What a great night! Our Hostel puts on these free trips around Singapore with the owner of the place, Tony, being the guide. There was 8 of us in total that went out with him last night and I learnt so much, think he must have talked solidly for about 5hrs! We just stayed in our district called Katong (along with many other names) its famouse for its food here and also its a bit of a mix of social groups with rich and poor living pretty close. I tried some weird dishes that I would have never known about if it wasnt for Tony. Egg and Tofu fried with a peanut sauce, Beef and dried chilli, seriously spicy eggplant, some rose and condensed milk drink which was foul! A deliciouse pudding made out of rice flour that was steamed intro small cakes with cocnut sugar (tastes and looks a bit like mollases) in the middle and fresh coconut - they were by far the best! Different curries and local sweets which were really stoddgy and gooey because a lot of asians are lactose intollerent so they cant use milk. We must have tried over 20 different dishes and this really smelly fruit think it was called Durum but it smelt like smelly cheese!
Tony talked to us all about Singapore culture and how people live here. Its quite hard to explain but here's a few facts to give you an idea....
Most people, infact 85% of the nation live in Government built flat blocks which they buy for around $350,000 bearing in mind this is only about a 100yr lease that they buy and they are only allowed to qualify for this type of housing if the household income doesnt exceed $9000 a month! Then to actually buy a private flat its near half a million and to buy a terrace house (which only about 10% of the nation owns ) its nearer a million!
Its a very multi racial country and they embrace all the different nationalities that live here. They understand how small their island is and that they have a very faragile multi racial nation. This means that they have strict rules on racism and open preaching, no one is allowed to speak out against other religions - at all! They all have 17 public holiday a yr celebrating all the different religions religious days so everyone is invloved. In the housing blocks its more like a small community with shared areas where they are incouraged to all join together. People can hire public spaces to put on events inthe community and weddings and funeral happen in the communities, like last night there was one on the local basketball pitch! These houseing areas area also multi racial where they poulation cant exceed the percentages of the whole nation, like 80 % chinesse, 10 % malay and 5 % indian or something like that!
They still have the death sentance here! since 1965 they have hung over 250 people for such offences as drug traffiking, murder and the more serious crimes. They also always have canning as part of most punishments like littering! Can you belive that if you are caught littering you will get beaten! Its hard for me to comprehend that this still goes on here, they have some very strange and strict rules that makes it feel like its more of a Communist regime here but weirdly it does work, you just have to look around to see! Our guide Tony see's it more as a Libertarian state, people are respectfull here of the tight rules which even lead so far as agreeing with gays but there is still a law in place saying they cant have sex!?! But people here see the benifit they get from living in line with the rules, they can see what they're govenrment are providing for them and reap the benefits from a very prosperouse and clean nation.
