Singapore Overview

Two hundred years ago this island was a mangrove wilderness. Things have obviously changed since then. A high modernize nation of Malay, Chinese, Indian and English cultures have melded together to create an island like no other Singapore.

This city nation of Singapore isn’t so much a land as an intriguing collection of old and new, Asian and Western, traditional and cutting edge.

At first glance, Singapore looks like an ultra modern city but there’s more to it here than meets the eye. Back there among those sky scrappers in the bay area are cultural and micro cultural that a well perfect exploring and a great introduction to this port city is to take a trip around the harbor on a Chinese jump boat.

Even though it’s a relatively progressive — compared to surrounding Asian nations, Singapore continually grapples it’s principles of modernity, economic prosperity and social conservatism.

Singapore is an independent Thailand at the southern tip of Malaysia, its only 26 miles long and 14 miles wide. Early history, suggest Singapore or Singapura was always somewhat up for grabs. The mangrove island was fought over, left to the jungle and fought over again by various Malays, Sumatran, and Javanese and Thai rulers. Everything changed when Europe establish shipping roots to China. Suddenly the Malay Peninsula which forms a bottleneck on the trade groups became a strategic hot point for Europe. To secure leverage and vast riches, Thomas Raffles established the modest British trading settlement on the southern tip of the Peninsula. It was 1819, within three years the island was a booming, port of 10,000 people. Immigrants from China, India and Malaysia streamed into town with their own religions and customs.

The 20th century so disaster occupation by the Japanese in World War II After the war, the island briefly became an English colony again but their relationship was forever altered. In 1965, the English relinquished control and Singapore became a sovereign nation. These days 97% of the Singaporeans come from 3 ethnic backgrounds, Chinese, Malay and Indian.

The combination of the three has created quite an interesting cuisine. Let’s go sample some food. There’s no better place to stumble Singapore cuisine than a hawker center. It’s quaint essential Singapore. This one in particular is called neon circle and it’s really well known for very festive mood. The word hawker originally referred to wondering food vendors of Singapore who would yell through the street to proclaim their arrival. Nowadays, Singapore strict hygiene laws require hawkers to gather in one place, thus hawker centers. The food and lots of this hawker center is a blend of Chinese, Indian and Malay cuisines. You might say the cuisine here is the delicious symbol of the nation’s mixed history.