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Singapore
Let's explore one of the world's most fascinating countries — packed with surprises, stories, and pen pal potential.
The Basics
3 Things That Will Blow Your Mind
Genuinely. You'll want to tell someone immediately.
Singapore is a city, a country, and an island all at the same time
Most countries have many cities but Singapore is a single city that is also the entire country, sitting on one main island plus about 60 smaller ones. You can drive from the northernmost point to the southernmost point in under an hour. It is one of only three city-states in the world, the others being Monaco and Vatican City.
Singapore has no natural fresh water at all and has to make its own
There are no rivers, no lakes suitable for drinking, and almost no groundwater. Every drop of fresh water comes from collecting rainwater, importing it from Malaysia through pipelines, turning seawater into fresh water through desalination, or a process called NEWater which purifies used water through membranes so fine that not even bacteria can pass through them. About 40% of Singapore's water supply now comes from this last process.
Singapore went from one of the poorest countries in Asia to one of the richest in about 30 years
When Singapore became an independent country in 1965 it had no natural resources, no land to grow food on, no oil, and no fresh water. The first prime minister said he cried because he thought the country could not survive. Today Singapore has one of the highest average incomes in the world. Economists still study how it happened and disagree about the answer.
Famous For
Changi Airport
Consistently voted the world's best airport year after year, Changi has a butterfly garden, a rooftop swimming pool, a cinema, a four-storey slide, a 40-metre indoor waterfall called the Rain Vortex, hundreds of restaurants, and free city tours for passengers with long layovers. Some people book connecting flights through Singapore specifically to spend a few hours in the airport.
Hawker Centres
Open-air food markets where dozens of stalls each specialise in one dish, some of which have been made by the same family using the same recipe for 40 years. Singapore's hawker culture is recognised by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage and it is possible to eat extraordinarily well for very little money.
Gardens by the Bay
A vast futuristic park containing 18 enormous Supertrees up to 50 metres tall that collect rainwater, generate solar power, and are covered in living plants. At night they light up and play music. Two enormous glass domes next to them contain plants from Mediterranean and tropical mountain climates that could not survive Singapore's heat outside.
A City Built to Work
Singapore is designed and run with a level of intention that visitors find either deeply impressive or slightly unsettling. The streets are clean, the trains run on time, the parks are immaculate, and chewing gum was banned for many years because people stuck it in train doors. It is one of the safest and most liveable cities on Earth.
Did You Know?
Singapore's NEWater is so thoroughly purified that it meets World Health Organisation standards for drinking water and is cleaner than most bottled water sold in shops. Singapore serves NEWater in bottles at official state events and gives it to visiting heads of government as a gift because the country is genuinely proud of solving a water problem that should have been impossible to solve.
Pen Pal Connection
A child in Singapore might write to you about eating at a hawker centre where the same family has been cooking the same chicken rice recipe for decades and it now has a Michelin star, the Supertrees in Gardens by the Bay that glow and play music at night, the slightly extraordinary fact that the tap water was recently something else entirely, what it means to live in a country where the airport has a waterfall inside it, or the experience of going to school in English and coming home and switching to Mandarin or Malay or Tamil depending on who is in the room.