August, 2005

Greetings from the cleanest city-nation around! You can be fined $1,500 bucks for selling chewing gum, $1,000 for chewing said gum, $500 bucks for spitting on the sidewalk, and I think they pretty much just chop your head right off if you sell drugs. Good for them! The result? A really clean, really beautiful, really safe country. Some people call it totalitarianism, I call it fun.

Sadly, this is one of my trips where all of the photos were lost. These three are all that remain. The only proof that I ever visited this great place.

	Yours truly, decked out in rock-solid tourist parephenalia. Ugly shorts, t-shirt, camera bag. What more could any independent city state ask for? In the background, we see downtown singapore. There's the Merlion (sort of like a city mascot, only for the entire country) puking polluted bay water on tourists and passers by.		Another classic Matt Munson Money Shot, this one was taken on Sentosa Island. Think of it as the Disney Land of Singapore. It's a small island just south of the main city that used to be a guard post against naval incursion. There's some great stuff on the island, but all of my photos are lost. You'll just have to settle for this mug shot of me with the brown elixir from above.
	I found this sign in chinatown. While I'm sure there's some weirdness introduced vai the language barrier, I still think this is a great sign. It appeals to tourists on so many levels. And no, I did not visit the massage parlor. :)