Man, Singapore has changed over the decades I’ve been visiting and you especially notice if you haven’t been for a while. It now epitomises what can only be described as architectural porn. If Lily Philips and Bonnie Blue were buildings, they’d be here. Men would be queuing up at their various entrances to come inside. These days the newer buildings especially, are extravagant and extroverted and for a modest fee you can go all of the way… to the top. At this point (because i just deleted a whole lot of R18+ material) I’m reminded of that famous joke – a beautiful woman walks into a bar and asks the barman for a double entendre, so he gives her one. And I can hear Led Zeppelin singing songs from In Through The Out Door. That’s enough; time to move on.
Do you know how hard it is to drive in Singapore? Okay, it’s not that the traffic is like it is in Boston (scroll down a few pages to find out) but it’s really hard to be able to drive in Singapore. The government wants to keep the traffic moving and the fewer cars there are on the road, the more room there is for the buses. As I have said before, if you close your eyes and step into the road in Hong Kong you’ll get hit by a taxi or a Rolls Royce (okay, maybe not as probable now as 25 years ago). In Singapore you’ll be hit by a single decker or double decker bus. Only a certain number of cars are licensed at any one time so when a slot becomes available, it’s auctioned. So how did that guy driving the clapped out Honda Civic afford the 90 grand for a certificate to drive before even buying his car. Oh…that does explain it.
When you visit Singapore, Raffles Hotel is a venue for tourist pilgrimage. Not so much the hotel itself, where dressing for dinner requires a cream linen jacket, jodhpurs, spurs and pith helmet, but the Long Bar which much to the chagrin of visiting colonels, accommodates shorts, t-shirts and thongs (of the foot variety). But you are made to pay for these indiscretions because the management knows you are only there to sample the famous Singapore Sling so one for me and one for the child bride plus GST plus service charge sets you back cents short of a ton. And that’s Singapore dollars which used to be worth somewhat less than the Aussie and are now worth 20% more. Thanks Albo. The only compensation (and reasonably priced nourishment ie free) was peanuts still in the shell. On relieving the nut of its outer layer, said layer is discarded on to the floor – tradition, old boy.
On our way back from Raffles to our lodgings, we happened upon a bar/restaurant that looked suitable for our custom. It was serving Taiwanese cuisine which is a bit too Cantonese for my liking but the menu looked okay so we went in. After dozens of trips to Taiwan you can get used to anything. A pint of Heineken for me and a stubby of Tiger for the CB and we were set. It was a good sized establishment but there was no one else in there, only us. The bar down the street was packed. Was there an imminent Chinese strike on the cards which we hadn’t been told about? There wasn’t. You would have heard about it.
And now, in the immortal words of Monty Python, for something completely different. The worst thing that can happen to you on the road is to have your credit card stopped by your bank. It happened to us yesterday. This has happened to me a few times in my travels. For example, a night out with my marketing team in London many years ago, in a less than salubrious establishment, resulted in a frantic phone call from the CB at some ungodly hour when I was still barely capable of lying down without falling over. The supermarket had rejected her card and apparently our bank was a little miffed. So this afternoon a couple of texts from the bank set off alarm bells. I was pretty sure it wasn’t my fault this time but what??? This is Singapore and everyone is scrupulously honest, right. It turns out, a card which I thought had expired years ago and been replaced, was still active and someone was using it. Apparently I am now a member of the National Gallery of Victoria. WTFingF. After being on hold for 15 minutes on an International call, it was eventually sorted
What is it with us and bars? If you’ve read about our recent trek through north-east America and Canada, you’ll know that not everyone takes these things anywhere near as seriously as I do. We’re talking Vince Lombardi’s seriousness about winning serious. So we’re in a perfectly respectable hotel in Singapore with a perfectly adequate lobby bar. Call me old fashioned but one thing expected of bars, especially with happy hour draining away, is that there will be someone behind the bar to do what people behind bars normally do for people in front of bars. So for two consecutive nights I’ve had to go to the front desk and politely ask, on behalf of us and other patrons, the whereabouts of the barman. Each time they’ve tracked him down long enough to pour a couple of drinks then promptly f.. off again. There’s a much better party going on somewhere else obviously. And while we’re on this topic, we just got on our flight for which we have lashed out to sit up the front and they are serving Singapore Slings. For nothing. More champagne, my dear. That can either be a question addressed to the child bride or a statement addressed to the flight attendant.