Thumbs down to US YouTuber for ‘inaccurate, outdated’ S’pore travel guide’

Singapore – An American YouTuber offering a travel guide to Singapore is being rubbished by the online community, with netizens commenting on the multiple inaccuracies in what he says.

YouTuber Chris Raney, known for his Yellow Productions channel on social media, got called out for misinformation in a video meant to give a glimpse of the Lion City.

“From the weather to the language, to the currency… this video will teach you everything you need to know about travelling to Singapore! Have you ever been there?” he says..

The four-minute video offers pointers on Singapore’s food, transport, weather and language. “While Singapore is a really modern city, a lot of it is still cash-based, so it’s really important to have cash in Singapore,” says Raney.

His next topic – safety and laws –  zooms in on  “interesting laws” such as chewing gum being illegal in Singapore. “Don’t even bring it into the country with you,” he advises. Actually, chewing gum is not illegal here. It is against the law to import, manufacture or sell it but not to chew it. And there are exceptions for such things as  therepeutic, dental and nicotine chewing gum which can be bought from registered doctors or pharmacists.

His comments on the weather were correct too.

However, he runs into trouble when he gets to “language” and says: “Singapore has four official languages, that include English, Mandarin, Malay and an Indian language.”

 “But the official, official language is English.”

Netizens were quick to weigh in with corrections, noting for a start that Tamil rather than “an Indian language” is one of the country’s official languages. “What’s so difficult with yourself in mentioning that it’s TAMIL language,” asked one  Facebook user.

And others were quick to tell him that Malay is the national language of Singapore.

Ranay also makes the mistake of “explaining” that Singlish is English “with a lot of Chinese words”, only to have netizens point out  to him that Singlish is a blend of several languages.

The video was uploaded recently to his Facebook page on Feb 1, but the content is drawn from a YouTube video of his which was posted in 2016.

A Facebook user noted having seen this video in the past and urged Raney to update the content “because the video is pretty outdated”.  Take for example, the Merlion statue behind Raney in the video . It was demolished in 2020.

“Look at the comments, people are commenting about the content, and you can’t blame them. Like I said, this is old content. Please update the content,” said the netizen./TISG

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