South East Asia is an interesting region, bounded by the same time zone and clustered in form of 15,000 islands, it has been noticed with any commercial interest only in last decade. Earlier it was merely a cultural, beach, and shopping holiday destination.
Singapore interestingly has close ties with all 4 cultural sub-entities of ASEAN nations.
Islamaosphere
Hispanasphere
Sinosphere
Indosphere
Malaysia has its own binding with Singapore and hence in its people, in its ‘lah’ and ‘Teh C’ and ‘Nasi Lemak’, a part of Malaysia lives in Singapore all the time.
Indonesia is not further than Malaysia from Singapore and is related not only in terms of its biggest trade partner but also root wise all Indonesian, Malaysian and singaporean migrated from Farmosa island and rest is history, so there’s an inextricable root connection amongst all these 3 nations, right from the known beginning.
Which two country accept the currency of the other nation at the par? Well Brunei and Singapore do respect the currency of each other and Brunei dollar is pegged to Singapore dollar. This represents the level of trust and co-operation the nation have.
This was an equation between Singapore and Islamospheric nations ( the 3 nations in south east asia where culture is highly influenced by Islam).
Now let’s relate Singapore with the Hispanospheric country which is highly influenced by culture of Spain.
Singapore and Philippines are culturally twin bros, having individual coloniol history, they both respect their own culture by maintaining thier traditions while adopting the colonial traits as well. People of both nations are great shoppers, which is evident in the form of ubiquitous malls they’ve and they like to explore outside their own nation, without giving up the trait of being foodie.
Before diving into Indospheric nations let me quickly cover the Sinosphere of south east Asia which is primarily two countries Singapore and Vietnam. Years of Chinese influence on these nations and majority of Chinese population obviously creates the unbreakable link between two but otherwise also they’re complementary nations in terms of resources present in Vietnam can be effectively utilized by investors in Singapore, and probably that’s why amongst all ASEAN nations Singapore is the highest investor in Vietnam.
Moving on to relate unique ties of Singapore with the Indospheric nations i.e. Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos & Thailand. All of these nations other than being heavily culturally invested in each other do also have long ties and faith driven relationship.
Cambodia is one of the first nations to recognise Singapore’s identity and they signed a bilateral contract on 10th of Aug 1965, just a day after later got separated from Malaysia.
Laos is the first country from which Singapore is making renewable energy imports.
The first visit of the Thailand monarchy to a foreign country was Singapore back in 1871 and these two market’s co-ordination was so well co-ordinated that the Singapore and Thailand did launched in April 21 World’s First Linkage of Real-time Payment Systems, Pay Now and Prompt Pay.
Myanmar: In addition to being home to 200,000 Myanmar nationals Singapore also is the highest foreign investor in the market and hence coup and story of expectations of Myanmar nationals that Singapore doing something has been so widely pictured on google.
As Atal Bihari Vajpayee the late Indian Prime Minister once said, “We can change history but not geography. We can change our friends but not our neighbors”, Singapore is on to have close ties with all its neighbours in some way or other. It’s no wonder to see that how it has established itself with such connects as unofficial regional economic capital of the region.
