I knew I was coming to Singapore during
one of the rainy months, but with three out of the four days I was
there featuring monsoon style rainfall, I felt lucky to have one day
of glorious sunshine. Still, for me, going into the shopping
centres was as much about relief from the heat as from the rain - I'm
a lot more used to rain!
Crossing the border on the train on the
train from Kuala Lumpur, and with the everyone onboard having to get
off with all our stuff while the police and their dogs took ages to
check everything, I was half expecting to get arrested for bringing
in chewing gum! But I read that since 2004 it is allowed for
therapeutic value (?) only. That was thanks to Wrigleys lobbying
hard for chewing gum to be included in the free trade agreement
signed between the US and Singapore. Still, it turns out that I was
technically breaking the law, as any unauthorised transit of the
stuff is prohibited.
It was banned in the first place not
just because of the nastiness of gum on the pavements and seats etc,
but because youths had been gumming up the doors and locks of the
swanky MRT underground & overground trains. And that's the only
crime I heard a single thing about while in Singapore. Adverts on
taxis remind citizens to remain vigilant, and that 'Low Crime
doesn't mean No Crime', but everyone I spoke to said that there may
be the very occasional petty theft, but violent crime or anything
like that is unheard of.
Singapore city also lives up to its
reputation for total cleanliness, which must be at least partly down
to the long list of fines posted around the place, depicting
misdemeanours like smoking in the wrong place, dropping litter,
eating or drinking in the wrong place with their associated, severe
fines.
The Guiness world record holding 'Fountain of Wealth'. It was raining anyway!
So when a taxi driver told me that he'd
have his head chopped off if he didn't use the meter, maybe he was
only half joking! Apparently the sci-fi writer William Gibson
described Singapore as "Disneyland with the death penalty"!
Seems to me like a land of opportunity - the magician/robber who
stole my lens off my camera in broad daylight in St Petersburg could
make a fortune coming to Singapore on a working holiday, I think he'd
be pretty good at not getting caught.
About to rain again
Anyway, while Singapore lacks in the
threat of crime, it certainly makes up for it in the abundance of
shopping centres. They're everywhere! And stuffed full of plush
shops and unbelievably slow walking shoppers. I've noticed elsewhere
that everyday UK brands such as M&S manage to appear like top
line, chic labels, and in Singapore one of them is Topshop,
strategically placed in a mall full of proper designer label shops.
And, while the shopping centres don't go to Kuala Lumpur extremes of
having full size roller coasters right in the middle, they do all
have multiplex cinemas. I'm convinced that there must be enough
seats in Singapore's cinemas for every single member of the 4
million+ population to be watching a film at the same time!
Because of the pre-Christmas busyness,
I had to stay in two different places, with the first two nights
being fairly bizarre - I stayed at a creaky old hostel in the
Catholic Centre, an old but perfectly nice high rise featuring
madonna and child statues and water damaged biblical scenes all over
the place. The only unpleasant thing there for me was after I
discovered a bag of really tasty chilli infused Japanese seaweed in a
nearby corner shop, quickly wolfed down half of it, then spent the
next 2 or 3 hours being sick, six times!
From the hostel in the Arab Quarter
But I was fine the next day, then the
next two nights were in a more typical hostel in the Arab Quarter next to Little India, where
the next door street was totally devoted to selling fabrics and rugs.
I narrowly escaped from being skilfully talked into buying a very
fine, large Kashmiri rug. My excuse that I was flying in a few hours
didn't help - "I can fold it up to the size of a big laptop!"
On my last day there I went to the zoo,
which was great with lots of well looked after animals, including...
White tigers...
A frazzled looking Emu...
Cheeky monkeys...
The "World's Only" free
ranging orang-utan area, where you walk a treetop trail, and they're
around and above you. This featured a bit of excitement, when one of
the larger orang-utans somehow got hold of a steel bar, and was
showing off - running around and swinging it.
The wardens had to
clear the gathering crowd, and try to exchange the steel bar for an
apple, but that took some doing!...
Mandrills - this one was entertaining
the crowd of mostly children, playfully chasing the female around
their enclosure with a comical grimace, but the Singaporean parents
quickly and firmly told the fascinated children to move away when he caught her,
and started some prolonged rodgering!
Anyway, no photos of that you'll be glad to know! After a few days in Singapore I
was off on a ten hour flight to New Zealand, where I am now, in the lap of luxury with Jules and Steve and playing with Emily,
who's getting excited now that she knows it's Christmas day tomorrow!
