DON’T: WORRY

Singapore is super easy to get around. Cabs are clean and cheap and convenient. Thirteen-seat mini-buses go for about $75 per journey. Our group of 10 lined up the driver from our first trip to be our driver the entire time. He brought beers with him. He smiled a lot. Cracked gags. He was a dead ringer for Kiradech Aphibarnrat. Even when road works meant his GPS betrayed us, we weren’t lost for long. Our man the ‘Barn Rat’ got us to the church on time every time.

Our group was in Singapore the weekend Donald Trump was meeting Kim Jong Un. We played golf on the very island, Sentosa, where they were to meet. Yet apart from the odd military helicopter, a flotilla of police boats on the water, and the occasional large build-up of cops in the town, Singapore was Singapore – one of the safest places on earth. Some people call it “boring”. But very little bad happens, which is a good thing.

Singapore has its issues that might itch a humanitarian’s pants. Wealth is generated on the back of low-paid labour from the sub-continent and the Philippines. Its one-party government brooks little dissent. There’s one major newspaper that toes the party line.

Yet everything works. And everyone’s happy, or looks like they’re happy. They don’t look unhappy. You can Google up yarns about a “dark underbelly”, but you can do that for any place. Mostly Singapore feels like civilisation run by a benign, well-meaning, friendly dictator.

Bastard could lower the green fees, however.