Singapore: First Impressions

On July 6th we woke up at 3:30am in Kuta, Bali for our 6:20 flight to Singapore. Our hotel prepared us a boxed breakfast to take with us to the airport as we left too early to enjoy our complimentary buffet breakfast at the hotel. The breakfast contained a few pastries, two eggs, an orange and a juice box. Once we got to the airport we made ourselves comfortable on the floor (there were no seats left) and decided to indulge in our boxed breakfast. I love hard boiled eggs, so you can imagine my surprise when I cracked into one of my eggs and raw egg spilled out all over the floor of the airport, and onto Mads’ pants! Why would our hotel give us raw eggs for breakfast to bring to the airport?? Bizarre.

We arrived in Singapore at 9am completely exhausted, but since we only had 3 days in Singapore we needed to make the best use of our time! We dropped off our stuff at our hostel and headed out to explore the city. 

Singapore (officially: The Republic of Singapore) is a small city-state with a population of about 5 million people and a size of about 695 squared kilometers. Since it is only 136 km north of the equator is it very hot all year round.

Singapore was a huge culture shock for me! It is completely different than any other Southeast Asian country I’d been to in the past 6 weeks. It is very very westernized, extremely clean, with a lot of modern architecture, expensive cars and beautiful trees everywhere. It is very wealthy compared to the other Southeast Asian countries. The city is so technologically and socially advanced, and it completely shocked me! I guess I didn’t know what to expect when coming to Singapore. I hadn’t done much research in advance, and even though I was excited to see it, I didn’t expect that it would be a highlight of my trip. I was totally wrong, and Singapore ended up being one of my favourite cities I’ve seen thus far.

My favourite part of Singapore was the feel and vibe of the city and the architecture! Almost every building has something of interest on it, whether it is pink painted windows, or an art installation, or an interesting shape or architectural design. We spent a lot of time walking through the streets of Singapore admiring the buildings, architecture, and the random sculptures scattered around the city!

What I loved the most is that among the tall skyscrapers and interesting architecture, there was an abundance of lush trees and greenery all around the city.

One of the major differences in Singapore (than in other Southeast Asian cities) is that English is one of it’s official languages! In Singapore English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil all have the status of official languages, so getting around is super easy! All of the signs are in English, which was a huge change from the cities I had been visiting!

They also have the most bizarre rules, for example it is illegal to sell chewing gum, and if you fail to flush a public toilet you can be finned. There are also strict laws on jaywalking, littering and the possession of pornography. Sexual activity between men is strictly forbidden. Also, there is no eating on the subway or in taxis. Everything seemed so much more regulated and strict here than anywhere else I had been traveling to. For example, we took a taxi within the city and when we didn’t put our seatbelts on an automated voice sternly told us to buckle up! In most of the taxi’s I’ve taken in Southeast Asia you are lucky if you can even find a working seatbelt! Once we arrived at our destination in the taxi, an automated voice came on informing us the amount we needed to pay.

The city is so organized, civilized and technologically advanced. On the streets they have automated signs indicating the driving time to a number of major destinations within the city. They also have signs indicating the number of currently available parting spots in the nearby parking lots so you can plan your route and parking facilities while driving.

Another really cool thing about Singapore is how multicultural the city is, reminding me of Toronto. It has a Chinatown, Little India and an Arab Street, each with a collection of authentic stores from their respective countries.

We started our exploration of the city in Little India, where we walked through a little market and a number of Indian stores.

There were many booths where you could get henna tattoos, or buy authentic Indian spices, scarves, clothing and jewellery. After spending a fair amount of time chatting with an very nice Indian lady we indulged in a few souvenirs from her shop.

From there we explored Orchard Road: the major shopping area of the city. I’m a big shopping fan, but I can honestly say that walking around on Orchard Road is overwhelming, almost too overwhelming to be enjoyable!

Imagine a street with one shopping mall after another, lining both sides of the street. There must have been at least 5 or 6 enormous shopping malls on that one street! When you walk into any one of the malls you will see floors and floors of stores and restaurants… and people… lots and lots of people everywhere! I can’t even imagine how people can do this much shopping! Apparently people fly to Singapore from all over Southeast Asia to do their shopping here.

We didn’t last too long in the shopping area and we quickly headed over to the waterfront to hop on a cruise down the Singapore River. It was really nice to see the city by boat.

We had dinner in an area called Clark Quay, which is one of the hippest areas of the city with a collection of restaurants and bars overlooking the Singapore River. The buildings are all very unique, interesting and really cool looking:

By the end of the day we were completely exhausted! We had been awake for about 20 hours, and going non-stop the whole time. We collapsed in our hostel beds to rest up for our next day in Singapore!