Somebody is offering me a trip to any of the two countries. I've been to China except Beijing. As for Singapore, never been there.

I vowed myself that the next country I'll visit should be fairly English-speaking. It doesn't have to be perfect as long as a sizeable population could understand.

In this case, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Britian should be your next destination.

Then Singapore would be your choice, it's very pretty, has awesome food and you can easily cross the border and visit Kuala Lumpur which is also a very pretty city, especially in architecture. Both countries easily facilitate English as they are both former British colonies.

I've been to Singapore and not a whole lot of people (asides from college students and the educated crowd) understood what the heck I was saying. I had to reduce sentences to Pidgin English, so instead of asking "excuse me, Mr. bus driver, is the next stop Sentosa Island?" I had to say "next stop Sentosa?" before anyone understood me.

Persoanlly, I found Singapore to be worth a weekend and not a whole lot more unless you just wanted to go there to socialize and party. Much of what was interesting has been bulldozed by the government to make way for rubber stamped shopping malls next to condo highrises. I had a friend that (hated) doing this for a living there, but it was his job to evict the local charm to make way for uranization.

You may have heard that Beijing is an English speaking city, sorry, that's probably my bad as I went around pretending to be the "helpful flirty local with good english" when I was staying there. It was a lot of fun messing with the Euro tourists.

Since flying around within Asia is pretty cheap, here's a plan. Go to Beijing, then Guilin (the place where all those misty ink brush paintings of steep cliffs and mountains and rivers are at), then take a bus to Yangshuo -- that place will blow your mind. A little hamlet in the middle of farmland that looks like a small European town. There, most everyone speaks English. And the coffee is pretty good, they even served it in the Euro fashion, black. It was established by backpackers years ago and still retains much of its original charm. If you want to stay a while, there's endless opportunities to teach English in exchange for free room and board at local schools.

Both destinations should be interesting. I have never been to either of them. Beijing is full of history, and Singapore is a business place and very clean. That is what I have heard...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moomin

Honey-bunnyyyy...

Singaporeans speak English, albeit sometimes in the localised 'Singlish' form, where its mixed with the Hokkien dialect and Malay. But most people there should be able to understand normal English. I think people had trouble understanding creamofcow due to his foreign accent. Speaking slower usually helps.

If you want to go to an English-speaking place, then Singapore definitely triumphs China. But like what cow said, Singapore is a tiny hypermodern city. The government has clean out many of its old buildings, thus its moniker of being a 'concrete jungle'.

I've never been to China before, but loads of documentaries and travel series clearly tells me that there are heaps of ancient architecture and beautiful sceneries there. For old palaces and temples, Beijing is the place. Shanghai is apparently just like Singapore now, modern but lacking in old stuff.

most of the people I met (students) in Shanghai, could speak some english, the older generation, forget it.

Oi, I used to live in Beijing. I don't know how it is right now for sure, but if it is anything like it was the last time I was there. There is a lot of construction going on for the 2008 Olympics. Doesn't mean you cannot get to places there, just maybe a lot of traffic, very hectic and noisy.

watch out for huge dust storms. Beijing is known for that in the spring season. It comes from the Gobi desert.

as for the language issue. demographically, beijing consist of mostly chinese from northern china provinces, and some koreans that have lived there for generations. Like every other part of China, as you may know, beijing is also no exception, all the signs are in chinese, and everyone there speaks mandarin, and not much english. and some may scoff at you if you are Asian and dont speak mandarin. So its best to go with a tour group.

other than that, beijing is awesome and there are a lot of stuff to do there. Beijing is the capital of China, strong in its ancient history, and known for its political/cultural influence that it has over the rest of China. there are a lot of little trivial facts and things that i know about the city and its history that most people may not have known just from western media sources.

I heard in Singapore....you can get by on English alone. Beijing on the other hand would definitely not qualify as an English speaking town.

Beijing is one of the more interesting places to go in the world right now if you are interested in new social developments unique to china.

I don't know much about Singapore, except that it is clean as a whistle.