We started in Bangkok, made our way to Cambodia, and had two days to rest in Singapore at the Marina Bay Sands before heading to Bali, Flores, and Komodo to see the dragons. Singapore is a great place to recharge and provision. It has everything you need. The economic miracle of Singapore is one of my favorite stories, and what LKY achieved on these muddy banks of the malacca straight is my favorite exercise in country building - we may never see something as profound from an economic dev standpoint again. That’s why I love Singapore.
You can taste the melting pot in its dishes - Chinese, South Asian, Malay, Cantonese, Indonesian - and the list goes on. It is my third favorite place to eat behind Hong Kong and Tokyo. Singapore is becoming almost intolerably nice - most of its grit has been sheared by economic progress and scarcity of land in the defacto capital of Southeast Asia.
I love what Singapore represents a sort of cultural compromise and the most precise and nimble form of government - the city state.
It was a great place for us to provision and rest up for Indonesia. Marina Bay Sands has a great pool and shopping, but it was one of the most disappointing hotels I have ever stayed at - stick with the MO or Raffles. It is not bad per se, but it deserves to be much better and felt cheap and impersonal.