No really, I have to ask this question. Because both basic logic and my years of training in development and examining other cultures tells me that no place is perfect… but Singapore comes pretty damn close it seems. So close that I found myself asking this question from the first day through to the last day that we were there. It was clean, orderly, diverse seemingly without the ethnic tensions that tend to come with it, has great infrastructure, excellent food, a million gardens, and you can hike with wild monkeys! Where is the downside here? The only evident downside that we found was the cost of living. Now, I’m sure that there is probably something horrifically wrong with the country – like maybe it’s a hub for organized human trafficking rings or the political elite are in the process of establishing a family-only dynasty that will last 350 years despite rampant corruption or something. I definitely know next to nothing about its history or its culture or how it came to be (I mean, I know more now after this recent trip than I did before, but the bar is still pretty low here). But you know what? For now, I’m willing to live in the bliss of believing that there IS a place on earth that actually has its shit together and cares about its people living happily and in harmony with one another.
Let’s start with the gardens. If you’re a garden person, plant person of any kind, or perhaps even have just defaulted to having fake light-up plants because your aspirations to one day be able to keep that tiny cactus on your desk alive for more than 3 weeks have failed harder than a penguin training for a marathon on a treadmill, Singapore has something for you. Seriously. Gardens by the Bay alone houses the Flower Dome, the Cloud Forest, and the Supertree Grove (which counts as both real plants AND fake light-up ones!). It also has several other gardens (like the Silver Garden, which we walked by but never actually saw), a waterway boardwalk, and at least one other flower-related attraction that I’m forgetting about at the moment. Between the Gardens by the Bay and the Singapore Botanic Gardens alone (a UNESCO site by the way), there are over 462 acres of garden.
Do you like food? Well thanks to Singapore’s coming together of ethnic Chinese, Malay, and Indian cultures, you can find pretty outstanding dim sum, roti curry, nasi goreng, Hainanese chicken, Biryani, and the best masala chai of my life here. Yes, eating out is expensive in most places, but if you’re willing to step out of your comfort zone a little and be the only foreigner inside the Hawker Centers, you can find arguably far better food than you will in many of the standard brick and mortar restaurants. These centers are where Singapore moved the street food vendors when the government started regulating them off the streets and it’s one of the only places where food vendors have managed to keep their prices low. But you can find Michelin Guide restaurants here all over! It’s incredible. Here we are in one of them on a food/history tour with someone the guide lovingly calls “Crazy Seline” (because her name is Seline and she is endearingly exuberant to the point of crazy).
As much as I really want to go into how cool it seems that there are such distinct cultures not just co-existing, but integrating, without tensions and with minimal racism, or how Singapore has appeared to build their (admittedly very new) national narrative around how diversity is a strength, I don’t actually know enough about the country to truly be able to say this with any confidence. I’ll leave that for after I’m able to do a little more of my research. What I will leave you with is truly the best part about Singapore, which is jungle hikes with wild monkeys. Yes, you read that right. We actually went hiking in the jungle where there were wild monkeys walking along and across the pathways! It. Was. Incredible. I mean seriously, when your hike begins with this site, you know you’re in for a good time.
We even saw one monkey carrying around her little wrinkle-faced baby monkey. My life is now complete. I have no more wishes. This was my every dream being fulfilled in a few blissful hours of mild to moderate, low impact exercise. You can see them in this video (click on it to play) –
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