That's what I assumed myself initially, so I spun up an AWS micro instance in their Singapore data center. But then I found that the ping times were almost twi

That's what I assumed myself initially, so I spun up an AWS micro instance in their Singapore data center. But then I found that the ping times were almost twice that for instances in the US west coast, because some Australia ISPs (including mine which is Optus) route traffic to Singapore or Japan via the US west coast since it's cheaper than going through Perth. So although Singapore is closer to Australia than the US as the crow flies, it's not necessarily closer on the internet.