After leaving Jakarta, Indonesia, any place in the world would have looked great, but when we touched down in Singapore it was like being back in the United States. It was clean, orderly, and just plain comfortable - all things Jakarta was not. If you mention Singapore to anyone who has been there they will usually (1) rave about the city, and (2) a comment about the level of cleanliness being so far to the extreme, and the example "eating off the sidewalk" is usually invoked, that you almost don't believe it...until you see it. "Why?" you may ask "is the little island nation of Singapore, so clean one could spill lunch on the sidewalk and gobble it up?" Simple answer, Singapore criminalizes many activities which are considered fairly harmless in other countries:
- failing to flush toilets after use
- littering
- jaywalking
- the sale of chewing gum
My favorite is the Sale of Food Regulations because I did check it out and you cannot "traffic" chewing gum anywhere in Singapore and there is a $500 fine for chewing gum! It is amazing how removing chewing gum apparently cures of society of all ills...
Singapore may ban some harmless activities, but we had a lot of fun over the two days we were there (gasp! more than one day in a country, I know, shocking). The first day we had some school visits and saw some sites downtown like the Merlion. The Merlion is a statue with the head of a lion and the body of a fish, and it is located at Marina Bay with striking views of the downtown Singapore skyline (you'll see pictures). After that we were done at 3:00pm - again, almost unheard of during this trip, and that evening we went to the Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo. The Night Safari is the world's first nocturnal zoo and one of the most popular attractions in Singapore. This place was pretty cool, an entire open-air zoo set in a humid tropical forest. We walked and rode a tram and saw rhinos, deer, leopards, deer, elephants, more deer, giraffes, flying squirrels (my favorite), giant bats, hippos, a bearded pig, deer, otters ("here otter, otter, otter"), some more deer (I am serious, for some reason there were a LOT of deer on this safari). All animals were visible by lighting resembling natural moonlight, so it was hard to take pictures. The animals were also separated from us by natural barriers, no cages, so it was very open...we were a foot away from giant bats eating some fruit and the flying squirrel (probably twice as large as a regular squirrel) did fly from one tree to another above us, pretty neat stuff.
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