Singapore

Arriving in Singapore after more than 4 months in Japan was quite a cultural shock. It sounds very stupid but I was wether actively aware of the new currency nor of the new language. So, I ended up starting every sentence in Japanese when speaking to someone in shop or on the street and the calculation of the prices was not the easiest too. The worst was that Singapore is by far not as clean and organized as I imagined because of its reputation. The same applies for the friendliness of the people and the service quality. To be fair you have to know that the Japanese are absolutely worldclass in both. If you ask someone for the way they either bow 90 degress and tell you 100 times how sorry they are or they bring you mostly directly to the place where you want to go, because their too afraid too speak English... :-) In Singapore many don't even listen to you and there are often shop assistants who don't speak a word! Further more you have to pay extra for everything and pay attention that they don't cheat on you just because your foreign.

The good thing about the cultural shock is, that I'm now hopefully a bit better prepared for my further trip to Malysia and Thailand. The big diffrence there is that I don't expect clean streets or public transport that is on time. The only thing I hope to get is a clean bed and a shower, I guess probably also have to adapt my measure of cleanness...
The bad thing is that I got so many warnings how dangerous Malaysia is, that I got albdreams last night! I keep my fingers crossed that nothing will be stolen...

Today I luckily got the chance to explore Singapore with 3 "native" guides :-) and could feel the big diffrence. So I got my eyebrows cut for 6 Singapore dollars, had a fresh cocotnut, could enter Singpore Management University (usually only possible with security card) and explored little india without shop assisstants who run after you and want to sell you every "rubbish".
Thanks a lot to Gerland, Ian and Min Chu for showing me your city, I enjoyed it so much!!!