Today is Wednesday and we don't meet our travel group until midday Friday. So we have a few days to ourselves, so what to do. Well our neighbours back in Sydney just had a short holiday in Singapore and they recommended the Singapore National Museum, so that was the excursion for the day. As it turned out the museum is within an easy walk of our hotel and on the otherside of a hill that is the sight of Fort Canning and Fort Canning Reservoir

I must say I found the museum interesting and somewhat inspiring. Because of my age I have a vague recollection of the formation of the country of Malaysia in the late 1950s early 1960s and the separation of Singapore from Malaysia in 1965. But the displays in the museum filled in some of the details for me and brought home just what a big (courageous ?) decision that was. As it turns out Friday is the 59th anniversary of that momentous decision and in anticipation of that day there are national flags everywhere. The flag consists of a red crescent and 5 red starts. The crescent represents "a young nation" and the stars represent nation's ideals of "democracy, peace, progress, justice and equality".

I recently saw a Bloomberg article noting that Singapore in now the wealthiest nation in Asia; and certainly that seems possible as one walks around the city and notes the cleanliness, the expensive cars, and the iconic buildings. I guess one would have to say Lee Kuan Yew and his colleagues who made that fateful decision, and oversaw the growth of the country, have so far been successful.