A glint of light washed down from the towering mirrored high-rise and touched the dancing tigers on the crumbling stone fa?ade of the shadowed temple.

A wealth of multi-cultural diversity hides behind the anonymous exterior of Singapore. Organization and cleanliness rule the city. Every detail of life is pre-planned, like the spreading out of people beginning each day. Shift workers use local transportation at 7:00, school children at 7:30 and service workers at 9:30 and shop owners at 10:00.

Only one in nine people own a car as the permit just to buy a car is $50,000.00 US. The permit expires in ten years. Many of the downtown streets are toll roads. Above the street as you enter is a neon sign with the automatic charges during certain time periods. One sign said taxi-$1.50, motorcycle-$.25 for just driving a couple of blocks on that street.

Even the drinking is controlled from 10:30pm to 7:00am unless you are inside a pub. There was a huge riot long ago; it was enhanced by excessive drinking so this law came into being. Much of downtown is new buildings on reclaimed land meaning that area used to be the sea. Soil and sand were brought in from Indonesia to fill in and create more land area. The government has rules about new construction; all buildings have to give back 100% of the space they occupy replacing it with green space. I didn?t understand why so many buildings had thousands of live vines growing from balconies and rooftop jungles complete with tall mature palm trees.

I think Singapore won the race with Dubai for my vote with its healthy green idea and its equally creative architecture, even without claiming to have the tallest building in the world.