Singapore – bring yer wallet!

A weekend in Singapore. Sounds like a movie. And it kind of was with a quick flight on a Friday afternoon, followed by a return flight on the Sunday. Two nights in the big smoke. It’s that Asian hub thing. People down here jump on planes like Canadians load up the SUV for the weekend. I’m already on my second carry-on roller bag – a critical piece of gear here that must be in top shape at all times.

So ya, another long weekend was upon us. Idul Adha – festival of the feast – here in Indo. The premise of this stat holiday is a celebration of Abraham’s sacrifice of a goat to god….or whatever. It’s an intensely sacred holiday for muslims (although, is there anything that is not sacred here?). Along with the ritual slaughter of cattle and sheep just outside the mosque (er, dude, are your hands clean?), the festivities include all-night ranting and raving via our neighbourhood mosque’s audio system, which, I can assure you is fully operational and as loud as any air-raid siren (so we’re good if North Korea decides to nuke Indo). So after a night of little to no sleep (however, fully blessed by Allah I’m sure), we set our sights on yet another Uber ride to the Jakarta airport, destination: Singapore.

The main reason behind the mad dash to Singers for the weekend was banking. For those in the international banking biz, Singapore is well known as one the world’s big financial hubs, i.e., good place to stash your money. So that was the central purpose of the mission: to get a US-dollar, off-shore account (contrary to common folklore, off-shore accounts are entirely legal). Since that takes about an hour on a Saturday morning, we decided to roll the banking mission into a long weekend trip to see what all the hype is about.

What really sweetened the deal for us, was making contact through the magic of the internet with a dear friend from a former life, Andrea Macdonald, a long-lost friend from my uni days. Last contact: late 80s. She now lives in Singapore with her dude Simon, and has been for about a decade and invited us for a visit. So hey, giddie up….we’re going to Singers!

Now, the “free place to stay” thing cannot be overstated. Unbeknownst to us prior to reading up on Singers (coolio term for Singapore, if you haven’t caught that), is that it is, interestingly, shockingly, and painfully, the world’s most expensive city (really, it is, hit this: www.cnbc.com/2017/04/11/the-10-most-expensive-countries-in-the-world-.html). Hmmmm, I thought that was Vancouver J  Nope, Vancouver is Boliva prices compared to Singapore. A night out in Singers can buy you a decent mid-sized used car in most countries. Speaking of cars, price for a standard economy car in Singapore: 130,000. Dollars that is. No, it does not come with house. Just the car. It is indeed a whole new scale of daily spending, where a 50-dollar lunch is a snack, and a happy-hour beer is more than a night out in Indo.

OK, Singapore…what’s the story. The story, is yet another British colony that has risen from the ashes of colonialism to become the world’s leading trade, commerce, and banking center. Those Brits eh? The horrors of colonialism aside, they seem to have done something right in these edge-of-the-empire outposts. Singapore proudly boasts one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, a smokin’ hot economy, and one of the highest standards of living on the planet. If you’re not making six figures, you’re living below the poverty line.

Singapore is definitely unique. It is quite literally an island of prosperity in the middle of the chaos of southeast Asia. i.e., it actually is an island 20 km wide x 30 km long, located off the southern tip of the Malaysian Peninsula. The real head-spinner is that it is a short boat ride away from Indonesia, which, as we know, is a full member in good standing of the southeast-Asia-chaos club. Jakarta – Singapore is a 1-hr flight, but it might as well be the moon.

As a city state, Singapore is a fully independent country with it’s own everything. Population: 5.6 million +/-, mostly of Chinese descent, but also Malay. Everything is perfect, including the streets, which you could eat off of, if you had to. Get this: chewing gum is a banned substance in Singapore (again, really: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum_ban_in_Singapore). Importing gum is illegal, and only doctor-prescribed gum is legal. Spitting it out gets your knees removed (OK, not really, but it will set you back 700 bucks for the fine).  

Obviously a population of go-getters. Slackers are no doubt rounded up and unceremoniously dumped in the ocean. Joking aside, Singapore is pretty much the team to beat to beat in Asia, and everywhere else for that matter. On the education stats, Singapore school kids appear to be smarter than everyone else on the planet, which probably explains a lot.

OK, the Singapore Sling. We had to do it. We had to get to ground-zero of one of the most famous drinks in the world. The Singapore Sling, a tasty gin-based cocktail mixed with a variety of tropical juices and topped off with a slice of pineapple, was invented in 1915 (ish) by Ngiam Tong Boon, a bartender at the Raffles Hotel in downtown Singapore. On the way to Raffles, I joked to Amy that this was going to cost us 20 bucks each just to have a drink. I was wrong. It’s about twice that. With the mandatory tax and gratuity, 2 Singapore Slings at the Raffles Hotel in downtown Singapore will set you back 72 bucks (Sing $ =  Can $ +/-). Free peanuts though! Ah….hey, sometimes you just gotta say, what the hey, and hey, the best thing is that where ever we go from here on in, whatever we’re paying for, it’s going to look like a deal!