We start this trip pretty much where we left off last trip: in a big, rapidly growing SE Asian City of Lights. We are spending a three-day cultural and circadian rhythm adjusting stopover in Singapore, before popping over to our eventual destination in Sri Lanka. My first impression is much like that of Shanghai when we visited there in 2014: This is the kind of big, prosperous, and happening city that reminds you that Vancouver is a very pretty backwater.
First things first. We are staying in a funky little boutique hotel in the Little India neighbourhood. Funky and little also describes our room, which is about 8 feet wide, and saves a lot of unnecessary wall space by putting the bathroom and the bed all in the same room. The view out the window is of an alley two floors below that operates as some sort of ad- hoc restaurant overflow seating until well past midnight. This is in no way surprising, as In Little India, pretty much any open space seems to serve as some sort of ad-hoc restaurant seating.
On our first day, we walked at least 20 km, just to get the feel of the place. From Little India, through an Arab neighbourhood, to the marina, the central business district, Chinatown, and through the Colonial area back to home. It was hot, humid, and we managed to be inside while it rained.
As you can tell from the sentence above, Singapore is an incredibly diverse city, with people from around the world here to engage in the business of Singapore, which is business. A bustling commerce and trade City, the glass canyons of the CBD tower over colonial architecture.
We are here on the weekend, so the business traffic is limited, but the streets were quiet for another reason: Singapore appears ot back night time City. There are more people on the streets at midnight than at noon, and way more people in the mall than on the street. But more on that later.
Our first impressions are that Singapore is almost a great City for walking, but it is a great City for driving. It has long been touted by transportation planners as a City that does things right. An extensive and affordable subway system, a comprehensive bus network including dedicated bus lanes, one of the world's first regional road pricing systems and high licensing costs for private automobiles: Singapore checks all the Transportation Demand Management boxes that should make it a traffic-paradise.
It is also, quite clearly, a booming economy. construction is everywhere, as are indications of wealth. A few more Cartier stores than a population might be expected to support, a healthy proportion of European sports cars on the street, and a bustling energy in restaurants where you can pay the equivalent of C$70 for a steak.
Back to walking; There are phenomenal public spaces of all sizes, from covered and open car-free shopping promenades and "hawker" food courts to ample green spaces and riverfront walkways, however, getting from A to B on foot is sometimes surprisingly difficult, as walkways dead-end at the back of buildings and the aforementioned construction blocks your preferred route. And the roads are sometimes remarkably hostile.
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