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01-11-2003 04:02 SG
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"Juha Saarinen, a fellow journalist who went on the same IDF trip this year, felt otherwise. Making money is what matters in both Taipei and Singapore, he said, but Taipei reminded him more of Kuala Lumpur than Singapore - not as tidy and scrubbed clean, yet perhaps a bit more free than the latter. Furthermore, he added, Singapore doesn't have half as many scooters."
The caveat here is that I've not been to KL nor Sinkers for many years so my observation could be completely off. Mind you, while I can imagine KL getting spruced up, I don't think Singapore would ever let itself go, unless something very dramatic happened.
As I came from an antipodean winter and expected temperatures in the low twenties centigrade, Taipei was a bit of a shock at first. I wasn't dressed for 35C+ and Singapore-style humidity. Thank goodness cooler weather set in later on.
True about the scooters though, and funny how the street crossings have been designed to accommodate riders. For instance, on many of the larger crossings there is a box painted on the road, in front of the pedestrian crossing and the cars. Looks like scooterists who want to make a turning can go into those boxes, instead of waiting at the lights. Don't quite see the advantage of the boxes myself, but I'm sure there is one.
The bubble-tea craze has hit Auckland too. Went and had a look in my favourite food court, and the kopi tiam had heaps of different variants. Had the simple one, with just black tea and "pearls", which was nice albeit a bit sweet.
Downtown Auckland is rapidly becoming an amalgam of HK, Taipei, Singapore, Seoul and Japanese, in fact. That means good food 24-7, but also some friction between the old locals and the new ones, as the latter haven't taken the step towards integration that the former ones think they should have, ie. learning English. Mind you, the Kiwi accent can be hard to understand for anyone used to standard English, or American...
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