I had a long trip to Singapore. I started friday morning at 4.30AM from home to catch a flight at 6:40 AM. I got my boarding pass on time and had security check in on time at DFW airport. There was some 1 hour waiting time at the gate. The flight was transiting from Chicago-HongKong-Singapore. At Chicago, I had some 3 hours waiting time. I had a smooth transition at the port of departure. At HongKong however, we all had to get through another round of security check ins. HongKong Airport looks quite nice with mountain at one side and a beach at the other. I had a waiting time of 4 hours at HongKong airport. Finally from HongKong to Singapore, it took some 4 hours. I reached singapore at 11.30 PM. The foreign exchange counter is open all 24 hours, so it was easy getting singaporean dollars. If you ever want to get your money exchanged, do it at the Singaporean airport rather than doing at any American points. There you get the best exchange rate. The airport is simply beautiful and you can get a taxi just immediately. Very reasonable fare. I was staying at Grandpark City hotel and the taxi takes about 20 minutes to reach there. Grand park city hotel is a very nice place to live, beautiful rooms, swimming pools, exercise area etc. It reminds me of town and country hotel in Oakland, CA where we had one sequence annotation jamboree way back in 2004.
Singapore is a city with western infrastructure and eastern warmth. I simply loved it. The climate is also very much like Indian climate. To sum up I would say, bring all the big buildings and best roads from Mumbai and Chennai and subtract slums, then it becomes Singapore. There is a super shopping center called "Mustafa" in Singapore and that is the life line of most of the people staying there. On weekends you will find a huge crowd there. There are little India, Little China, Arab world etc. I have seen traces of India there, with 13% Indian population in Singapore. People somehow democratize the roads and decorate them for the seasonal fervor. I saw for instance a whole road was decorated on the eve of Ramdan and another one on the occasion of Chinese Moon festival.
I went to see some apartments and they are more or less similar to Mumbai apartments but very expansive. In private housing society, the apartment rent could be somewhere between 4000-5000 singaporean dollars. The swimming pools look slightly different from the swimming pools here in USA or India. They are like canals - long. We dined at a place called as "Gayatri" and it was really good. For shopping, if you are going from US, don't do any shopping there. It may not be worth it. I heard from the locals that people don't prefer to buy stuff in USA, because they are lot cheaper there. So, I had few of my myths clarified.
As a whole, I think I will give 8 out of 10 for food and dining, 8/10 for transportation, 4/10 for cost of rental places, 7/10 for weather.
