Singapore
27 March 2026
Well, Singapore will be a hard one to beat! It’s like Hong Kong, but richer and less crowded (1.5 million fewer people). Our guide showed us one condo where every apartment has its own private elevator! It’s a small island country just 1 mile off the southern coast of Malaysia, which shares the peninsula with Thailand and Burma (Myanmar).
Singapore was part of Malaysia until it went its own way in 1965. Most residents descended from Chinese, and the guide said 52% of the population is either Buddhist or Taoist, and the rest are of every religion on the planet. We saw a Methodist church, a Catholic church, an Anglican church, a mosque; as she said, every religion on the planet.
Singapore is beautiful, modern, perfectly clean (huge fines and “re-education” classes required for littering), very high tech, though there’s always the fear of breaking some unknown law, because they take obedience to the law very seriously. In the US, in addition to a little capital punishment here and there, our courts have the options of fines, jail time, or both. In Singapore they have those plus the punishment called “caning.”
Judicial caning in Singapore is a severe, legal corporal punishment for male offenders under 50, involving 3–24 strokes of a rattan cane on bare buttocks for offences like violent crime, drug trafficking, and vandalism. It is mandatory for certain crimes, causes intense pain and scarring, and is considered torture by rights groups.
In 1994 Singapore sentenced American teenager Michael Fay to be lashed six times with a cane for violating the Vandalism Act (he spray painted some graffiti on a wall). This caused a temporary strain in relations between Singapore and the United States, as President Clinton tried, and failed, to prevent the caning.
Usually, though, they just go with high fines for things like chewing gum or smoking in public. Our guide said she thinks they like the money. She told of a joke: How was your vacation in Singapore? Ah, it’s a fine country. Fine after fine after fine.
It’s illegal here to criticize the government. Our guide, a local resident in her 70s, would probably get into trouble if local officials heard the things she had to say about the local government, how they are aloof and out of touch with the common people. She said they have homelessness and all the other problems of other countries, but Singapore is very good at hiding it. The same political party has been in control in Singapore since 1959. She said they use Gerrymandering to hold on to power.
Singapore was once a British colony. Ten years ago, 30% of the Singapore population spoke English at home. Now it’s 50%, though they speak English with an eastern Asian accent. Our guide told us that in Singapore, when you greet someone, you don’t say, “How are you?” Here, you say, “Have you eaten today?” She said a lot of South Korean kids are sent to Singapore to learn English. All the store signs and road signs here are in English, and ONLY in English. In Hong Kong, signs were in both English and Chinese.
Being in Singapore reminded me of an episode of Star Trek Next Generation. The crew of the Enterprise arrive at a perfect planet. Everyone there is beautiful. All they do is laugh and play all day. But one day Enterprise teenaged crewman Wesley Crusher, running to catch a ball, inadvertently steps into a forbidden garden zone and damages a plant. It turns out that, on this planet, ALL crimes result in a death sentence. Zero tolerance. Captain Picard has a hard time navigating the Prime Directive to save the boy.
So, our day in brief: we took the Cunard tour bus to the botanic garden’s orchid section, which was the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. It could be Eden or Paradise, except for the 90F/32C temperature with 95% humidity. Then we bused downtown to see the Merlion, the famous mermaid-lion statue/fountain that’s the symbol of Singapore. See my rant on this subject in a separate, optional post (as if they’re not all optional).
Finally the bus took us to Chinatown, with its markets, restaurants, more markets, a Hindu temple, which I didn’t enter because they don’t allow shoes, and a Buddhist temple, which I did tour because they like shoes, and they like incense. I haven’t smelled so much incense since I was a student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in the 1970s.
Our guide told us about a common practice here, rooted in Taoist/Buddhist traditions. For deceased ancestors’ use in the spirit world, they burn paper or cardboard luxury cars, and craftsmen make paper homes, ships, servants, and modern items like iPads, which are burned to send the items to dead relatives. Linda headed out, determined to find some of these to buy. I don’t know if she found them or not. I went my own way in Chinatown and saw enough to want to go back someday! A great culture.
We’re in Singapore again tomorrow, on our own. They don’t have Uber here, but they have a similar ride sharing app called Grab I’ve downloaded so we can get around town. Maybe. Stay tuned…
More Singapore:
Outside the Singapore Buddhist Temple
Inside the Singapore Buddhist Temple
Outside the Singapore Hindu Temple
I’ve always wanted to have an attraction in Black River Overlook Park, similar to the lion fountain in Singapore, something that would get people passing through Pocahontas to stop a while and enjoy our town. The one I’ve pictured sort of mimics a small version of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. It’s based on a fountain I had seen in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Merlion statue in Singapore. People from all over the world go to the Singapore statue and make photos of the Merlion (mermaid/lion) seeming to spray water into their mouths. It’s a fun, easy attraction for people to participate in.
It would be simple in Pocahontas, since a rice pump or similar pump drawing from deep in Black River could feed the fountain year round, since the river never freezes. The water could create a little creek feeding back into Black River. It would have been fairly cheap, fairly easy, and could put Pocahontas on the map.
Still in Singapore, David and I went out alone today, as Linda opted to take the day to rest up for Kuala Lumpur tomorrow. Since we’d seen Chinatown and the Indian Hindu temple (from the outside) yesterday, we opted for the “Baghdad District” today, with it’s beautiful mosque and multiple middle eastern shops and restaurants.
I called a Grab, the SE Asia version of Uber, and it picked us up and took us to the intersection of Arab Street and Baghdad Street. Can’t get much more Moslem than that. The streets in that area are mostly pedestrian malls along old buildings full of shops and Turkish restaurants and Lebanese restaurants. We walked first to the awesome mosque but found that, like the Hindu temple yesterday, you have to enter without shoes. Since we both left our socks on the ship, we decided not to walk around there in bare feet.
We strolled a while, studied the photos of strange Turkish foods in strange sauces, and ended up at…a hamburger place! And it was great! It was called Burgs and is owned by a local Moslem family. It looked like “a hole in the wall” and it didn’t even show up on Google maps, but the cheeseburgers and fries were delicious! You order and pay at a computer kiosk. As I mentioned earlier, Singapore is as technologically up to date as anywhere on earth. We picked up our burgers, fries, ketchup, and soft drinks at the counter and enjoyed the air conditioning and the meal.
Being a Moslem district, we didn’t see any alcoholic beverages for sale. After lunch we walked a block to get just outside the district and it was like we were in the New Orleans French Quarter, including the heat, humidity, architecture, and bars! We picked a place and had glasses of wine as we people-watched and talked. Then we took a Grab back to the ship and called it another successful day.
