Trip to Singapore

During our vacation between semesters we managed to make a quick trip to Singapore and from there a ferry ride to Bintan Island in Indonesia (separate blog post). We absolutely loved Singapore and really enjoyed just walking around and ovserving the differences between Hanoi and Singapore. It is the second most densely populated country on Earth with a density of 18,220 people per square mile. Strangely, it looked, smelled and felt much roomier and waaaaay cleaner than Hanoi. It is a country with very strict laws and this is one way to run a country to create such a considerate and pristine condition. People don't honk their horns, pedestrians have the right of way and there are people cleaning the streets and other public areas everywhere. It is an extremely safe and comfortable city. I thought with 100% of the people living in "urban" areas that the city would be filled with concrete etc. with no green space. We were wrong. The city is so well planned, there are plants, trees and grasses growing and intermixed with teh buildings. It is beautiful! Of course this is relatively easy to do at 1 degree north latitude. At some places it really felt like some sort of fictional, futuristic cityscape that you might see in the background of some Star Wars movie. The people you see walking around are from all over the world. There is a large ethnic Chinese population as well as Indian, Malay, Pakistan, English, etc. The city does not feel like an Asian city. There are signs in 4 languages on the subway etc. and people never stared at us like they do in Vietnam. Needless to say, Hanoi has a long, long way to go to ever be like Singapore. We would love to read your comments and impressions on the blog!

A little reminder on the immigration card when entering the country.

Singapore streets.

Clean streets? No motorbikes everywhere? People waiting to cross the street?

One of the coolest buildings we saw while walking around.

The people drive on the other side of the road, which is confusing when crossing the street, but still easier than crossing the street in Hanoi.

Digital sign to alert you how many spaces available in various parking lots. Smart.

Some examples of art from local elementary schools on a wall near the Marina.

One of my favorite drawings there. The title is: I want to scale the highest mountain in the world. It is by Joyce Seah Shin Han in 2006 when she was 11 years old. There is a scale on the left side showing this mountain is 4,000,000 meters high.

I guess the city planners thought Joyce's drawing was pretty cool. So they made a sculpture of it and put it in the park near her artwork.

The top of the sculpture!

This is at the waterfront overlooking some new construction. The building on the left was recently opened, the Marina Bay Sands hotel and shopping. It was impressive. We didn't get to go to the top, but there is a swimming pool and park and restaurant/bar on the top. I can imagine a future James Bond movie incorporating this building into the opening scene and somebody jumping off the top.

The Helix. The only double helix shaped pedestrian bridge in the world.

Inside the shopping area of the Marina Bay Sands. These are chandeliers in one of the many jewellery stores.

Ice skating rink.

Cleaning the already clean glass in the super fancy shopping center at the bottom of Marina Bay Sands.

Lisa next to one of several ceramic pots in the lobby of the MBS hotel. A cool fountain on left side of photo that spills over a granite edge and into a slit in the floor.

Super cool landscape design outside the lobby.

Inside the lobby with more pots.

Truck/business collecting waste oil from restaurants to make into biodiesel.

Along one of the sidewalks.

Museum of fine art.

The next two pictures are of street storm drains. One is in Hanoi, where we get off the bus everyday and the other is in Singapore. Guess which is which!!

This was fun to see in Singapore. In Hanoi, motorbikes are parked and DRIVEN on the sidewalk. Walking on the sidewalks in Singapore was so easy. We didn't have to watch out for motorbikes, puddles of pee, piles of vomit, 4 foot by 6 foot by 5 foot deep holes, piles of rubble, piles of dirt and sand, people cooking, people sneaking up to us and measuring how short they are compared to us, people sitting on stools smoking out of a public and shared bamboo pipe, men sleeping on motorbikes parked on the sidewalk. In short, we could just simply walk down the sidewalk.