Luxurious Singapore

I spent six days in Singapore, a tiny island located on the Malay peninsula. Singapore can best be described as the world’s largest shopping complex disguised as a country that is actually a large city disguised as a country. Shopping as well as eating is 24 hours. You can find hawker street food and delicious affordable cafeteria style to five-star dining. I also had a Guinness for the first time in months. (Dark beer, or any beer besides Tiger and the country’s own watery brands, is hard to come by in SE Asia.)

Generally speaking, Singapore is visually brilliant – the landscape almost too perfect. Funky, colorful, creative buildings like an architect gone mad in his version of SIM city. It’s best seen at night – glittery, bright, and busy. Singapore is probably the most modern city in Southeast Asia – by one measure – a variety of clean public transportation. Like Malaysia, it’s equally diverse, boasting a Little India, Chinatown, Malaysian town, and Arab Town (which by the way, between Malaysia and Singapore, I visited three Little India’s.) And everyone speaks English, or Singlish rather, the heavily Chinese-accented English where every sentence ends in “la.”

The next leg of my trip, beginning Saturday and totaling two months, will include Cambodia, central and south Vietnam, and Indonesia (and if I’m lucky, Borneo’s Sarawak and Malaysia’s Taman Negara.) Ready, or not, here I come!

More Singapore photos can be found here.

Too many temples to keep up with the names.


















Too many malls, but when you're a shopoholic - Iluma.


















A snapshot of the colorful, interesting buildings in this concrete jungle.


















I'm told that durian, dubbed the king of fruits (in SE Asia anyway), taste best in Thailand, but the ones I had here, Vietnam, and Malaysia were tasty, too. BTW, mangosteens are considered queen of fruits.


















Fish head curry, a Singapore specialty, was to die for. Also had nasi lemak, satay, nyong curry soup, and more.























A street vendor selling interesting edibles.























For my Rice friends and colleagues - you'll be thrilled to know this wasn't the only shop in town with an owl obsession!























Look closely -- this photo captures the decadence that is Singapore. My friend, Maggie had her nails done at her relative's beauty salon. The session took nearly three hours, from making the fake nails to creating, with painstaking meticulosity, the piece of art on each nail.























Make note, durian is a delicious fruit, but it's stinky -- so bad, that it's not allowed on the subway.























A crowded Mcdonald's full of people watching World Cup.