A trip to both Singapore and Thailand is remarkable for me to totally understand the culture highlighted with traditional customs, religious practices, open markets, street food and hundreds of tropical fruits that give a vivid color to the palette of streets and markets in these countries. 

 

In Singapore, it's nice to see how the culture of Peranakan, Malaysian, Chinese and Indian people is being preserved while in Thailand, I enjoy the way Thais maintain superstitious beliefs alongside religious rituals passed from old generations. Singapore offers a very sterilized world of artificial and human-made things with lots of written rules but still manages to display its beauties, however, Thailand shows its colors in a much more chaotic and non-ordinary way. So, passing from one country to another is kind of a culture shock for me making me realize this is an inevitable perk of traveling around Southeast Asia. 

 

Embracing globalization all around the world, everywhere and everything feels almost identical, but in these two countries, I see the distinct cultural aspects being still in the process of defining who they are and what they've inherited helps them use these aspects as a tool for tourism as well.