Singapore

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This is Christine's 2nd and my 3rd visit to Singapore.

Singapore is an incredibly rich ($), clean and safe country. So safe it's almost unreal.

When Christine and I landed we had about 4 hours to kill. Unfortunately we had to do this on the boring side of the airport past security as we had to grab our checked bag. We were sitting at a Starbucks when a young (very early 20s) girl from China asked if we had an iPhone charger, I did, so I hooked her phone up to a portable charger I had. She said "thanks!" and left, and didn't come back for over an hour! Christine wondered what would happen if we left, I said we would leave the phone on the table and it would be there for her when she returns. I am not sure I personally would go that far to test the safety there though!

The unemployment rate is almost non-existent and the punishments for theft, etc are so severe that there is just nothing to gain whatsoever from stealing someones iPhone in Singapore.

Singapore has the world's highest percentage of millionaires. One out of every six households has at least one million US dollars in disposable wealth.

Acute poverty is very rare,  it's very unlikely you will find homeless and/or beggars on the street.

Lee Kuan Yew, the "Father of Singapore" has done an amazing job here, taking Singapore from 3rd world to 1st world (and beyond if you ask me!). It looks to me as though he has picked the most useful tools and constructs from far right free market capitalism to far left central planning. I will be reading one of his books soon.

It's so incredibly civil here that it makes North America look somewhat uncivilized and dirty and dangerous in comparison. Singapore has the 4th lowest murder rate in the world (2012), the top two have 0 murders. In 2007 There were 8 murders out of about 5 million people and all murders were solved.

It's not perfect, you don't have the free speech you do in NA, but from what I can tell their laws are  just a more thorough version of Canada's anti-hate speech laws. And yes some crimes are punishable by caning which will put you in the hospital for weeks!

As with any system there are tradeoffs, I can't help but feel maybe some of those are worth it when I am in Singapore, the net effect is such a comfortable, safe, clean, beautiful and prosperous place to live. Personally I think we would find it a bit too safe after a while though, it has been nicknamed "Singabore" for a reason.

It's definitely worth a couple day stop over at the very least!