Visiting Singapore - Take I

Posted on November 25, 2007
Tags: Asia |

I’m in Singapore at the moment, heading out soon to meet some friends at our usual micro brewery. Just a couple of observations of returning to Singapore after almost 3 months of living in Bangkok.

1. I missed the clean air. I was on a night out in Bangkok earlier this week with a friend visiting from Japan and another Brit who usually lives in Jomtien, we spent most of the night in the main outing scene of Sukhumvit. The pub food (beef and kidney pie) and beer (in-house brewed bitter) were excellent but the pollution in the street.. terrible air. I always cough after a trip to Sukhumvit. Luckily the area of my apartment is quite a bit better.

2. I didn’t miss the rudeness and loudness of some of the people here in Singapore. Maybe juxtaposing their behaviour with the general politeness of Thai kind of accentuated it for me.

3. There are even more foreigners now, I think, with the main increase in foreigners from China and other Asian countries. I think most of the hotel staff here isn’t Singaporean.

4. Two minutes into arriving here I was already shopping for stuff, although it was for things I planned to get anyway, just the convenience of everything is still astounding.

5. The weather is hotter, Bangkok is now cooler and quite pleasant while Singapore is the usual scorching hot.

6. I can understand the locals, whether they speak in English or Chinese. It’s a nice feeling for a change. I should put more effort into learning Thai.

That’s it for now. I’ll probably update more later.