Singapore trip

Just back from Singapore. It was a 3 days 2 nights DIY trip with my family.

To promote the tourism, Spore government is giving 10 days free entry for foreign (99% malaysian) vehicles, which normally costs SGD20 per day. With this opportunity, I drove there during the school holidays last weekend.

First impression, the woodland checkpoint looks gigantic like a japanese castle. With the mindset that 'Spore is a "fine" city', we are really careful, not to commit any 'crime'. The most torturable one to me is the speed limit. On normal road is only 70kmh while 90 for highways. For me who drives at 140kmh at our national PLUS, its really like turtle crawling. Don't think all Sporean follow the rule, there are still many of them who fly on the road. They know where the speed cameras are.

The impressive one about Spore city is their buildings. Almost everyone has its own uniqueness. Take the Suntec City as example, all 5 of its tower represents the Palm, with a fountain in the middle. Not to forget Sporean are kiasu also, so that fountain of Suntec City claims to be the 'largest fountain' in the world. Same as the man-made waterfall in Jurong Bird Park. The only difference with Malaysia is that we have "Malaysia Boleh" slogan, but they have no "Singapore Can"

Lastly, the implementation of the electronic cash card is very successful in Spore. The people there already used to paying with the cash card. Its very convinient as its really one-card-does-it-all - for MRT, tolls, parking fee to shoppings. The MRT is one great convinience unlike KL which has 4 different operators that use different ticket system and inconvinience interchange.

Conslusion, everything in Spore is well organized, but lack of 'livingness' and happiness. I find people there too constrained like robots, staying in well-planned flats. So even though KL has messy traffics, bad city management, dirty streets, I still prefer to stay in our lovely Kuala Lumpur.