Scotland vs Singapore: compare & contrast

Hello everyone! When I am visiting family up in Scotland I really enjoy walking the dogs - my sister in law has two lovely dogs and they need a lot of exercise, so we usually drive out somewhere beautiful and let the dogs run through the hills. I get to exercise with he dogs whilst seeing some of the most stunning Scottish countryside - from pristine hills with pine forests to rugged cliffs facing the Irish sea. I have done a couple of videos from this trip and I did realize that the simple act of walking one's dogs does tell you a lot about the lifestyle Scottish people have compared to Singaporeans. My sister-in-law asked me earlier if Singaporeans were a nation of dog lovers and I had to answer, no not really - my explanation to her was quite revealing.

Hello from Dumfries & Galloway, a very rural part of Scotland

1. Dogs need space - a luxury Singaporeans don't have 

In Singapore, about 80% of Singaporeans live in HDB flats and most of them are unsuitable for bigger dogs. Cats perhaps, but dogs are not suitable for small flats like that. Currently, the HDB allows only one dog of an approved small breed to be kept in HDB flats. Is this any surprise? The population of Scotland is 5.3 million whilst that of Singapore is 5.5 million already - there are more people in Singapore than Scotland, despite Scotland being vastly bigger. This means much cheaper property prices in Scotland - people have big houses and you can easily get a house with a large garden for under £50,000 in rural areas. If you could push the boat out to £350,000 (the price for a nice flat in Punggol), you could get a property with a few acres of land. Never mind having a few large dogs, you can even keep a horse or two with that much land. By that token, less than 20% of Singaporeans who do not live in HDB flats are allowed large dogs (mind you, many who live in private condos are not allowed either), so having a large dog is well and truly a luxury in Singapore whilst it is fairly common in Scotland. Well, to be fair, if you want a nice property in Glasgow or Edinburgh, then it would get quite expensive in the city centre - but what many Scottish people do is simply live outside the city centre (in a fairly big house, of course) and spend a bit more time commuting to work in the city. Well I'm afraid you Singaporeans really don't have that luxury.

2. If you wanna go to these beautiful countryside places, well you need a car

Oh practically everyone in Scotland has a car - the moment you get old enough to get a license at 17, you take driving lessons, so even teenagers have cars and why not? Public transport is limited in rural areas and cars are so ridiculously cheap, you can get a second hand car for a few hundred pounds and petrol is pretty cheap. So people will think nothing about jumping in the car and driving say 20 or 30 km to somewhere picturesque just to walk their dogs. Cars in Singapore are notoriously expensive to own (I obtained the figure of S$176,774 from this website) and most Singaporeans choose instead to use public transport - that means trying to take your dogs on the MRT or bus to a nice park in another part of Singapore is going to be rather difficult to say the least, given how crowded it can get.

3. Even if you are rich and had a big house and a car, you won't have the time

It is recommended that you walk your dog at least once a day, most people in Scotland will walk their dogs a few times a day with one walk being quite long, whilst the others being relatively short ones. This is a time consuming exercise that dog owners need to do on a daily basis without fail - us humans can get lazy and decide, oh I don't feel so well, I feel really tired, I won't go to the gym today but the dogs need exercise and the walks are good for their well being. Well Singaporeans work much longer hours than Scottish people - that means that Singaporeans would probably not have the time to walk their dogs and would favour other pets like cat or fish which are less time consuming. When you spend that much time at work, you need whatever time left to attend to your more basic needs: like eating or sleeping.

4. And even if you did have the time...

The weather in Singapore this year has been absolutely dreadful. Would you want to be walking around Bishan Park with your dog when the PSI is in the unhealthy range? You would certainly not, even if you didn't care about your health, you should think about the health of your dog when the air quality is that bad because of the haze.  In Scotland, there population density is so low that there is plenty of pristine countryside, a long way from any industry or major cities - the air I breathed on these long walks with the dogs have been absolutely, delightfully fresh and clean. Now that is one thing no amount of money can buy you in Singapore - and don't get me started on the uncomfortably hot temperatures in Singapore. Within a few minutes of walking your dog, you are pining the nearest air-con environment.

5. So what aspects of life in Singapore are better than Scotland? 

I would say that the one thing that bothers me about Scotland is the food - gosh, it is bland and boring. Ever wonder why there are hardly any Scottish-theme restaurants around the world? Quite simple: the food here sucks. I was able to get some quality sushi when I was up in Glasgow recently, but otherwise good grief, I am currently in a small town in Scotland and there is one Indian and Chinese restaurant here. And you may think - oh okay, there is Asian food here, but no - it is expensive and not good at all because they have no competition at all and they sell far less than a restaurant in say Glasgow city centre, hence they need to charge more. So yeah, food in Singapore is far cheaper and tastier - but once you've satisfied your stomachs, other aspects of life in Singapore pale in comparison to Scotland.

I do believe that giving up chicken rice, mee siam, fried hokkien mee, char kway teow, yong tauhoo, rojak, ice kachang and laksa is a small price to pay for a better quality of life, especially if you have children. I do think that Scottish education is a double edged sword though, given the size of the country, children often simply go to the nearest school (which can be 50 km or more away). In fact, children can commute over 100 km a day just to go to school and back in rural areas and it may or may not be a particularly good school, but that's just the nearest school to where you live. So okay, in Singapore, we often complain about the immense amount of pressure we put on our students, but at least you have a very wide range of schools to choose from within Singapore. In rural Scotland, there is virtually no choice, short of sending your children to boarding school (which can be expensive).

So there you go, that's a few aspects of life in Scotland which makes it radically different from Singapore. so over to you: would you like to live in rural Scotland? Do you think you would enjoy living in rural Scotland? Would you be able to adapt to a new environment like this? Do let me know your thoughts please, many thanks for reading.