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We spent 2 weeks in CDMX (way too short, I know), and these are our observations we made about this city.
Sparse: CDMX has a population of ~22 million people with an area of 1,500 square km. Compared to Singapore (~5.5 million on 730 square km), it is almost twice as dense. A stroll along the central business districts, shopping streets, or even the heartland areas of Singapore, and you will find yourself surrounded by throngs of people. However, it didn’t feel that way in CDMX at all. We never felt that we were surrounded by crowds, nor squeezing with people (we only had to squeeze on the bus during rush hour once). The streets of Roma felt serene and peaceful, we never had to queue for any restaurant, and the city even houses the enormous Chapultepec Park (twice the size of Central Park)!
Clean: CDMX is around 500 years old, the streets and buildings are old but the streets were surprisingly clean. We always spotted someone sweeping the streets or scrubbing the floors. There was hardly any trash nor were there any smells from the streets. This was very surprising especially comparing to New York City which similarly, is an old city and the streets smelled of…
Lots of police: Honestly, I was wary about travelling in CDMX due to the many stereotypes from the media. Also, I was coming from Singapore, which is considered one of the safest places in the world. We were surprised by the number of police patrolling around the city, there were police at almost every other block, and we felt safe walking around the city (even at night) although we didn’t let our guard down and still took necessary precautions.
Traffic: Traffic lights here seem to be a suggestion rather than a rule, and the green lights for pedestrians were so long (> 50 seconds), compared to around 15 seconds back home. We noticed that the cars were really nice to pedestrians and always giving way, but were assholes to each other with no patience at all. One second of hesitation when the lights turn green and the cars will start honking.
Romance is in the air: People in CDMX are so romantic and passionate! Asians are not too big on displaying their affection, but the Mexicans were the total opposite of that. The locals were not afraid to express themselves everywhere! In the parks, in the malls, on the streets, everywhere!
Dogs: So. Many. Dogs. It felt like every household had a dog (or dogs) here. We saw so many people walking their dogs at every hour of the day and the parks were filled with dog trainers and dog walkers. The dogs were amazingly well behaved, they didn’t even need to be leashed. It was fun to people and dog watch in the parks.
Google reviews: Being the Singaporeans that we are, we had to make sure the restaurants were going to were the best to make the most of the calories. Food in Mexico was insanely good (will post on this in the future!) but we noted that almost every single restaurant or street stall had reviews of >4 out of 5 on google and was reviewed by thousands of people. It definitely made it harder to filter out and decide where to eat.
These were some interesting observations that we made just from our 2 weeks in CDMX. We spent most of our time in Roma and Centro area so it may not fully represent CDMX, happy to hear your thoughts and insights on CDMX as well!
I hope you found these observations about Mexico City from the perspective of a Singaporean interesting!
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