Singapore

The word for Singapore is – stylish. It is a smart modern city, more modern than anything else we have seen in SE Asia. The streets are broad, often with nice flower beds, grass borders, or large shady green trees. The buildings are a charming mix of glass and marble palaces, interspersed with colonial buildings; small white churches, and rather pompous civic buildings like the old fire station. The glass and marble palaces are hotels, bank, hospitals but mainly malls. There are so many malls. Each is full of smart well stocked shops. All have exceptionally clean toilets with no squat toilets, and toilet paper. Jeff postulates a theory of economic development based on toilet paper – the thicker the toilet paper, the higher the level of economic development.

Getting to Singapore had been reasonably easy. We dropped the hire car at Johor Bahru and then caught the bus – simple. We actually caught the wrong bus, not because it did not go to Singapore, but because it was the local shopper bus rather than the 'express'. This meant that what should have taken less than a hour took more than two. But the up side of it was that it only cost 35 pence - and we did get to see a lot of Singapore.

We found a hotel on the edge of Little India. The area is full of Indian shops, businesses and migrant workers. It actually felt like a street in India particularly as the decorations for Deepwalli (their spelling) were still up. There are few Indian hotels - in this area they are mainly run by Chinese (as ours was). But the migrant workers live in boarding rooms. These cost about 450 Singapore dollars per week, but include access to a washing machine. At night you can see the workers sitting around in any public space, such as a childrens' playground; it is simply too hot to sit in their rooms, which I suspect contain beds for more than one person.

Little India ...

Getting around Singapore is easy, there is a modern efficient Mass Rapid Transport system, which is relatively cheap. However using it does feel a bit like something from Brave New World. You walk along these half empty corridors while soothing voices direct you were to go. “Alphas, please move to the front of the train; Betas, please use carriages ten to fourteen...” Well that's what it felt like. They also say everything in three languages.

Singapore offers a range of eating experiences from dirt cheap to jaw-droppingly expensive and boasts that it can offer any food cuisine in the world. We saw Russian restaurants, Scandinavian smorgasbords, Korean cuisine. And what did we eat ? – fish and chips. We saw it on our first evening and a chord was touched in Jeff's soul which meant that nothing else would do.

On the second night we ate in Raffles Hospital. Yes that is not a spelling mistake; it was the hospital, not the hotel. We are not quite sure why but the hospital has a food court on the ground floor that is open to the public; you go in and turn left for ear nose and throat surgery, straight on for orthopedics and turn right if you want to eat. Our theory is that with city centre premises being so expensive that anything which turns a buck is good news for hospital coffers.

We did experience some fantastic rain. In the UK we could have made this storm last a couple of weeks.

Our favourite building was the new National Library of Singapore – if anything would make you want to go to a library, this building was it. Our favourite shop was a book store at the Harbour front which was one of the biggest we have ever seen, and certainly the only English stocked book shop since Waterstones in Cirencester. No Guardian, but we did get a Scientific American.

After about six weeks of travelling, Singapore has felt a haven of safety and organisation; whilst much of this is due to the industry of the current citizens, we could not help thinking that some of the infrastructure and attitudes left by the British must have given it a head start over other countries. We were left with lots of questions : how vulnerable is the water supply, (imported from Malaysia); why is there now a policy to encourage more than two children (when previously there was a policy to limit the population). We did not manage to meet up with anyone who could help us with these questions.