the locals tell-all

Imagine you are describing the place where you live to a traveller who's visiting. I would love to hear. (I'll write about Singapore next time but i'm in a rush to get out of the house now.... )

There should be a wealth of information here....
Thanks!!!

 

okay... now i have time to type since the kiddies are sleeping...

Singapore: not somewhere in China.

location: small island, one degree north of the equator, (the sun rises and sets same time all year round, 7 pm/am)
southern most tip of the Asian continent.

weather: hot, wet. rainforesty kind of vegetation. very humid and muggy.
All human economic activity will basically grind to a halt if airconditioners islandwide decided to go on strike.

brief history: was a small fishing port before the British came. 1819, became a british controlled trade settlement because of it's location between India, China.. naturally deep harbours.

So the trade brought in the immigrants: Chinese, Indians and Malays from the neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia.

Gained independance from the brits after WWII but wanted to be part of Malaysia because we're so small and no natural resources. (Like i mean zilch. no oil, no land, no nothing other than human captial.)

but got removed from Malaysia 1965 because Malaysia was uncomfortable that our racial mix by proportion was very different from the rest of Malaysia (we are around 75% chinese).

Strong govt leadership with great foresight made Singapore what it is today. "economic miracle". from third world to first within 35 years.

Language: four offical languages, English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. But English is the language of instruction in school, the language for law, govt, commerce.

Every public sign and poster is in English. That was part of the foresight of the govt to choose to stick to English after we gained independance.

but singaporeans speak singlish to one another. it cuts across racial lines. It's a lingo that singaporeans understand.

an example of it goes like this: "He got come meh? where got? don't have lah."

Landscape: urban jungle. But a very pretty one. Very clean and orderly.

85% (if i'm not wrong) of our population live in flats. we live very densely.

the good thing about that is that our public transport is very efficient. I get impatient if i have to wait 15 minutes for a bus.

(one bus stop would serve literally several hundred families, so it make good sense to have a good system going)

Public transportation: is very convenient (and cheap) to get around just about anywhere. network of bus and train system (the MRT, Mass Rapid Transit). Payment is a tap and go stored value card.

For example, from the airport (Changi airport, always voted among the best in the world by travellers) to the city centre by MRT is about 30 minutes. costs around US$1. And it's clean and comfortable. (I;ve been on the underground, so i can say, ours is CLEAN and COMFORTABLE....)

What you can do here: Visit me!!!

shopping is the greatest lure for tourists. Orchard Road is the (shopping) capital of Singapore. But most of the shops you could find in the major cities of the world. And if you want to get local stuff, it's too pricy on Orchard Road.

To have a real taste of Singapore, go about where the singaporeans go. Just take a MRT and drop off on any stop and walk around housing estate to see the folks and hear the talk. (We still speak dialects of mandarin passed down from our parents. We (singaporean chinese) can trace our roots back to which part of china our ancestors came from.

Whenever we host missionary families, (i've hosted several phillipino families on transit to the mission field, as well as 2 American families, the friendships we've made will be lifelong) we love to bring them to eat at our "coffeeshop" (also known as kopi tiam). It's free-for-all seating, and you can order your food from a choice of several stalls, each selling different food. Being multi-cultural, our food is also very very "international". I love indian curry but also teriyaki chicken.

Singaporeans love their food. No occasion seems complete without the food. And because of our asian culture, it's always better to have more food than not enough (which is a loss of "face").

Religious sites: there are hindu temples, mosques, catholic churches (stain glass and all, smoky chinese temples.

Nature: the govt has taken care in preserving alot of land for the natural jungles. Our catchment area. There is a board-walk trail into virgin jungle somewhere.

Lots of beach. lots of SUN..

zoo: we love to bring visiting missionary familes to the zoo. I've never been to anyother zoo else where but our visitors seem impressed. The animals are kept in their enclosures with nayural barriers like bodies of water so there are no cages and stuff like that. there's a part of the lion enclosure that's glass and the lions can come up close to inspect you.

there's probably more to tell but i can't think of any at the moment.

 

Pimples? the highest natural peak in S'pore is afew hundred meters, like you can walk up in half an hour...
We call it "Bukit Timah". Bukit in Malay is hill.

That's why i crave mountains and natural scenery. Wyoming sounds like heaven to me.

Here's a visit singapore website for everyone coz i don't know how to stick pics in my post...

 

Bri, whereabouts in Queensland? it's my most visited Aussie state (coz i've an aunt who lives in Townsville.) been to Cairns, Brisbane, Gold Coast.

 

bump

 

Christ4Kildare! I've been waiting for your entry!

And other's too. UK? NY?

Thanks!