I arrived two days ago to Singapore, which seems very safe and clean compared to the rest of southeast asia. There is still a little garbage on the streets, but people have fined for littering, smoking on the street etc. so it is much cleaner than most cities. On the subway the fine is $500 for eating and $1000 for smoking. The drug traffiking penalty is death. I went down to Orchard Rd. the modern shopping area, but I decided to buy a cheap watch from a street vendor (my old one was destroyed in the rain in Thailand) and it worked for less than 8 hours. I guess today I'll have to buy a real one:) There is every kind of food imaginable available from US chain restaurants, including Dunkin' Donuts and Orange Julius to Chinese, Indian and every other international food. I had dinner last night with two british guys in Little India, where hundreds of people (99% men) were out celebrating Deepvali, the Hindu festival.
During the day yesterday the 2 Brits and I took a bus to Johor Bahru, Malaysia, a town just 1 km across a causeway. It's where people go to buy DVDs, fake adidas, purses, watches etc. They were celebrating the holiday there also so it was a little different than normal people said. It was dirtier than Singapore, but not as bad as many border towns. We ate at a local place and for 2 pounds we 3 had cokes and food. Everything was very cheap. We took out 100 ringgits each and then couldn't spend it all. When we first arrived we didn't have the local money so a nice lady gave us 5 ringgits for the bus. She wouldn't take a dollar or Singapore money. She was so nice.
