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"One Singapore Sling, please"

By change, I had an opportunity to drop by in Singapore in June 2001. I have never been so far away from Oulu — it took way over ten hours to fly there — not to mention that I have never experienced tropic climate. I have often wondered how it feels to be in a place where the temperature is constantly over thirty degrees of Celcius and the humidity is very high. In Finland, the temperature rarely reaches the 30°C, and in such a day the climate feels very dry and the sunshine is very "pointy". Another interesting difference is the steadiness of the weather: always 32 or 33 degrees of Celcius, around the year. However, after stepping out of the airplane in Singapore, the first feeling was coldness. The airport had an air conditioning system as well as almost all the buildings in the city. It was not until standing in a taxi queue when I realized the true nature of the weather — it was windy night and black dark, but still the temperature was some over twenty-five degrees of Celcius. Actually, in the first days, the air conditioning fooled me to put too much clothes on when I left the hotel at evening time. In Finland, there not so many air conditioned places that you could get used to the conditioning. And if it is black dark outside, it also means it is cold. Singapore is a very clean place. And it feels safe, because the children are playing outside in the parks at very late night. There were also those famous warning signs of not to litter the streets, and the fear of a fine of one thousand dollars seems to do the job. One local guy told that the tidiness of the city does not tell the whole truth of the nation's culture, as the nearby areas are not that clean.

Another examples of though law and order could be seen on daily papers. For example, a story ran about a guy who was caught on the country border with three grams of cocaine. The story cheerfully mentioned that five grams would have brought the death sentence. Nice… Shopping seems to be a passion for the Singaporeans. I guess it is the legacy of Singapore’s world wide trading and shipping culture. The shopping “cities” are open ‘till very late, and long shopping streets continues for many kilometers. There are also more local-like places to stop by for shopping, for example the china town. For a friend of fresh fruits and vegetables, this kind of tropical area is a great place to stay. Thousands of food courts and food centres offer also variety of seafood dishes, as well as fresh frog legs and other exotic stuff. It is common for office workers to have a lunch in the food courts next to the office buildings. In a food centre, everybody can select the desired dose and join the others in the common tables of the food court. From another "hawker", you can get delicious mixed drinks made of fresh fruits. Once we got some small fried sea stuff for a late night snack. Our local guide happened to be somewhere else, but I was in a terrible hungry and started to eat the lobster-like-thing right away. After eating half of the "crayfish", including the head, I was told how to first gently remove the head with a hand and suck the brain stuff and throw the rest of head away … hmm.   Typical views in Singapore.   Next to the city center, there is an island called Sentosa. Sentosa is a dream like place to enjoy a day off. A tourist or a local citizen may take a rather cheap taxi to the aerial cableway station and continue to the island by taking a great sightseeing ride with the cableway. A day goes quickly in Sentosa. There are golf courses, beaches, aquariums, war museums and restaurants to see. Instead of going to the beach, we spent our time in Sentosa by seeing the war museum. The island was an important defence fortress during the World War II, and there are many restored and interesting defence posts in the south part of the island. Hopefully I have sometimes a chance to go back to Singapore with more time. I scratched the surface of the life in the city, and I definitely would like to see more. And yes, the Singapore Sling tastes terrific in Raffles Hotel! :-)   Have you visited Singapore? Do you live there? Couple of web links (opems in a new browser window): Guardian Limited have an on-line article about fining in Sinagapore The official page of Sentosa island The Coctail Page reveals how to make Rafles Singapore Sling drink Current weather in Singapore from CNN web site   Go to the page top... Get back to the Around the World...

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