What do you call a long, narrow, spaghetti-strand sliver of land wedged between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains? Nobel poet and native son Pablo Neruda called it "the thin country". Everyone else calls it Chile. Within its borders in this south-western corner of South America is a multi-faceted, geographically diverse nation of 18 million that the indigenous Mapuche peoples named for the word chilli, or "where the land ends".

Visitors to the continent typically set their sights on Brazil for beach and samba, Argentina for barbecue and tango and Peru for its myriad delights, cultural and culinary. Chile remains a little further down the list and separate somehow from the rest of the world - including Singapore, 16,000 km distant.

Yet in a continent where economic disparity is the rule and political stability is never a sure thing, Chile has a deserved reputation as a resource-rich country (copper, seafood, fruit and wine are major exports) where services - such as those provided by banks, utilities and transportation networks - actually function like they're supposed to.