Sunday afternoon Nov 26Yesterday afternoon I flew to Singapore which is about 900 miles south of Bankok at the tip of the Malay Peninsula. The new airport named Suvahnaburmi was opened 2 months ago and is quite an architectural item. Mostly very modernistic built of metal and glass.
I was picked up at the Singapore airport by a friend that I made on the internet named Moh, a Singaporean of Chinese descent. He took me my hotel in the center of the city after a driving tour orienting me to the city.
These are some pics from my hotel room balcony of the famous Raffles Hotel across the street in which the Singapore Sling drink originated at the Long Bar.
And a view down the street.
We walked around the surrounding area and ended up on the border of the Indian and Arab neighborhoods where we went to a neighborhood Halal Indian restaurant for dinner. Halal is the name for the dietary rules of Islam, very similar to the idea of Kosher. So we had Indonesian fried rice, Chicken Bryani and mutton with egg in a fried pancake....very interesting and very good tasting. It's good to know a local--I never would have ventured into that place on my own.
Singapore is a fascinating multicultural, commercial totalitarian democracy. It is extremely clean and well designed. It is located on the Melaka Straits where all sea traffic between China/Japan and India/Africa/Europe must pass through.......that's how it got it's advantage in trade. It was a British Colony until the late '50s when it was granted independence along with Malay to form Malaysia. In 1965 Singapore separated from Malaysia to form it's own independent city-state on it's small island. The same guy, Lee Kwan Yu, was Prime Minister from 1959-1990 and now his son is Prime Minister. It's government is a somewhat benign democratic dictatorship that has mostly worked well because Lee Kwan Yu has usually had the best interests of the people and state in mind. And he is smart. He has kept up with or been ahead of most commercial trends in the world and has been sure to build an educated, technology oriented populace.
We walked around the surrounding area and ended up on the border of the Indian and Arab neighborhoods where we went to a neighborhood Halal Indian restaurant for dinner. Halal is the name for the dietary rules of Islam, very similar to the idea of Kosher. So we had Indonesian fried rice, Chicken Bryani and mutton with egg in a fried pancake....very interesting and very good tasting. It's good to know a local--I never would have ventured into that place on my own.
Singapore is a fascinating multicultural, commercial totalitarian democracy. It is extremely clean and well designed. It is located on the Melaka Straits where all sea traffic between China/Japan and India/Africa/Europe must pass through.......that's how it got it's advantage in trade. It was a British Colony until the late '50s when it was granted independence along with Malay to form Malaysia. In 1965 Singapore separated from Malaysia to form it's own independent city-state on it's small island. The same guy, Lee Kwan Yu, was Prime Minister from 1959-1990 and now his son is Prime Minister. It's government is a somewhat benign democratic dictatorship that has mostly worked well because Lee Kwan Yu has usually had the best interests of the people and state in mind. And he is smart. He has kept up with or been ahead of most commercial trends in the world and has been sure to build an educated, technology oriented populace.
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