressed about KL and it's infrastructure. Brand new roads, impeccable metro system, all at the same level as Singapore. Then I was reminded that much of this comes from massive influxes of loans from China, which have recently put the country in a very weak position. I heard it's kind of the same in Thailand.