View from esplanade towards Merlion Park
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by Keith Miller, text and drawings

Singapore is rich. Its GDP per capita is $85,000us. That is $10,000 more than the United States and six times more than its wealthiest neighbor, Malaysia. It was founded by Stanford Raffles for his employer, The British East India Company in 1819. Its transformation from a humble trading post on a swampy island to today's hyper-modern business center is often regarded as "miraculous." The adjective fits.

Yet, for Westerners the name Singapore still conjures up something very different; visions of opium dens and inscrutable Orientals. For anyone raised on Somerset Maugham stories or Hollywood's version of the "exotic East" the city will probably be a bit of a disappointment. That type of comedown in modern travel is a cliché of course—Singapore is simply a striking example of it.

Some 30 years ago the tourist board did a survey of their foreign visitors. Overwhelmingly they criticized the almost total lack of the atmospheric allure expected of a colonial city of the Orient. Instead they found a slick, modern shopping destination. The authorities took note and stepped up efforts to preserve what little was left of a small neighborhood of old merchant shophouses. They were restored to within an inch of their life and promoted as "Chinatown" in case anyone missed the point.

But let's not slam Singapore altogether. Unlike most other cities in S.E. Asia it's held onto a great deal of its parks and greenery and has one of the great Botanical Gardens of the world. Then, as big a fan of retail therapy as any other tourist, I find the premier shopping area (Orchard Road) one of the prettiest I've ever seen; leafy, running adjacent to parkland and even containing some rare examples of "Straits Malacca" colonial architecture.

At the end of the day, Singapore is a go-get'em city of well educated and ambitious people. It feels young. Another survey, this one focusing on the values of Singaporean youth, revealed a world view that could be summed up in their own words as the "4 C's" : car, cash, career and condo. Although this could be taken as a wry commentary on the materialistic bent of Singapore's young people, it does reflect a very real preoccupation with financial success. It's a highly competitive society where job advancement and bottom-line security are strongly emphasized.

I suspect that that's not so different from prevailing attitudes everywhere in this world among young people... and their parents.

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Keith Miller was born in Canada, but has spent most of his life abroad. At first travelling and working in Europe and S.E. Asia in the 1970's and 80's, he later settled in Mexico.

He's lived for the last 35 years in San Miguel de Allende where he now shares his home with a sometimes-faithful Schnauzer/Poodle mix.

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