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Singapore is so boring that even the sailors go to the zoo. I went there, too, hoping to see something improper. Unlike Singaporeans, monkeys are almost always willing to do scandalous things in public, but in Singapore I found that even the primates are well behaved.

As their human counterparts, the animals in Singapore's splendid National Zoo are all well fed and remarkably well looked after, and all also seemed pretty happy. For visitors from faster paced places, however, this small tropical-island nation seems the world's most regulated theme park. Everywhere one goes there are helpful Disneyland-like signs to ease one on one’s way.

Inside sparkling Changi Airport, the luggage trolleys have "press down here" on their handles, thus demonstrating how to push them. This is the only airport in the world where I have seen such 'Instructions for the Stupid.'

The stations of Singapore's superb subway all have glass walls running the length of the platforms, which open only when a train arrives. This prevents the unwary from falling in front of a train, but it also renders impossible a subway-suicide. After four days of such unrelenting good will and Singaporean-style, this traveller wanted to shatter the glass with his head and dive in front of a metal monster.

By the third day I actually ached for someone to be rude, but could find no takers. Even along the banks of the sluggish Seletar River, where a series of low-hanging banyan tree branches stretches across the walkway, there is a helpful sign pointing out "Low Branches Ahead."

Singapore has uprooted so much of its colonial history that the government has even placed a plaque in the ground to show tourists where a 1991 time capsule was buried. The plaque says that it will be unearthed in 2005. One can only speculate as to what arcane artifacts it will contain.

The highest point in Singapore is Mount Farber, which local guidebooks describe as offering breath-taking views. At 116 meters, it might be breathtaking, I suppose, if you were from an asthmatic from Iowa. I hate to be cruel, but a 98 year old matron could rocket down Mount Farber in a wheelchair without sustaining serious injury.

I risked altitude sickness, however, in order to catch the cable car across to the resort island of Sentosa, but the cable, being repaired, was out of action, and the famous Merlion was not working either. (What happened to all that Singaporean efficiency we are always hearing about?)

The pride of Singapore's tourist industry is lush and beautiful Sentosa. Sentosa is an old Malay word meaning "island of unsurpassed monotony" (sorry I meant "tranquility.") In fact the island was the top television news item when it hosted its seven millionth visitor: a startled Malay grandmother who appeared beneath the blinding TV lights like a deer trapped in a car's headlights.

Singaporeans must be doing something right, however, because their tourist arrival numbers are nearly as high as Hong Kong's; Sentosa alone sees three times more visitors annually the whole of the Philippines. There are two luxury resort hotels on Sentosa including the lovely beachside Shangri-La, plus several attractions that can be reached by a mini elevated monorail linking the various sites.

One highlight is the Rare Stone Museum, which contains over 8,000 rare stones. Over the years, I have visited some of the world's most fascinating museums and I feel safe in saying that this was not one of them. For stone lovers it must surely be a kind of Louvre of lapidaries, but it was not the sort of thing that would catapult me out of bed while on holiday.

There was also a maritime museum which, among other things, contains a riveting collection of rowing boats.

Perhaps the strangest of all was the Asian Village, a kind of theme park within a theme park within a theme park. The day I visited, the public address system played such traditional Asian folk music as the American teen touch number "See you in September" and Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night."

One thing not mentioned in the brochure for Sentosa is that a political prisoner, Chia Thya Poh, lived in a guardhouse near Stop No.6 on the monorail line for many years. I tried to find out if Chia still lived on the island after finally being released after more than 20 years, but no one seemed to know. The last I heard was that he was confined to Sentosa from 9pm until 6am; rather like me, then, but without the room service.

Another unusual aspect of Sentosa is that both hotel guests and locals need a pass to enter the island. Guests are reminded to carry their passes when leaving for the city just across the bridge, but this system is preferable to that of the old Soviet Union, where brain-dead doormen made life difficult for guests by trying to block them from re-entering the own hotel.

To me, Singapore's preoccupation with security is a kind of self-flattering paranoia, a point of pride that makes it feel important. In the Lion City, I noticed that the mail boxes divide the postal world into just two categories: "Singapore" and "Other Countries."

In its headlong rush towards complete modernization, Singapore's government bulldozed most of its past in the 1970s and 1980s, and by the time it realized the mistake, it was almost too late, but not quite. Two of the city's most famous old hotels, Raffles and the Goodwood Park, were gutted and renovated, but at least they still exist.

After its multi-million dollar reinvention, the 118 year old Raffles is as shiny and antiseptic as a freshly minted coin. In fact, I was not entirely sure that the paint was dry in the Writer's Bar, where the bartender told me he serves 800 'Singapore Slings' a day at more than US$10 each. I wanted to order an Amaretto on ice, but feared I might be arrested by the Tourist Police.

The new Raffles has all the atmosphere of a paper cup, and its collection of rooms appears to exist only as a mid-piece for a circle of brand name boutiques. The hotel's shopping complex, which is designed to appear as if it were part of the original hotel, has about 70 shops - twice the number of hotel rooms.

Like Raffles, the Goodwood Park Hotel, which opened in 1900 as the Teutonia Club, is its charming old self on the outside, but the original interior has gone forever.

The result, upon entering, is rather like seeing a beloved old aunt peering from a window. From the outside, she looks like her crinkly old self, but when you enter her house and see her close up, she has a new plastic body, a la Jane Fonda. Nothing wrong with a necessary re-vamp, I guess, but the end result of this overkill is a kind of high class crass, where the tyranny of the new has sadly wiped away the wonderful ambiance of the old. Even in Singapore's St. Andrew's Cathedral [1856] the old brass plaques honouring various doomed British garrisons in the East have been replaced, thus losing all the patina of age. They look as though they were chrome-plated yesterday afternoon.

I am sure Singapore is a wonderful place in which to live. It is super-clean, green, efficient, virtually crime-free and reasonably priced. It is also a great place to relax and shop. For more action happy travelers, I would strongly suggest that they drink plenty of coffee. It might be the only way to stay conscious during the day.

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