12 Hours in Lion City: Impressions of Singapore

On my the way home from my trip to Cambodia in April I had a 12 hour layover in Singapore. I’d had the same on the way over but because of the arrival and departure time I did nothing but try to sleep in the airport and try was all I managed. On the return leg however I figured out the rail connection between terminals and took the MRT into the city with a stop at a random park, being a park I thought it might be nice to walk around but it all looked pretty boring at the time.

I ‘alighted’ the train and walked into what felt like an extravagant shopping mall after Phnom Penh’s mostly low rise a definitely not brand named stores. Presented with a very appealing food court though I had to dig in despite insanely expensive prices. While the Singapore Dollar in at parity with the Australian Dollar the higher prices reflect that the average annual income in Singapore is significantly higher than Australia’s.

Given my limited time I wandered out of what I think was called Raffles, but then everything seems to be called Raffles in Singapore and made my way down to the Esplanade to taking in the the skyline and checking out the floating sports ground and the ‘Durian’ theaters.

This is the first place I really used HearPlanet on my iPhone and discovered that Singapore is the home of the worlds largest fountain so I made my way to the shopping centre that houses it. While I’m sure it is actually pretty spectacular I soon discovered that it is dry as a bone for most of the day and the only attraction to it is a supersticius walk around its center. Didn’t you guys know I was in town? Couldn’t you turn it on for just a minute?

Singapore lives up to its reputation as being a clean city, I sat watching city gardeners planting ground cover around well kept plants, as if the plants themselves weren’t pretty enough. That is the thing I felt about Singapore, it’s almost Utopian in personality, the presentation is superficial. ‘Look at us we’re so modern, advanced and clean’ but the faces of the people who live here appear not neat as happy as those living in the grit of Phnom Penh, their skin is lighter and more made up but that can’t hide that having some of the cleanest streets in the world doesn’t make these people happy, it does make them proud though and Singaporeans are very proud of their city state.

Singapore really is amazing as far as cities go, I imagine it as a sort of mini Hong Kong but somehow I think I would enjoy HK more. However these are only first impression of less than a day exploring on foot with little knowledge of what I should see, I would like to go back but to be honest while I have the choice of Singapore or KL as my hub on the way to the rest of SEA I’d rather go to KL. Changi airport is nicer than KL’s LCCT though that’s for sure.

Images: tomquah

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