Day 16 - Singapore

After Indonesia Singapore was a total contrast! Everything is organized and civilized, almost everyone speaks English, and actually almost all the faces look educated.

As expected, Dima and myself got stuck on the passport control. From Dasha’s words CIS countries enjoy visa free transit entry for 96 hours. Immigration office first hesitated that our flight from Kuala Lumpur is actually eligible for this regulation, but after all the stories about our trip, and royal mail, they stamped our passports with entry permits.

The heat in Singapore is even worse than in Indonesia due to total concrete structures all over the place. We spend about 1.5 hours in search of a hostel and ended up in the most expensive accommodation of our trip - $40SG per person. We could hardly stand all together in the room – it reminded me army conditions with double beds and no space whatsoever…

From the hostel we went to meet Joao, and after that luckily we proceeded to local team event meeting very interesting people from the local office – real mix of asian nationalities – philipino, vietnamese, indonesian, thai, singaporian, taiwan and so on. Joao brought us to his favourite Thai food restaurant, after which we could hardly walk. Indeed, Singapore is a paradise for Asian food lovers, but I am definitely not the best person to tell you about this…

After the dinner we went around the town. Night views of Singapore are very nice, although not as impressive, as in Hong Kong. Personal income taxes are really low here, so with a slightly higher accommodation prices compared to Dublin, one can enjoy a significant tax benefit with lower prices on other services on top. Not even saying about electronics paradise that we witnessed in the Sim Lim Square shopping center. Singapore is the place to be, if one is looking for an Asian hub city for living.