Singapore

Singapore

Welcome to the cleanest city in the galaxy.

Our friend Ashwin is in Singapore for a conference (of most of the worlds top quantum computer mathemeticians), so we have taken this as an excuse to fly over for the weekend (when will we ever be so close again). The flight out of Phnom Penh is ridiculously early—especially as the airline only has one flight a day. We flew JetStar; sort of like WestJet without the jokes.

There are lots of jokes in the city-state about caning and odd rule: no chewing gum on the island and no transporting Durian—a particularly smelly fruit—on the MRT (subway). You can even buy T-shirts with 16 things you can’t do here—a grid of the universal no icon (the circle with the slash through it) and under each the amount of the fine and number of lashes. I’m not sure what the locals think of this of marketing the place.

The city is beautiful, and very clean. However, on Sunday morning Anna-Marie and I wander down to the Starbuck for 10 dollar cups of coffee. Our route takes us along the riverside restaurant strip that was packed on our walk the night before. The pedestrian mall is covered in litter, but I am absolutely certain by noon it will all be gone. The city also has the best mass transit system I have encountered. The picture is of a group of mathematicians trying to figure out how to buy MRT tickets.

We spent Saturday wandering around Chinatown, going to a Hindu and then a Buddhist temple. Sunday we headed off to the only undeveloped part of the Republic, the island of Pulau Ubin, where we rented bikes and toured around for the day. A weekend of contrasts, the island is home to wild pigs, a great variety of birds, and a mangrove swamp. This was the highlight of the visit for me, as I am intrigued by them and it didn’t look like I was going to encounter one on our travels. The island is also home to an English cottage, the former vacation spot of a local land surveyor. They always get the best spots.