Singapore

We went into our short trip to Singapore with curiosity but not extremely high expectations - we've heard that it is very modern, convenient, and somewhat bland. That's probably true but I've rather enjoyed our couple of days here. Singapore is indeed extremely modern as far as technology, transport, and architecture, but it has an interesting cultural mix that makes it different than other large Asian cities we have seen. English is everywhere, but so is Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. The Chinese are the largest ethnic group, but there are sizable Indian and Malaysian populations as well, with certain quarters of the city sometimes dominated by one group.

We are staying near the Little India and Arab Street areas, which we explored on foot our first night. It was interesting to go from being surrounded by a large mosque and shops selling burqas to stalls with Bollywood movies and Indian tailors after walking down a few streets. Besides being the budget part of town, it's supposed to be the quarter with the most character. We enjoyed the market, where Chinese vegetable sellers rubbed shoulders with grisly piles of meat tended by large bearded Arabs. It's also been a nice reminder of the past to eat in simple, Mandarin-speaking Chinese restaurants with bright fluorescent lighting and offerings of pig trotters on the menu.

But Singapore certainly shares a lot in common with large Western cities, with its fast food chains, shopping, and British influences from its colonial past. We escaped from the heat into one of the many malls, and were entertained by a Digimon (Japanese kids show) promotion in perfect American English. Today was spent exploring the colonial district, with some heavily British-influenced buildings, and soaking up the technologically savvy National Museum. It is a history museum with almost no captions, but rather an iPad-ish companion device with audio and video. I've been fond of the drink known as the Singapore Sling for years, which started mostly as a joke. Little did I know that I would get to visit the very bar where it was invented, in the historic Raffles Hotel, the preferred accommodation of people like Rudyard Kipling. It has been renovated and now goes for about $600 a night and up, and at $15 we couldn't even afford a Sling, but it was a fun visit nonetheless.

We plan to hit just one more museum tomorrow and get going to Malaysia, which will be harder on our cravings for air-conditioning but easier on our wallets.