Spain/Morocco: Initial Observations
It is hard to know what to make of the development trends we see. On the plane from Singapore now, I flew over Dubai and saw the famous development being built on new islands in the ocean. In Singapore there was the juxtaposition of Sentosa Island: a beautiful theme park island complete with universal studios expensive resorts water parks food, beaches and beautiful foliage, with the island of Palau Ubin, a similar Island except that it is undeveloped.
On Palau Ubin you can rent a bicycle for 2 dollars an hour and explore the jungle on dirt paths where monkeys and wild boars walk around. We walked through mangroves and saw a giant lizard beautiful Ibis bird. But of coarse how much money does Palau Ubin make? Very little, and the sparse homes there run on diesel generators for only a few hours every day. For me this is very nice, and even the people on the island talked to me about how upset they were that the government of Singapore has slated the island for development in 2017. But how much money or power do they have in the government? None. At the end of the day we went to Singapore’s amazing zoo, where they have an amazing open air (no cages) tour of many animals on the verge of extinction. On the plane now half the passengers are dressed in white, coming back from a trip to Mecca. Going through security I saw two preppy and very ripped Arabs with western passports bribe the security man so they could bring the 5 bags of alcohol they purchased in the duty free on to the plane. Everyone striving for his or her different version of happiness.