Squeaky Clean Singapore

Well, close enough anyways especially in comparison to China. And how do you keep a small island of over 4 million all shiny and sparkling? With an eccentric authoritarian obsession for cleanliness and order of course. Actions such as jay-walking, chewing gum in public, spitting, littering, not flushing the toilet, and consuming food and beverages on public transportation could land you with a heavy fine to the Michael Fay treatment. While these laws seemed to be randomly enforced, it is still impressive that most of the citizens follow them coming from such varying cultures. This city state has been the most diverse area we have been to yet housing a population from all over the world from Chinese, Malays, Indians, Arabs, and handfuls of expats.

Leaving from our not so clean, but definitely squawky red light district hotel, we venture out into the pristine city. First stop, we checked out Merlion Park, a harbor displaying the icon of Singapore. Half merman, half lion the statue faces out to sea spitting a fountain of water from its mouth. Not quite sure the significance, but entertaining nonetheless. The Singapore Flyer, the world’s largest observation wheel, was spectacular at sunset and lit up with colorful lights at night along with the other Christmas lights decorating the streets. While the closest thing we got to a turkey for Thanksgiving was roasted chicken potato chips, our chili crab and fried carrot cake dinner wasn’t too bad. However, the latter neither resemble carrot nor cake, still a mystery to us.

To our surprise the next morning we found the Aggies playing the Longhorns at Kyle field on TV, half way across the world. While wanting to watch the rest of the football game we had to check out. With some time to spare before our flight to Australia we strolled around the Singapore Zoo home to white tigers, Lions, and sun bears. Afternoon showers decided to stay so we packed it in early and decided to make our way to the airport for a couple hours before our 9:55pm flight. Our jaws dropped though when we saw that we had 30 minutes before our flight departed at 8:20pm. Like chickens with our heads cut off we ran around the airport to find the check in desk and pleaded our way onto the closed flight. Thank goodness for the rain because a couple minutes later and we might have had to take the animal cargo option instead. We made it through check in, immigration, security to our gate on the other side of the airport in 20 minutes flat, record time!