Shocking Singapore & First Impressions (Videos by Visitors)

First time in Singapore?

Not sure what to expect?

Here are what some visitors said (or put on Youtube!) 

From the video above:

1) Hawker centres and food prices there

2) So clean and safe (even at night!)

3) Public Transportation

    - No eating or drinking on public transit

    - How affordable public transit is

4) Rain. It rain a lot! And the variability of the rain.

5) Strict laws covering every aspect of life.

6) Multi-cultural but in harmony.

7 Language - English.

The next video is from an Australian backpacker... who dines at high-end (well high-end to me) eateries. As any Singaporean will tell you (and the video above), Singapore can be affordable if you eat at Hawker Centres like most Singaporeans. We save the high-end eateries for special occasions. Like you won the lottery or your rich uncle died and left you a small fortune (too small to buy a car, large enough to splurge on dinner.)

I've included her video here because of her reactions. 

But I don't want it to seem like visitors had only good things to say. This video's first and last items are negatives. Cringey even!

For the first point about heat and humidity, nothing we can do about it. But Singaporeans have adapted - there are lots of air-conditioned shopping malls, our trains are air-conditioned, as are our buses. So these are our relief from the unrelenting heat and humidity. Try it. Duck into a shopping mall whenever you need to cool off.

As for his last point, here was the defence in the comments: 

Singapore progressed from Third World to First in ONE generation! That means people who grew up with bucket toilets, spitting, littering, (unhygienic) street hawkers, and picking their noses (in the 1960s), found themselves (after just ONE generation - about 25 years) in the first world with flushing toilets, clean streets, sanitary hawker centres, and tourists who notice them picking their noses in public!

The next two videos are about leveraging on long layovers in Singapore. 

These travellers stayed in a capsule/pod hotel in Chinatown to be closer to the attractions, then headed back to the Airport to spend a few hours there enjoying Jewel.

This next video's travellers had just 21 hours layover. They stayed at Hotel G which is convenient to the Marina Bay attractions. This allowed them to hit all the highlights, and make it back to the airport in time. But 21 hours (or 24 hours) is a little bit of a rush. 

These visitors stayed a little longer. But I included them mainly because of their uninhibited awe and joy at seeing Singapore. (I'm a Jaded Singaporean, and I need these people to remind me that I live in a pretty good place.) At about 5:00 minutes in the video, they tried Hainanese Chicken Rice, which is Singapore's National Dish. They were not overly impressed. I'd blame the Hainanese. They should've tried laksa. But they make up for their lack of enthusiasm for our National Dish by their reactions to the Garden Rhapsody (the music and light show at Gardens by the Bay). 

This next couple saw one of the many family of otters on their first evening here! And they went to the Marina Barrage which is not usually a place tourists visit.

And yes, there is wildlife within this "Concrete Jungle" cos we have made space for them: