Well I've made it to Singapore; that bastion of capatalsim in the heart of South East Asia. The arrival as ever involved a delay. To keep consistant in these matters no accomodation had been arranged. The picture to be painted can be drawn thus. Arriving late, tired and slightly disorientated - towards the latter stages of the evening - with every hostel you've phoned booked up. Thankfully the night envolved not as much melodrama as it could have potentially lent and we found a hostel.It was in Kampung Glam the ethnically Malay part of Singapore.
Singapore quickly conforms to two preconcieved stereotypes: The first is obviously it clenliness and the second its wealth. It almost as if with one big effort they have swept all the poverty away. The lack of any visible poverty is one of the most striking about Singapore when you compare it to any other large cities. There's not really any homeless or other benchmarks of poverty to be seen anywhere.
The uncluttered nature gives you space to breath and relax; it's efficiency gives you less opportunity to stress. One example is the fantastic MRT (Mass Rapid Transport). Like the London Underground except it works. The train arrives at the sealed platform, exhales some passengers, inhales some more and wisks you off at speed in all it's air conditioned glory to the next destination.
There are many different ethnicities that you can see here. They are mainly Indian, Malay and Chinese. Each with their own enclaves, dress, religions and temples. So i thought I had better get down to trying some of the local cusine. Just outside our hostel is a large local food court. The hardest thing to do is trying to order - in a different language - something of which you are not quite sure. Anyways, I ended up with Fish bellies in a kind of cruel. The next hardest thing in eating is to work out what how all the various bowls you are plied with correspond. "Move this gruel stuff, to this bowl of rice, into this a bowl. ah no I think thats for washing your fingers" and so on. All good fun and beats eating from the plentifull MacDonalds. It was actually quite tasty apart from the latent fish bones
