Final thoughts on Singapore as a destination

This turned out to be a really great place for a last-minute trip, and a great destination in Asia in general.  In fact, it's such a comfortable place to travel it hardly made this spontaneous trip much of a challenge.

With a vibrant economy, standards are high and facilities and infrastructure are impressive.  The MRT is clean, efficient, and incredibly cheap, using a distance-based system with most of my rides costing less than a dollar, and even taxis are cheap.  The island is compact so you can get everywhere and see everything in a comfortable amount of time.  Cell service and mobile internet is cheap, fast, reliable, and coverage of the area is 100%.

English is one of the national languages and all signs and documentation are in English, so it's about as easy as a foreign country could possibly be.  This is particularly interesting for Asia, as a language barrier typically poses at least some inconveniences, from communicating with your cab driver to accessing the most interesting of street food.  Even in Japan, probably the most developed and accessible country in Asia, cabbies don't speak English and you need to come prepared with where you're going in writing.  But here, it's so simple, cabbies all speak English, and even the food hawkers do too and their offerings are posted in English too.  So it's been a breeze.

Also, the cleanliness and hygiene standards are incredibly high, so it seems safe to eat street food from almost anywhere.  I've been subsisting on mostly hawker food and fresh juices on ice, and everything looks cleanly prepared in front of you, and I haven't had any illness problems.  The streets and subways are all very clean, due of course in no small part to Singapore's hard-line attitude to things like chewing gum, graffiti, and littering.  And also due to strict standards, people are honest and you don't need to be on your toes about getting scammed.

So given all this I would perhaps actually recommend Singapore as people's first destination in Asia, because it's so easy to get around and experience things, yet it still offers so much of what makes Asia interesting, while being safe and hygenic.

The food has been incredible, there's about as much variety here as in any city I've been to, with Chinese, Southeast Asian, Indian, Muslim, Malay, Indonesian, and western options and various fusions of these, at both the high end and the low end.

There's plenty to do, with extravagant tourist destinations and resorts, the aquarium, the zoo, casinos and horse racing, extensive nightlife, parks and beaches, and of course, food.  Really happy I wound up here and had enough time to see what the place is all about, I highly recommend it.