I'm leaving Switzerland next Thursday and quite happy to be going to Taiwan for a month and then on to Singapore.

I feel like I"m about to get out of prison. Then again I feel like that going to Milano too.

Its a win / win situation for all concerned I suspect

Best of luck to you.

1) Things I am looking forward to.

It feels quite liberating to be returning to civilization. To convenient cities with amenities, real cities, with dense populations, store hours that are convenience for CUSTOMERS, night markets, a lot of good and cheap restaurants with food from all over the world, some place where people ACTUALLY SPEAK THE OFFICIAL NATIONAL LANGUAGE (Taiwan they speak Mandarin and I speak that far better than High German and in Singapore everyone speaks English although Singlish (dialect) is widely used I know...),places with good weather (don't need a winter coat, boats, etc and summer last more than 2 months), friendly people (never thought Chinese were friendly before, until I moved here, now I have an appreciation, I made more friends in Taiwan/Mainland China in 3 months then I made in Switzerland in 6, not counting fellow expats, almost all my friends in Switzerland are expats, in China they were mostly locals...)

2) Things I will miss

Very high salary/disposable income (but then again there is nothing really to buy as oppositions are so limited...but you can save)

cleanliness (but often it can be so sterile it seems that no one "lives" there...a bit of chaos is actually appreciated by me, I like the graffiti in Milan, especially on the mail boxes...yeah I know Singapore is as bad or worse than Switzerland in this regard...but on a scale of 1-10 this is not very important to me lol)

efficiency of the government (Singapore is also efficient, but I doubt as much as Switzerland).

That's about it, everything else I can get in Singapore, including people having no clue where they are going, walking into me all the time...

Enjoy Asia, again.

So youre not coming back? I just got back from a 6 week trip to Asia and I have to say Im depressed now that I am back here. You dont realize just how unhappy and cold the Swiss are until you go to Asia or North America for a month and then return.

Have fun!

Dear Mr Caps, actually in Taiwan there are significant numbers of people who cannot speak Mandarin fluently and some who cannot speak it at all.

That's all of the trolling I'm interested in responding to at the moment, except to note that both Taiwan and Singapore have their own expat forums too.

Zuger:

Yeah Switzerland doesn't have this:

LOL in Switzerland at this time (in any city) everything would be closed. In Taiwan they have this every single day!!

I can't wait...last night market I went to was in Vietnam 2 years ago, in Saigon...loved it, just sitting out.

To each his own...people like what they like...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9KNuaKOFy4&

EVEN ON SUNDAY. Oh and I can go to 7/11 24 hours a day! Wash my underwear whenever the hell a washer is available!!! Shocking...crazy... OMG...the small things...

Yes, especially in the South, but in Taipei (capital)...no that is not my experience, in fact most people under 50 can't speak Taiwanese in Taipei at all...due to the fact their families never spoke it (waishengren) or the former KMT government did a good job stamping out dialect as "backward and bad Chinese" for decades. Either way, it is good from a foreign perspective.

Taipei Mandarin is usually easier to understand than what is spoken in Beijing for example, less yelling, no "er" sounds, and also slower.

Yup, I saw a special on the discovery channel while I was in Cambodia about Taiwanese culture etc. Very interesting. They have a segment this month committed to Taiwanese history.

I am amazed at the price differences for everything though. We bought model airplanes for my kids and nephews. They cost $0.90......!!!! Thats it. I went to the model shop in Switzerland yesterday to get glue for these. They happened to have one of the exact same models we had bought in Bangkok. They were selling it for CHF27. This is madness. And its not the only example.

BUT, its so high quality!!

For those who like outdoors...oh other nations do that too. Not much snow though...but I've never liked skying.



Oh and Singapore has shopping...




You can have all that and still wash your underwear at midnight and buy large varieties of food.

Night markets




People actually working past 7PM to provide a service. 7 days a week.

Life...!!



I'm so excited I"m about to crap my pants.

Well you haven't been a happy bunny here have you? So good luck with Singapore.

I lived in Malaysia 3 years and liked it, but after 10 weeks in Singapore I was sooooo glad to get back here!

bye








too short

Dude, enjoy your trip back to civilization..send us back some opening hours and some choices.

I have to admit, Singapore can be a bit boring depending on your life-style. But Borneo, Lombok, Bali, KL, Malecca, Phuket, Langkawi, Bangkok etc are all at your finger tips.

But certainly the pace of Asia is much faster than Europe. More colorful, warm, and outwardly creative....

Interesting. Why could you not wait to get back?

I know S'pore is small, but Malaysia is 30 minutes away from the city center and Indonesia a boat or plane away...Thailand 2 hours away...

To be honest I don't need a lot, I just need convenience. That's what I miss most about home, how convenient everything is and the variety. I also love exotic food, which was quite easy to find in Washington DC (not everywhere in America I know...here it is so boring as far as places to eat and you often pay a lot of money for bad service and semi-good food)...I like to be flexible with my schedule and not have to plan everything in my personal life, be spontaneous. I plan enough at work.

Places like Singapore have a lot of rules, as much or more than Switzerland. Taiwan (and China and Japan) all have "cultural norms" but the big difference between them and Switzerland is that they know and accept foreigners live differently. They do not think the way they live is perfect for everyone on earth.

I have lived in Shanghai, China, Tokyo, Japan, and several places in America. In Switzerland I have lived in St. Gallen and Zug. Guess which places I had to change my life style the most?

St. Gallen and Zug. Why? Because the rules here directly affect my life in a way I find negative and invasive.

If the average Japanese does not want to do laundry on Sunday they won't. Probably no Japanese will, but they typically don't give a crap if a foreigner is doing laundry. They won't make rules with the apartment to prevent me from doing that, report me to the landlord for doing that, etc. Some of this is actually ethnocentrism or racism, because they see foreigners as "different" and in a way "the foreigner can never be us, so let him be a foreigner" but it fits my life very well.

by that logic, most (if not all) of europe is only 2 hours away from switzerland

Yep, creative is true. Often the Western stereotype is Asians are not very creative, B.S. to that.

Little Hong Kong has probably produced more internationally critically acclaimed movies (movies in their dialect, not even in Standard Chinese) than Switzerland has ever created (and Switzerland has 4 languages to choose from).

Think about that for a minute. Crowded, poorer, little Hong Kong contributes more to international art and culture than Switzerland which is in the center of Europe.

True, but there is more to do in Singapore than Switzerland to start. If you get bored, both nations off easy outlets, but I think Singapore has more convenience and more things to do at any given time of the day 7 days a week to start with.