I like Singapore although it is a bit authoritarian.
The people are bright, usually the highest average I.Q. in the world, sometimes #2 to Hong Kong.
In the case of Singapore the I.Q. thing is especially interesting as their average is higher than that of any of the genetic pools the city-state draws from: the Chinese, Malay and Indian.
As a Malaysian Chinese businessman I know has told me, "We should never have let Singapore get away."
Another back-and-forth with Hong Kong is income/wealth. HK has more billionaires but Singapore has a higher average income.
And then there are the Gurkhas. More after the jump....
From Spears' Magazine
Singapore has eclipsed Hong Kong to become the new home of wealth in Asia. John Arlidge reports
Singapore Airlines flight 317 from London bumps through the last of the towering tropical rain clouds and banks hard right towards Changi airport, and that’s when you see it: a vast gash in the lush, tropical green of the Lion City.
Changi is building a third runway and a new fifth terminal to enable it to handle 140 million passengers a year and overtake Heathrow, where the debate over a third runway has been going on for so long that Changi has built a second runway and three new terminals in that time. The centrepiece of the new development is the Jewel, a £951 million vertical ‘city’ that links the terminals. It has indoor gardens and rainforests; the tallest indoor waterfall in the world at 130 feet; 280 shops, restaurants and bars; a ‘pod’ hotel; and an open-to-all lounge.
It was completed in just four years. ‘We don’t hang around in Singapore,’ says Lim Ching Kiat, managing director of development at Changi. Singapore is not hanging around anywhere you look, whether it is domestic investment, local brands expanding overseas for the first time, or Western brands plugging into the Lion City.
Two centuries after Stamford Raffles landed and founded what has become the modern city state, it is finally overtaking Hong Kong to become the crazy-rich business capital of Asia. ‘When you look at Singapore now and ten years ago, the contrast is striking,’ says Melissa Ow, the government executive charged with attracting visitors to Singapore.
Singapore Airlines, long considered the world’s best carrier, is going the extra mile. Its new Airbus A350 has broken the record for the longest flight in the world: the 10,377- mile, 19-hour run from Singapore to New York. On its A380 superjumbos, it’s raising the bar on luxury in the new Suites class. There are only six suites at the front of the upper deck, served by three cabin crew. They come with a tobacco brown Poltrona Frau leather seat and a separate 6ft 3in long bed that drops down from the wall....MUCH MORE
