Showcase of Prosperity: Singapore
It’s quite easy to succumb to the stereotypes and dismiss Singapore as a bland avatar of Asia – yes a multitude of different faces and creeds live in its walls, but they are authoritarian walls, predictable, prefabricated and pedestrian, where its people are “freed” from the shackles of chewing gum and talking back to their leaders in dissent. Intimidating and boring – this is but sheer nonsense.
Singapore is in fact one of the most sophisticated, cosmopolitan – and fun – cities in the continent. As you arrived bedazzled at the sight of one of the world’s most fully featured and thoroughly efficient airports, along the highways blissfully free of traffic jams and blights of poverty that hobbles most cities in Southeast Asia, you eventually come to the realization that you are smack dab in the middle of a nexus, one of the showcases of the ‘new’ Asian prosperity.
This tiny city state – this rock jammed close to the equator – hot, steamy and unbearably humid at times, is the unseeming recipient of the largesse of the global realignment in wealth towards the Orient. It is the Switzerland of the East. This is evident in its gleaming towers housing global titans of industry and finance, however on the ground one can enjoy the city’s many bounties just the same. For example, its dizzying shopping options – from luxury high street fashion to dirt cheap bargains at the bazaars and markets – to the smorgasborg of cuisines sourced from across the continent and beyond ensures that Singapore’s many delights can be matched by only a handful of cities in the world.
