Expat Singapore Cultural Differences
Before you leave your home for Singapore, you need to know about Singapore Customs Laws and procedures for smooth immigration clearing. You can go to the Singapore Customs website http://www.customs.gov.sg for more information. If you are keen to transfer your beloved pets to Singapore as well, please refer to Singapore’s Food & Veterinary (AVA) website http://www.ava.gov.sg.
Singapore is friendly with most countries internationally, so there are a number of foreign embassies and consulates established in Singapore. You may wish to find out whether your country has an embassy or consulate in Singapore, and its location and contact information before you leave home. You may refer to the list of diplomatic missions in Singapore, to find out whether your country has a formal presence in Singapore. It is always advantageous to know where you could turn to for help in a foreign place. It is advisable to read up on Singapore, especially on the culture before you arrive airport to avoid undue culture shock when you reach your destination, especially when you have not come into much contact with Asians previously. Singapore’s tax may be different from your home country.
If you have school going children, you may wish to find out more about the types of school available for your children, and if possible secure a place for them before you leave home. Most expat enrolled their children into an international school to avoid unnecessary stress for their children as local government school is competitive. Check online for a list of international schools available in Singapore; however international school is expensive. If you don’t have that kind of budget, you may wish to consider government school which is highly regarded. All children attending government school have to learn 2 languages, i.e. English and Mandarin/Malay/Tamil. However, if you don’t have a family member with any of those languages as mother tongue, you can apply for exemption from the second language. You may wish to access the Ministry of Education website for more information on local education. There is also a write up on Singapore local education on Wikipedia website. If you are considering other types of private education for your children, this is information online pertaining to private schooling.
As Singapore has a large international community and its local population migrated from East Asia, South Asia and Malaysia hundreds of years ago, there are many different types of food available in Singapore. Most local food originated from China and India, and of course there were foods that the natives were already eating before the arrival of the immigrants. There is a group of Chinese, called the Peranakan, that have been in this region since the late 15th century and their food (called Nonya food) is a marriage between Chinese and Malay cooking, and they used spices found in Southeast Asia. If local food is not to your taste, there are many different types of restaurants in Singapore selling specialties. The most common ones include American, Mexican, Mediterranean, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian.
Read more details about Moving to Singapore and Fishing Singapore.
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