09-08 Singapore and Thailand 1983

It was four days in Bangkok and then onto a week in Singapore for the 10th International Small Business Congress.
And my first surprise after settling in at our five-star hotel in Bangkok was seeing how much of their economy was linked to their rivers and canals.
Naturally I asked where these people were going with their boats laden with food and they said it was to the closest floating market. So off we went to one by boat. Couldn't believe all the children swimming in what looked like filthy water.
We visited the Canadian Embassy, and they told us to go to Johny’s Gems to buy jewellery. They sent one of their staff with us. What fun that was, with beer and food and beautiful women waiting on us. They had an embassy price list that they would bring out only if someone from the embassy was with us.
Then we saw this huge building without a sign of any kind that was four floors of parking and four floors of what looked like hotel rooms. It was a serious house of prostitution that drew a planeload of sex tourists from Japan each weekend.
We loved the food and of course the entertainment that was provided. It is a society with a fantastic culture.
Singapore was an education. It is a city-state that broke away from Malaysia with a majority Chinese population but a strong representation of Malays and Indians. We loved walking around Chinatown.
The first big surprise was meeting a Kevin Bulloch from Australia at the Congress and discovering we were distant cousins. Apparently back in the mid-1800s a Bulloch brother from Scotland went to Australia, another brother to Atlanta Georgia and a third to Northern Ireland. The Georgia branch married into the Roosevelt family.
We all then headed over to the famous Raffles Hotel one evening to have one of their famous Singapore Slings. I chatted with a business leader from Singapore who said that only the brightest 5% can get into a Singapore University. Both of his children were attending the University of British Columbia.
One of my great honours was being invited to speak to a group of 100 engineering students at the famous National University of Singapore, which has a world ranking.
I was struck at the closing banquet of the conference how a multi-cultural society like Singapore builds an economy with such harmony. During the entertainment portion of the evening, I was sitting next to one of my dear friends from Taiwan John Liu. He was a global traveller and told me the best Chinese chefs in the world are in Singapore.