Singapore: Almost Perfect, But...

Singapore : almost perfect but....

Coconut palms, shiny deep-green banana leaves, smiling orchids, lights and colors, hygiene and smiles, tranquility, calm, organization... but where have I ended up? The Air Asia flight from Penang landed less than half an hour ago but it seems the flight has transported us to another continent... we are still in Asia, sure?? Singapore gives its welcome already with its phantasmagoric tropical airport, where every opening, every detail is surrounded by greenery, flowers, plants, palms. Everything in its place, everything right, everything Asianly orderly, everything scenographically spectacular. Singapore Changi is the symbol and image of a beautiful city, livable (at least by an elusive visitor), hot and humid like Bangkok, very green like Kuala Lumpur (or perhaps more), commercial squared like and more than its half-sister Hong Kong.

The unknowns of passport control are around the corner, they often cause problems, but they are passed without issues. We decide to venture on the cheapest means... ahh serious mistake... While the airport is connected with the city by every kind of transport, we decide to take the very slow bus 36!!! which takes its quiet little hour to reach the center, picking up along the palm-lined boulevards the urban citizenry of Singapore—elderly women shopping, fashionable fifteen-year-olds, designer-clad from head to toe, speaking English, Western and non-Western businessmen, career women, in short... an ordinary city, in an ordinary continent... with 28 degrees, 80% humidity, the monsoon around the corner and shopping malls that like King Kong crush the streets of this metropolis of money and the good life.

After the stop at the hotel, we plunge into the concreted waters of Orchard Road, a magnificent succession of the well-to-do Singapore, the good Singapore, the wealthy one, of tourists with bulging pockets, of Christmas lights, of children's prayers... "Please, Let it snow!!!"... bahh poor Singapore children... not even your almond-eyed Santa Claus will be able to leave you on the path the dreamed-of snow. But Singapore has this in store for them too: it will create and sell it in its shiny colorful shop windows, under tons and tons of—also colored—concrete, a thousand palms, purple and red gardens, money, money, money... everything can be bought in Singapura, everything or perhaps everything.

Orchard Road brandishes its marvelous weapons, long arms of shops, underground canals that peek between the folds of your and my wallet, summoning your god of money, and whispering "buy, buy, drink, eat, look, buy, buy, sell, come, enter..." A continuous succession of opportunities for food, merchandise and drinks, among luxury hotels and glass sk