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Order Vs Chaos (Singapore vs Bangkok)

Posted by Stuart at 08:59 PM on September 19, 2004

As promised, today was a busy day for us on Orchard Road. I am now the proud owner of three new pairs of pants, three shirts, 6 pairs of socks and a belt. Piyawat added socks, a belt, a couple shirts and a light jacket to his collection. Whew.

After shopping we had coffee with Mark near the California Fitness on Orchard. It was good to catch up with him. I think he is one of the few people in the world who travels more than I do. He just returned from an impressive month-long trip to Myanmar (Burma). He said that the trip was a real adventure, including one not-so-pleasant experience of getting food poisoning while on an 18-hour bus ride through a country with very poor roads. The 18-hour bus ride is bad enough, but being sick on top of that is an experience I'd rather miss.

Piyawat and I have walked around Singapore quite a bit today. A recurring theme in our discussions is "Could Thailand ever look like this?" Singapore is perhaps the cleanest, most efficient, most orderly city I have ever been in. Bangkok, on the other hand, is probably one of the most chaotic.

Or, to look at it another way, Bangkok has so many things that Singapore doesn't have: mangy soi dogs sleeping in the street, beggars (many of them children), piles of trash waiting to be collected, black stinking canals, air pollution, street vendors taking up all the space on the sidewalk, uneven sidewalks that force you to watch where you are going or else face a twisted ankle or worse, loud motorcycles, horrible traffic, non-airconditioned busses that belch black smoke...

There is some reason to have hope for Bangkok. After all, Singapore was an average SE Asian city just 50 years ago. The improvements they have made in those 50 years are nothing short of amazing.

Could Bangkok become like Singapore? It could, if it was willing to make changes. Small things like flat, even sidewalks and a little landscaping could go a long way. Charging cars a toll to use the streets in the downtown area would be a great idea too. Requiring busses to meet minimum emissions standards would also help. Bangkok could also follow Singapore's lead in moving all of the street vendors off the sidewalks and into government-sponsored Hawker Food Courts.

You may be asking, "If Singapore is so wonderful and Bangkok is so terrible, then why don't you move to Singapore?" I think the answer can be found in my feeling that Singapore has gone too far in their drive to produce order and cleanliness. ChinaTown, although beautiful with it's freshly painted centuries-old shophouses, looks like Disney World to me. It is too perfect. Singapore has sacrificed its soul, its heart, its emotions in the rush to have order.

I'd say the perfect city lies somewhere between the two extremes of Bangkok and Singapore. Where is that city? I'd say San Francisco and Sydney come close, with San Franciso being on the chaotic/emotional side of the fence and Sydney being on the orderly/rational side. But both seem to be somewhere in the middle.