Singapore
Singapore
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Singapore just south of the Johor region of Peninsular Malaysia.
According to 13th century Malay Annals, a prince spotted a creature he believed was a lion and named the island "Singa-pura" (Lion City), from which Singapore was derived. A British colony from 1819 when Sir Stamford Raffles' established a presence there. Occupied by Japan between 15th Feb 1942 until 2nd Sep 1945, then reverting to British rule again until independance in 1959. In 1963, it formed a union with Malaya (now Malaysia) but split again on 8th Aug 1965. It felt and looked very much like a tropical version of London, including the occasional military/police parade as can be seen here. |
| There are a large number of colonial buildings mixed in with modern high tech skyscrapers, here you see the famous Raffles hotel, where naturally we stopped for a Singapore Sling. |
| I'm not normally into clothes purchasing nor do I care for suits, I only wear one at EDS because I have to and it's the easy option. In Singapore I had a Versace suit made to measure in a 'do your suit by tomorrow' type shop. We looked around to find one with good quality stuff on display, it was a risk and after parting with my 200 GBP (credit card so some protection) I was still worried, but I am please to report the quality was excellent and the fit marvellous, best fitting suit I've ever had, also the first (not last) made to measure suit. |
| Education is clearly very important in SP, we went into a McDonalds (I know, but just had to visit one in each country) and what we saw amazed us. I'm not talking about the special local sauces (much spicier than we get in the UK), but seeing kids studying. Yes, kids in McDs actually studying, pouring over chemistry and mathematics books as far as I could see. These were not outcasts as they would be in the UK, many large groups of them were stilling around, studying, scribbling answers in their books, slowly sipping at their shakes and juices and occasionally discussing how to solve a particular problem. I was truly impressed, if only they could do that in the UK but if you tried it someone would probably come up and chuck your books around or purposely spill something on it. |
| Play was equally well organised, we were walking through a shopping area (ok so most of SP is shopping or rain forest), when we came across model car racing group, racing their liquid fuel driven, radio controlled cars around a makeshift course which although it just consisted of logs, it still had a computerised logging and tracking system, checking cars as they passed the start finish line. |
The Night Safari, a superb wildlife experience in a real rain forest ... more to come ...