Singapore ~ The Garden City

They say a book cannot be judged by its cover. Well, the moment I reached the Singapore airport and discovered that I did not need a visa to enter the city state, I was wowed; it was love at first sight. As a citizen of Nepal, I have never experienced such privilege of not needing a visa to enter a country with an exception of India of course. But that does not count because India is the next door neighbor and our cultures are so alike that it does not even feel like abroad. What is more, the immigration officer also gave me sweets while I waited for him to stamp my passport :).

Singapore is obviously the cleanest city that I have ever seen. It has so much greenery and it is the only city that still has the natural Amazon forest within the city. No wonder it is called the garden city; a city built in the garden. Besides the cleanliness and the greenery, what impressed me most was the beautiful contrast between the modern sky scrapers and the traditional buildings. The Singaporean government has declared many old buildings as heritage and so regardless of their location they must be conserved. This gives a unique feel to the city with both the modern and traditional buildings located in the same area. SG is a multicultural city state with majority Chinese, followed by Malay and South Indian population. So this city state has four official languages (including English)J.

My first day, I decided to take a tour bus on my own since my friend was not feeling well. I was almost at the end of my tour when an Indian looking guy approached me asking if I was a tourist in the city. Although it was an obvious thing, I still decided to answer him. After couple minutes of conversation, I found that he was an engineer working in Australia and his firm had designed and distributed artificial hands for UNICEF. I was getting really hungry and could hardly concentrate at our conversation and just then he asked me if I wanted to join him for dinner with his Singaporean friend in about half an hour. It was a random proposal and I would have usually said no but the thought of having a local’s company game me away. We went to Arab Street which was full of traditional buildings and many Middle Eastern, Lebanese and Turkish restaurants. Although the food was great, what made is better was the useful insights on Singaporean politics, culture and social issues. After dinner, they decided to go to China town and invited me to come along as well. But I did not want to give wrong ideas so I decided to head to my friend’s place instead.

Next day my friend and I went to Sentosa Island and spent a fabulous day there. Afterwards my friend suggested that we go to the Marina Bay Sands Casino. Since I had never been to one before, it sounded exciting. But I did not want to lose a lot of money so I decided to carry 200 dollars with me. My friend had recently lost her work permit (which worked as a combination of social security and driver’s license in SG) so she carried her passport with her. But Singapore does not give visa to people with work permit so they did not let her inside the casino L. I did not want to play alone so I just took a tour of the casino and came back thinking perhaps God did not want me to lose money. So my friend and I took a nice walk by the Marina Bay instead looking at the beautiful financial district area, floating mall and opera. We also enjoyed the light show (that my friend was not even aware of) at 8 pm.

Next morning was my flight but I was worried that I would get stuck in the traffic but to my surprise, there were hardly any cars on the road. The SG government has efficient public transport facility with tight restrictions on ownership of cars, making it one of the most expensive states to own a car. I loved everything about SG and as a tourist with free accommodation it was a beautiful experience for me. But I was still a little disturbed with the thought of the immigrants with very low paying jobs. Most of them borrow large amounts of money to fund their visa and flights, I cannot comprehend how they manage their lives in such an expensive city and at the same time save to send back to their families.