Singapore Architectural Wonders

I am writing this newsletter in my hotel room on the 39th. floor of the spectacular, brand new Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore.
It is by far the most beautiful hotel I have ever stayed in my 50 years of traveling and thousands of hotel stays.
The Marina Bay Sands is an integrated resort fronting Marina Bay in Singapore. Developed by Las Vegas Sands, it is billed as the world's most expensive standalone casino property at S$8 billion, including cost of the prime land.
With the casino complete, the resort features a 2,560-room hotel, a 120,000 sq.mtr. convention-exhibition centre, The Shoppers mall, an Art & Science museum, two Sands Theatres, six "celebrity chef" restaurants, two floating pavilions, a casino with 500 tables and 1,600 slot machines.
The complex is topped by a 340m-long SkyPark with a capacity of 3,900 people and a 150m infinity swimming pool, set on top of the world's largest public cantilevered platform, which overhangs the north tower by 67m.
Unfortunately the view which is magnificent is currently tarnished by a thick seasonal haze which is coming from slash and burn fires in neighboring Indonesia and Malaysia.
The rooftop swimming pool at the sands leads me admire the genius of the Architect Moshe Safdie Architects. The local architect of record was Aedas Singapore, and engineering was provided by Arup and Parsons Brinkerhoff (MEP).
The lobby is like a city within a city and walking along the corridors is like walking on a major Singapore mall.
I have not had a chance to sample the food downstairs this trip but the room service was exquisite and on time at a reasonable price (for Singapore).
Attractions:
Marina Bay Sands features three 55-storey hotel towers which were topped out in July 2009. The three towers are connected by a 1 hectare sky terrace on the roof, named Sands SkyPark.In front of the three towers include a Theatre Block, a Convention and Exhibition Facilities Block, as well as the Casino Block, which have up to 1000 gaming tables and 1400 slot machines. The Art-Science Museum is constructed next to the three blocks and has the shape of a lotus. Its roof will be retractable, providing a waterfall through the roof of collected rainwater when closed in the day and with laser shows when opened at night. The Art-Science Museum opens in December 2010.

The SkyPark is home to the world's longest elevated swimming pool, with a 146-metre (478-foot) vanishing edge, perched 191 meters above the ground. The pools are made up of 422,000 pounds of stainless steel and can hold 376,500 gallons (1424 cubic meters) of water. The SkyPark also boasts rooftop restaurants, nightclubs, gardens hundreds of trees and plants and a public observatory with 360-degree views of the Singapore skyline.
Hats off to the President & CEO Thomas Arasi for taking on what must have been one of the most difficult hotel operations in the world and making it the success it is today. 
One of the major changes in Singapore over the years has been a dramatic rise in prices and one reason is the Singapore dollar (which I am very bullish on) has been rising dramatically.
I had a talk with some major international bankers the other day and asked them “are you receiving a lot of the money that is coming out of Switzerland since many who put their money into Switzerland don't feel safe keeping their money there anymore. Especially Americans".
Their answer was a definite yes.
I then I asked "what's the money going into?" Are they keeping it in foreign currencies or are they putting it into Singapore valued assets. They answered mostly Sing. dollar denominated assets .
Although the Singapore government has been very successful in controlling the value of the Singapore dollar I see it as a near impossible task to prevent the Singapore dollar from rising dramatically in the near future as much as the Australian and Canadian dollars (which I recommended heavily the last two years) have also done.
Singapore has certainly changed a lot over the last 14 years since I've been coming here. The architectural marvels are eye boggling. I've never seen more building cranes in one place my life before.

While sipping a cocktail at Ku De Ta last night with a friend of mine who has lived here for probably close to 20 years and is a major mover and shaker he agreed with me that Singapore real estate prices are probably way over priced in comparison to the rentals you can receive.
Much like Sydney which I visited two weeks ago there may be a bubble developing here in the very near future.
When the bubble bursts there will be huge decreases as has had happened many times in the past in Singapore.
 While driving around a Singapore taxi cab driver discovered that I was from Bali and started asking questions about what it's like to live in Bali?
When I told him about the cost of living especially that he doesn't have to pay $40,000 just for the right to drive a car he became interested  in retiring there. Retiring  Singaporeans may be one of the biggest movers in real estate in Bali in the future as they, along with the rest the world reach the retirement age next year when 25% of the population, the baby boomers reach 65 for the first time. It would make good sense for Singaporeans, especially those on limited incomes, to move to Bali and live on a retirement visa.
They will have no problem having their friends and relatives fly two  hours on low cost airlines like Air Asia for as little as $70 and come visit them.
Everything has become much more expensive here in Singapore and prices are similar to Sydney last week with an average breakfast costing S $30 and a nice dinner costs S $70 or S $80 which is about 200 % more expensive than Bali.
 It's been an exhausting two weeks for me having spent one week in Sydney with over 500 travel industry leaders at the annual Skal club convention and then the following week last week in Lombok with our rentals manager Yanthi who did an extremely good job meeting with over 40 pre-set appointments with travel agents from around the world.
She mentioned one interesting comment was that several times mainland Chinese travel agents, when passing our booth stopped and recognized our brand name which has become very popular with Chinese travel agents.
This week I spent three days at the Sun Tech convention Center at the International Travel Bourse where again there were several hundred travel agents from around the world especially throughout Asia who attended the event. I picked up some very powerful contacts with some largest travel agents in Europe, Middle East and Asia.
 
It's been a great month so far for those in the markets especially the investments I recommended at the beginning of the year such as Palladium which is up 40 % and gold which is up 21%. Even the investments I thought I may have made a mistake on mid-year are now turning very bullish such as wheat which has risen 21 % in just the last few months.
Currently the G. 20 nations are meeting and discussing what they should do with the currencies specially with China who many believe is artificially controlling their currency.
At the end of the trading day on Friday it was obvious that most likely nothing will come out of this meeting and that currencies will continue on their trends with most foreign currencies rising against the U.S.D.
After all there's nothing wrong with the Chinese currency rising because it will make imported food and minerals less expensive to their people at a time when one of their biggest fears is higher inflation.
Another item my friend and I agreed on while having cocktails last night was most likely that the huge increases, especially the last 12 months in  basic metals such as copper, iron ore and precious metals plus the huge increases recently in wheat, corn, soybeans and rice will eventually funnel down to consumers and we may see huge rises in consumer prices in the new year.
This will lead many countries to raise interest rates, such as Australia which may be the stimulus that kills their real estate market. Even in Singapore you can still borrow money at those 2%. If they are forced to raise interest rates to curtail inflation it may kill their real estate market here as well.
Fortunately Bali is immune to that because 95% of all investments in real estate in Bali are done with cash with literally no or little financing for foreigners so it doesn't matter what happens to interest rates.
Tomorrow I’m off to Jakarta to attend another travel show again with our rental manager and am also running two investment seminars there where I will talk about my predictions for the balance of this year and 2011 for most major markets.
I will especially talk about Bali real estate and the great opportunities.
By the way Bali real estate is very hot I was only my office for one day in the last few weeks and concluded two sales contracts.
The bottom line is life is good if you're in the right markets at the right time.
 I highly recommend you attend my seminars and you too can perhaps discover what to do with your money in this world of low extremely low interest rates at banks.