Carpeting that silences footsteps and mutes voices. Oases of lush greenery. Multiple opportunities to eat and shop.  And that's just Singapore 's airport.

A pristine environment designed from the beginning to incorporate nature at its most beautiful - while offering shopping and dining at its most modern and convenient - Singapore is the thinking person's city.   The government has tried to foresee and ward off urban ills ranging from overcrowding to unsightly power lines, while providing luxurious accommodations, fine dining, natural spaces and huge underground malls.

First, the accommodations. Perhaps most notable is the legendary Raffles Hotel, which offers visitors the priciest lodging, ranging from $600 to $6,000 a night (Michael Jackson stayed there when he toured Singapore, a cab driver informed me).   If it's out of your price range, it's worth a visit for "tiffin" (tea) or a drink (a cocktail costs S$15, or about US$12). Live music plays upstairs from 9 p.m. to midnight ( 9:30 p.m. on weekends).

I stayed at the Marina Mandarin, whose awe-inspiring atrium is the largest in Southeast Asia.  Framed by the rows of balconies festooned with (silk) ivy are several impressively scaled artworks that transform themselves as you walk around the wedge-shaped space.  Caged birds utter strange but appealing calls from the fifth floor, and five restaurants range from British colonial to various forms of Asian cuisine.   The hotel is connected to two others, the Metro and the Pan Pacific, by a maze of underground malls - six in all. These also lead, by a tortuous route for the uninitiated, to the pristine underground rapid transit system, the MRT, and the Esplanade, a spanking new US $500,000 theater complex that the government hopes will compete with venues in Tokyo. http://www.holidaycity.com/marinamandarin/

 This double-domed hall, as unique and worth seeing as Sydney 's opera house, was designed to resemble a microphone, but locals say its small, shiny, jagged peaks remind them of an insect's eye.  Surrounded by informal, open-air dining opportunities ranging from Thai to American, the hall offers free outdoor concerts on weekends and a host of ticketed indoor acts

If you can tear yourself away from the dining, shopping and entertainment surrounding most of the city's hotels, Little India and Chinatown are well worth visiting, offering a wide range of cuisine and shopping opportunities that, compared to the malls, are relatively de sanitized.  For a farther-afield adventure, try the cable car to Mount Faber and the island of Sentosa, Singapore's most-visited resort area.   Formerly a military fortress, it now features a multi-faceted, to some tacky, array of attractions.  Perhaps the most fun thing about it was getting there - you swoop to it via cable car,  gaining a lovely view of the harbor en route.

To me more interesting than any of the destinations, however, were the people. Those in the hospitality industry,  reeling from the double shocks of SARS and the Bali bombing, were invariably smiling and overwhelmingly accommodating. Foraging for an ice machine,  I was informed that the valet service, which declined a tip, would bring it to me.  The least request brought warm deference from elegantly clad women in floor-length gold dresses and smartly uniformed men.   Taxi drivers were eager to converse, bemoaning the absence of American tourists.

On the street, things were a little different. In the non-touristy heart of Little India, distance and even a slight hostility greeted the blonde American.   Mosques and temples could be visited, but woe to the unwary who forgot to remove footwear, who took unauthorized pictures or entered after regulated hours.  Feedback was immediate and sometimes abrupt.

Knitting together these extremes were the extraordinary governmental controls that make Singapore the premiere tourist attraction that it is.  The pristine is achieved at the expense of community - entire villages were uprooted into government-subsidized high-rises and their former dwellings converted into quaint shops. It is illegal to spit and to be nude in the home; shorts on women are unacceptable - I wore a long skirt,  purchased for the trip, the entire time.  An incredibly complex system of prepaid cards and huge overhead readers charge those who would drive into the city, and prepaid tickets replaced parking meters.  You must be married and 31 to qualify for two-bedroom public housing.   Billboards and television commercials bombard the viewer with public service announcements on intimate subjects.

The result is the feeling of living in a British prep school. All rules are for the inmates' good, and many citizens extol the impressive forethought the government has exhibited, from providing green open spaces to the relentless modernization that brought Singapore through the current economic crisis ahead of Tokyo and Hong Kong .

But I saw little gaiety in the streets; happy hour participants on the cheerful riverfront Boat Quay, a bar hopper's delight, were a subdued lot.   I almost understood the overwhelming urge of American Michael Fay to earn jail and a caning for the pleasure of vandalizing Big Brother.

But the enviable result of these controls is a clean, safe, well-run city, whose fascinating mix of religions (16) and official languages (4) are firmly unified in the quest of wealth. And it makes for a tourist mecca.  You can safely visit a Hindu temple and an Islamic mosque on the same block.   

English    is   a    key     common denominator for a populace that, from neighborhood    to neighborhood, speaks languages with different alphabets.  

There is free internet in the airport,  and, in the true test of a civilized country,  free luggage carts.

The government has thought of everything.  Happy Traveling and Happy Holidays.

Singapore

Weather:  http://www.luxurytravel.com/cityguides/singapore/weather.shtml

Singapore

Attractions: http://www.luxurytravel.com/cityguides/singapore/attractions.html

You may e-mail me at:

EGraham@photoandtravel.com