Singapore’s purpose was to ease me into travel, like getting up to your ankles in icy water before diving in, taking a taste of the unfamiliarity of what is to come. But Singapore was just like Vegas, but with more rules, more malls, and less personality. (In so much that it can be said that Vegas has “personality.”) Despite its many merits, e.g., high degree of cleanliness, delightfully efficient public transportation, a lovely airport, friendly people—all very excellent things to encounter anywhere you go—it seemed to lack something essential, that intangible thing that New York has, that San Francisco has, that Paris, London, or Rome have.

TK nailed it: he said it’s soulless.

Not in that evil blood-sucking way, just in the way that brand-new things can’t really have souls. They can be beautiful and efficient; they can be sweeping and innovative. But without age and experience they are only flash.

Singapore is a new soul. A gorgeous but slightly vapid city. There are enclaves that show some spunk and color and texture, namely the ethnic neighborhoods like Chinatown and Little India. And fans and denizens of Singapore may take issue with this general assessment, and to that, I say, yes, please, educate us all. But from my brief experience with it, I saw a mecca to consumerism, a city of malls and retail opportunities, and corporate high rises.

This isn’t a bad thing. But it wasn’t the easing into the culture shock of Southeast Asia that I was planning on either.

So after three days in the shining city state, Phnom Penh was a shocking dip indeed. Gorgeously chaotic, falling apart at the corners, traffic anarchy reigned, the streets thick with motorbikes and cars and beeping horns, the tuk-tuk touts accosting you at every block, cars and mopeds parked across the sidewalks with families cooking lunch over jury-rigged hibachis while children played in the street construction happening a few feet away. Several generations, from baby to grandma, crammed onto a single motorbike, the air thick with heat and grit, with unidentifiable smells, some delicious, some repulsive, wafting out of cavernous eating establishments furnished with plastic and metal. Fish drying in baskets. Other fish gasping on ice. Purple spiky fruit crawling with flies. “Same same, but different” t-shirts everywhere. And the now ubiquitous “Keep calm and carry on” slogan (and its countless more sarcastic variations) t-shirts too. Sparkling fake gems and aluminum masquerading as sterling silver.

Singapore is only seven hours behind us, but it’s already forgotten. Phnom Penh shimmers with heat and chaos where Singapore shimmered with glass and steel.

And I am so grateful to have seen them both. And I can’t wait to see more.