Singapore's a small country; only spent 3 days & here's what I found...

With a reputation for being super-clean (chewing gum is illegal as it's a mess if it doesn't end up in a trash can) I kind of expected the streets to have a glimmering sparkle.  The reality is that there's trash on the ground just like anywhere else, though it is quite a bit cleaner that other cities I've seen.  There's no graffiti to be found, perhaps because the penalty can include being whacked with a sugar cane, but for littering there's just a fine so I guess that's not enough to prevent its occurrence.  I wonder what the level of crime would be like in the USA if penalties were actually harsh, such as caning or having prisons which don't resemble country clubs (to quote a Pakistani friend of mine, he said something like "man, your prisons in the USA are like country clubs:  you can play basketball, lift weights, watch movies, you get fed, and plus you actually can get paid for making license plates and things!  In Pakistan, prisoners are barred up in a hole in the ground and they're lucky if they get a few meals."  I guess that would be strong disincentive for committing crimes!

In all, Singapore for me was a bunch of nice tall buildings and thousands of shopping centers and food courts, literally at least one of each on every block so it seemed.  So in an attempt to look beyond the metropolis, I went to the "Night Safari" which includes entering a big bat cage with a low ceiling and small trees.  Whoa.  Countless bats were flying around all over the place, right by everybody's heads.  And they weren't like the bats you see in caves around VA, which hang just a few inches long.  These bats, when hanging, were about 18 inches long and their wing span was about 3 feet.  Zoinks!  I enjoyed hanging out in the room watching people scream as bats flew by, or as they realized they were standing right next to a huge, well-camoflaged bat hanging from a tree.  Also cool was watching the bats use fingers or something on the ends of their wings to walk upside down along tree branches.

A few more tidbits:

- At the night safari, I volunteered to go up on stage at a show they were putting on, and they stuck a 10-foot-long, 6-inch-diameter Reticulated Python snake on me.  It kills by constriction and it was lots of fun while it started to wrap around my leg!

- At the movie theater, when you buy a ticket there's a computer screen:  you can see which seats are taken, and then you pick your seat (all assigned seating).  I saw Collateral Damage (www.collateraldamage.net).  It's about some terrorism, and if Americans watch it, it might inspire them to go out on their own and hunt down Osama.

- As far as I know, the only places in East Asia where you can drink the tap water (without risk of getting the runs bug) are Singapore and Japan.  In the month prior to coming to Singapore, not being able to have ice, salad (since it's washed in tap water), fruit which you eat without peeling, etc ... really made me appreciate the to-us very basic concept of safe tap water as a luxury!  I filled up on salad & fruit in Singapore, hopefully enough to last until I'm in Japan.

On to China for a few weeks! 

Cambodia ~ Thailand ~ Malaysia ~ Singapore ~ China ~ Mt. Fuji ~ Japan