After spending slightly more than 2 weeks in Malaysia celebrating Chinese New Year with friends/relatives and doing some errands such as getting a new passport/applying for visas, it’s time to get back to the travel mode again.

Felt a little lazy after having a stable life for the past 2.5 weeks. Spent the past 3 days in Kuala Lumpur, getting back my new passport (RM300~USD$88) with a multiple entry Chinese visas (RM148~USD$44), US visa (RM492~USD$145), finally got on the 3pm Aeroline bus from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore (USD$79~USD$23, 5.5 hours bus ride). There are other buses to Singapore which is cheaper but got on theAeroline bus since it’s just across MCA building in KL city center and is more convenient for me.

Arrived at Singapore at 8.30pm. Today Singapore has a population of around 5 million but the city just had 3 million people 20 years ago. The government policy has been immigrant friendly to attract talented professionals to the workforce.

Singapore is a city state and the island is just around 700 square kilometers. The city is 45km from West to East and 25km north to south.

Singapore merged with Malaya in 1963 to become Malaysia but was explused from Malaysia in 1965 to become an Independent country because of disputes between Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party and Malaysia government then. Singapore is considered as the only country in the world that gained independence unwillingly.

Because of the competent government of the country, even without much natural resources, the country has been growing on a sustainable path and become the richest country in South East Asia. An example is to compare Singapore dollar to Malaysian ringgit which is exchangeable
at par until 1973 but today 1 Singapore dollar ~ 2.4 Malaysian Ringgit.
Since the country doesn’t have much natural resources, the country economy needs to diversify into different areas in manufacturing, services, biomedical, tourism and is also one of the biggest port in the world.

Singapore is considered a democratic country but with a strong government controlled by PAP party. Even though there is election but the PAP has been in power since independence and controlled around 90% of the parliment seats since independence.

Arrived at Harbour Front in Singapore at 8.30pm. Took the metro to Tanjung Pagar area and crashed at Jason’s place.

Inside the metro, I heard not only Singlish but also noticed that Singapore has a lot of immigrants from China, India and South East Asian countries from the way the people speak. There are also quite a lot of expatriates and tourists as well. Read that there were 10 million tourist visiting Singapore in 2007, twice the number of the country population.

Met up Sunny whom I have not seen for a while for dinner at Bugis area.

Had hotpot buffett for dinner, SD$20 per pax.