Back in the old days of my first visit in 1997 Singapore was a fine city. Fines were looming, among many other offenses, for spitting, playing music in public and even for chewing gum. Correspondingly the t-shirt “Singapore is a fine city’ was a precious souvenir. When I tried to buy one in a hawker market in Chinatown the vendor suddenly vanished under his sales table, came back minutes later and handed the tee over to me rather conspiratively. No wonder – selling and buying the tee was penalized, too.   Ten years later I came back on a regular basis to Singapore, while residing on the beautiful island of Sri Lanka 
The food in this food-obsessed city, be it Chinese, Malay or Indian, was as good as before. But suddenly there were interesting architecture, galleries, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra concert and – imagine – young people drinking and having fun in public! Trying to lure more expats to its ultra-humid shores Singapore had successfully morphed in a lot cooler place. After all, it  takes more to attract some of the world’s boldest people than being a fine city.