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Just like home
Entry 28 of 53 | show all | print this entry |
After nearly four weeks in Indonesia we flew to Singapore the daqy before yesterday. We will be here for 2.5 days before flying to China. Our Round the World airline ticket requires us to transit through the Singapore Airport numberous times, but only allows an actual stop over once. Our original plan was to stay for 24 hours during our stopover. However, we changed our mind based on viewing the airport when we transited through between India and Indonesia. It may seem strange for us to have changed our itinerary based on our impressions of an airport. However, it makes sense taken in context. We were coming from India which had been chaotic, noisy, dirty and exhausting. We arrived in the Singapore Airport which was pristinely clean with wonderful sitting areas (great decor, plants, pictures, fountains, etc) and good coffee. We decided a few days in an English speaking first world city with good coffee in the middle of our trip would be a treat, and we decided to extend our time here to three days.
We are now on our second day here and we are enjoying it very much. In many ways it is like Vancouver. It is a multicultural city which prides itself on its cultural diversity. English is the official language although many languages are spoken. It is a port city and there are cafes and walkways along the waterfront. Singapore is also known for its fine restaurants, although, unfortunately, our budget won't allow us to explore that side of Singapore. Singapore and Vancouver are also both cities where there is a strong arts community. For example, the musical Cabaret was playing here a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately it ended its run before we arrived. This is ironical as we missed the same musical in Vancouver just before we left home (couldn't get tickets). We saw Caberet a couple of years ago in Vancouver and wouldn't mind seeing it again. Singapore's also like Vancouver in that both have Indian and Chinese sections of the city. Yesterday we toured "Little India" and today "Chinatown". We also took a long walk along the waterfront and had lunch at a small cafe overlooking the water.
Of course there are also differences between Vancouver and Singaore. Although both are ethnically diverse the ethnic mix in each city is different (Singapore - primarily Asian; Vancouver - large Asian community but also representation from other areas of the world). There also are political and cultural differences between the two. In regard to infrastructure, Singapore has a better transit system and definitely a better airport.
We leave here the day after tommorrow for Chengdu China. We hope to go to Tibet for a few days and then to Xian and Bejing, but our itinerary in China is somewhat up in the air.
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