Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Singapore is not that bad. If you stay in the touristy areas, yeah, everything is corporate and efficient seeming. You can go from the airport to your hotel without ever going outside. If you go to where people that live in Singapore go, though, it's just like any other city. Okay, not as cool as Manhattan or Tokyo or Hong Kong or London, but still pretty normal.

As for the death penalty, yeah, they have it. Singapore talks tough but it does not feel like a police state there. When I come home to the US, I am asked 20 questions by the immigration agents. I live here, just let me in. In Singapore, they have "death to drug traffickers" written everywhere, but the immigration agents did not ask me a single question. I don't even recall the usual customs line (red lane / green lane). If you change planes in Singapore, you don't even go through security. You are released into the secure area and you just walk to the gate where your other flight leaves. If you want to traffic drugs, they may have the death penalty, but they don't really care. (They say they care, and they make an example out of one in a million people, but they don't really care. Interestingly, everything is like this in Singapore.)

Anyway, on paper, Singapore is terrible. In real life... it's not too different from any other country.

(The US seems upset about Singapore's death penalty, but we murder a lot more criminals than they do...)

Keep in mind the US has more people than Singapore, so the number will obviously be higher for the US. But if we were to enforce drug laws in the US like Singapore, you would see a lot more death sentences. And floggings, if we had that in the States. But yes, I do see it hypocritical when we criticize Singapore. Except it's a bit of a straw man when the US has 300 million (compared to Singapore's 4 million), and every state having their own opinion on how to apply it, if at all.

Singapore admittedly isn't that bad. It is one of the most efficient economies in the world, but freedom of speech is very controlled, and libel laws come with criminal consequences. If you stay out of hot topic areas, you won't run into trouble, but you will if you have thE limelight over you on an unpopular topic.

Don't forget to remember the simple guideline that epitomizes Singapore's reaction to lawbreaking on the back of the disembarkation card on the plane in bold, all-caps red letters: "Welcome to Singapore. Death to drug traffickers under Singapore law." [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SingaporeEmbarkationCard.p... Taiwan used to have a similar message, but has been rarely enforced.

When I visited Hungary in 1988, I was handed a photocopied paper at the border that stated that "Hungary has no drugs, prostitutes, gangs", and so on...good times.

That night we were watching a dubbed version of "9 to 5" on TV, and my mother's cousin asked me if I smoked dope - because all North Americans do, no doubt. :)

Challenge the Lee dictatorship and comeback and tell us how little they care.

Yes they do care and yes they will execute you https://duckduckgo.com/?q=singapore+execute+australian even if you are not a king pin, just some dumb kid.

Also don't get stuck there with out health cover/travel insurance or you will regret it, its not malaysia/thailand.

I can't say much about death punishment but..

"He said he was carrying them to Australia for a Sydney syndicate to help his brother Khoa, a former heroin addict, pay A$30,000 ($31,460) in debts."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...

See how drugs forces people to do "dumb" things?

no i dont really see how drugs are responsible, it was government ruled by a dictator that did/does/will do the killing.

anyway maybe you will find this interesting http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2010/11/02/3052373...

peace

Could you please elaborate on the health cover/travel insurance thing?

Their doctors don't work for free. If you seriously injure yourself in Singapore, you will have to pay money to have yourself fixed up.

This is confusing to people not from the US, apparently.

Do you mean that you have to pay for emergency medical services like the ones needed when you are hit by a car or you have appendicitis?

mate was fly back to aussie from india and had a stopover in singapore.

malaria hit him and he ended up in hospital, ended up costing him many thousand of dollars.

yes paying for things like that are foreign to us but the point is if he was stopping over in kuala lumpur or bangkok then he would have paid much less for basically the same high quality of treatment.

> (The US seems upset about Singapore's death penalty, but we murder a lot more criminals than they do...)

We may execute more people, but there's nothing like the anecdotes from Singapore to make you feel like you're just one unlucky afternoon from a death sentence. When you're only this far away from being executed at all times, no matter how squeaky clean you live your life it's easy to get a little nervous.

I'm personally not necessarily against the death sentence, but I definitely appreciate that it is difficult to apply here in the US.

If you only feel like "an unlucky afternoon can result in a death sentence", it is ok. But it is really far from the truth. Oh.. unless your daily life include smuggling drugs, kidnapping or something hideous.

I don't fear for my life everyday when I go to work. I am more concerned that I am late.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com