Nonono Singapore is so.. Perfect. Its too perfect to have a ~~feel~~ not like Beijing which is like, all noise and pollution or even Seattle that has a strong clash w its infrastructure
Yeah but I feel like all big cities have that front. You have to look a little harder to find the "real city". Who knows, maybe it's there in Dubai too, lmao.
Singapore isn't on the top of my list though. Still have a lot to see before I wanna go there.
Singapore has a bit of that too, with the strict no gum chewing (spoiler: it's not strict on chewing, but more on trafficking), littering fines, bringing durian onto MRT fines, etc. The caning is over exaggerated to scare white people, says one of my friends.
It's definitely a cool place with lots of opportunity, I just think culturally it can feel a little shallow because it's image is so pristine and clean cut. There are definitely still pockets to go to get the 'real singapore' feel, it's just you have to look a lot harder to find them. my local friends took me around to the best spots so I got a real feel for it, not just what a tourist would see.
I'm probably going to take a prep course in a couple of months so we'll see how that goes. I'm also going to ask for additional study materials for my birthday. Oddly enough I'm excited about it.
With Dubai's "closed-mindedness" I was more pointing towards the annoyingly exact societal rules of who has to do what and when around whom, etc. It's ridiculous.
I don't know really. My Dad went and said he was fascinated (he's an architect). I've always felt most at home in dense cities, weirdly enough, so it always seemed attractive to me.
I mean, Singapore is probably more culturally open since there is a strong Chinese, Malay and Indian presence and they co-exist pretty peacefully. They're exceptionally open to Westerners and other foreigners too.
It's a total consumer driven culture though, and a lot of it can feel like a cookie cutter at times. There are a ton of malls too. It's infrastructure and food are top notch though. I've met a lot of good people there. I'd definitely live there for part of my twenties, although it's so small it could be suffocating after a while.
Bratislava because I'm part Slovak and it'd be a disservice to not visit my homeland. My family name is Slovak too so I feel a particular attachment to it. I'd want to explore a bit around the area to get a feel for it.
Skipping Turkey would more or less be due to a time / money constraint than anything.
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