It feels weird arriving in a country that is only made up of one city, one tiny island. Buildings, skyscrapers, villas, shacks (very few, but still), apartment blocks, hotels, malls. Just heaps of concrete wherever you cast you eye. A little speck of something green every now and then. It's miles away from the one paved road in Juara Village in Tioman. And still Singapore hosts a 1.64 square kilometer patch of primary rain forest, home for hundreds of different species of animals, insects and plants.
Also: The rules and regulations. Plaques and signs prompting people to behave properly, wash their hands, cross the road with care, flush the toilet (even though it's automatic..?!), take care of their belongings. Signs saying you can walk in both directions on the sidewalk... Du'h. Fines for chewing gum smuggling. No sitting or loitering. Infomercials showing pick pockets' mothers die (to scare anyone ever considering stealing something from someone), "8 steps to wash your hands correctly".
Fines for jaywalking, a law very hard to conform to after rest of Asia where, when it comes to traffic, The Law of the Jungle applies... It feels like everything is prohibited, but the people here seem to rely on all this so things would run smoothly.
Everything's expensive, but at the same time one can expect things to work and function properly. Not that we've been enjoying traveling the most when the bus arrives "sometime, sometime" in Cambodia or when we have absolutely no clue of where we are in China, since nobody aboard the vehicle understands our desperate charades.
The diversity of the people here still amazes me. Signs sometimes have writing in English, Mandarin, Tamil, Hindi AND Malay. Big signs, they are. But they like them here.
The weather is awesome. Humid and Hot.
And now we're off to the movies and after that we'll probably get cozy in our clean (!!) sheets in our airconditioned (!!!) dorm room. You do honestly not want to know what this is doing to our wallets. hehe.
//R
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