One Fine Day in Singapore

If this is Wednesday, this must be Singapore.

The pace of this trip is hard to keep up with, but there's really no mistaking Singapore for anywhere else. 

The ship terminal looks like a ship, sailing.

For one thing, the preport warnings are completely different.  Eat and drink anything you like.  The streets are safe at 3 AM, even for women walking alone.  If you lose your passport, someone is more likely to chase you down to return it than to sell it. 

However, there are plenty of warnings.

You can't enter the country with gum.  Or an apple.  Or a DVD.

Or a newspaper.

No jaywalking.  No spitting.  No criticizing the government or disparaging religious or ethnic groups.  (Comedy clubs must have a tough time here.) 

And here's one I hadn't heard of:  no outraging the modesty of a woman.  This is one that's landed quite a few Western men in jail here.  Modesty of Singaporean women can be outraged pretty easily, evidently.

All of this has earned Singapore quite a reputation.  There's a popular t-shirt calling it "A Fine City" and another, with appropriate iconography, for the "I-Fine."  (In Viet Nam, it was the "I-Pho," although the soup pho is pronounced "fa.")

As it turned out, I got over the urge to chew gum pretty quickly and got down to the business of seeing the sights.  Singapore is no sterile Disneyland of a city—there are far too many construction sites for that.  You don't see much litter on the streets, but there's still underwear hanging on the balcony. 

Singapore has grown tremendously in the last 30 years.  They have reclaimed land from the sea, and they have built up as well, with a very impressive skyline.  There are a lot of very unusual buildings, like this one, a ship stranded atop three skyscrapers. 

Marina Bay Sands Hotel and Casino

There's interesting use of color, rainbow hues everywhere. 

Hindu Temple in Chinatown

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, also Chinatown

In a multicultural society, there are many religious paths, and I saw a couple of mosques, a couple of Hindu temples, a Buddhist temple, and several Christian churches of various sorts today.  The Anglican church has stained glass windows of three prominent white leaders.  (Perhaps this explains why it's been destroyed by lightning twice?)

In this mosque, the layer of tiny dark circles under the gold dome is the bottom of bottles.  The architect collected bottles, then sold them to raise money to build the mosque.  I gather this was like getting your name on a brick, but without names.

On the other mosque, which is in Chinatown, there was a sign wishing happy lunar new year to our neighbors.

Somehow, it works.