Day 67 (12 August): Lion City

I woke up this morning in Holland Park--which is a neighborhood as I did not sleep on a park bench--(and is the primarily expat area that Laurent lives in) and took a stroll down to the Singapore Botantical Garden where they have some amazing Southeast Asian tropical flowers that even kept my attention. From there I made my way around Singapore's diverse neighborhoods: first to Little India and then down to the Civic Center (where I saw City Hall and the famous Merlion, part-lion/part-fish, statue that is the symbol of the city-state). I ended my day in Chinatown before heading out to the airport for my overnight flight to Sydney.

Observations:
1) Chinatown seems like a strange concept in a city that must be majority Chinese. The place is still very nice, but a little more disorderly than the rest of the city. Calling the district Chinatown almost seems like an excuse for the moderate level of chaos. The same seems to be true for calling Little India, Little India.
2) The more remote suburbs of Singapore look very planned and almost communist. I wonder if this is as a result of heavy government planning.
3) The Ministry of Manpower. This is what they call their 'Labor Ministry' since they think it sounds less communist than calling it Labor. The name sounds ridiculous to me and conjures up images of little people in a big place lifting weights.
4) Food in Singapore is very, very cheap especially since it is the best I've had anywhere in Asia. In fact, it seems like the less you pay the better the meal you get.
5) Service jobs. The Indians in Singapore, like in Malaysia, still occupy the service jobs except for being maids. Fillipinos seem to take on the role of being maids and nannies like in Hong Kong (despite being one of the richest countries in SE Asia prior to WWII.)
6) Johor Baru. The guy next to me on the flight to Australia worked for Hewlett Packard Australia in their logistics office. He confired that Johor Baru is starting to overtake Singapore in its logistics abilities but seemed to think that a number of the companies were undercutting each other and potentially driving each other out of business.
7) Laurent's take on Singapore is that it is 'a better to live than visit' primarily because it has good schools, comfortable apartments, etc but that given the strict laws there's not the same energy you see in some other cities.