Singapore

At long last it was time for my long overdue annual leave.  I spent 3 of the 14 days in Singapore at a Pathology conference.  Singapore is a very small country, a city state of 581km2.  Despite having limited land, Singapore is a country that has been managed very efficiently since its separation from Malaysia in 1965 and has very quickly become one of the so called "Four asian tigers", alongside with South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.  The population is around 5 million, of which only three million are Singaporean. The rest are all foreigners (mostly Malaysians) whose expertise Singapore sees as valuable. In fact, land in Singapore is getting so scarce that they have been running land reclamation, bumping the country's land area to more than 700KM2.

I stayed at a four star hotel called Grand Park Orchard, and yes you have guessed it, it was on Orchard road, one of the busiest streets in Singapore.  The hotel was smack bang in the middle of all action, with two MRT (train) stations within walking distance, i was very happy with the location of the hotel.  The staff members were polite and helpful and the room was modern and clean. Even the bar tender who made me my CC & dry was super friendly.

In Singapore, you can see coexistence of sky scrapers and mature trees and lots of rubbish bins and recycle bins.  Singapore government has very strict rules when it comes to littering with very heavy fines.  Chewing gums are banned in the country.

I found a few swings on Orchard road. I thought that was an interesting concept.

Check out the 7-Eleven at the roadside.

Don't think for a second the weather is always warm and dry......

Like Malaysia, Singapore too is a shopping heaven.  All the labels you want.

Not to forget the yummy Asian food. The dumplings in the next photo were totally awesome.  Thin soft dumpling skin with moist mince pork filling.  Is that yum or what?

After dinner, we took a walk to Marina Bay to look at the magnificent Marina Bay sands hotel.

I found this very interesting water feature. Some call it vortex. My cheeky cousin called it flushing toilet.

Louis Vuitton boutique at the bay.

A clever Water-light show at the bay where images were projected onto a water-mist screen.

The national university hospital looked very new and it was huge.

I had a nice time. Thank you Singapore.