At around 700 square kilometeres, Singapore is a microstate and quoted as the smallest country in South East Asia. Not only that, it’s also mentioned to be the 5th wealthiest nation in the world and the 10th most expensive. You can now understand why only 2 days were spent to visit this country! With a demographic quite similar to Malaysia, there are “singo-indi-asians” everywhere! AND with temperatures reaching in the high 30’s attached extra humidity as the norm, be prepared to be soaked with buckets of sweat and melted anti-pirspirant dripping down your shirt. Most blogs and guidebooks will tell you that there are many affordable accomodations to be found around Little India or China town (for the high-milage backpackers), however if you use a discount broker like agoda.com you may be lucky enough to find yourself a deal. Hotel 81 it was called - on 25 Lorang 16 Geylong! $38CAD/night! With average prices ranging around $100US/night, surely this sounded like a superb deal. It wasn’t until our customs officer at the immigration office kindly questioned our intentions within the country before explaining that the Geylong district is Singapore’s Red Light District equivalent. Opps. If you fall for the same mistake, know that the city has cleaned up a lot of it and it’s not too bad anymore. No happy endings here! If you wonder why the streets and sidewalks look brand new as well, take a deeper look within the convience stores and you will notice that they don’t sell chewing gum anywhere making it almost as clean as Japan! After two months of constant stop-n-go, I will be honest and say that the majority of my journey here was dismissed and substituted by catching up on sleep! However, with high-end shopping malls (Orchard Road), Changi Village (the rural Singapore from back in the day...), and Marina Bay (some crazy theatre) there are defintely many things to do and see. But after checking my bank account again, it wasn’t a hard decision to fly to another location that is much cheaper (in purchasing power), more exotic, and actually relaxing!
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