Disneyland with the Death Penalty

What can I say but to agree with Gibson.

When I first went to Singapore quite some decades ago it was a vibrant Asian city with old world Asian charm. There were charming streets with people galore, dozens of small businesses that seemed as if they'd been there for a hundred years or more, lovely smells of Asian cooking, trishaws moving about - and I mustn't forget to mention the deep open street drains that one quickly learned to jump over.

Singapore was a charming place.

On my last visit several decades later I found Singapore much as Gibson describes it - a sterile boring dirt-free 'Disneyland' that no longer held any charm for me.

Changi airport is quite an enginering feat and it's great if one's only interest is changing planes but it too could have been built in any other part of the world and wouldn't look out of place in just about any other modern city. And Gibson's right, it's sterile and clean but totally lacking in any Asian charm.

I wonder what those poor wretches who were locked up in the infamous Changi Gaol under terrible circumstances by the Japanese in WWII would think if they could see and had time to contemplate that airport area today.

I'd bet it'd much more than just that they were glad to be free.

I'd put odds on that not all of their comments would be complementary.