Singapore : Futurama on steroids

Cara on phone : "Hello, can we book 2 tickets for tomorrow's coach to Singapore please ?"
Operator : "I'm sorry, but all our coaches are fully booked for tomorrow."
Cara : "Your website says you have free seats for the 8am departure."
Operator : "Yes, we have 6 seats available on that coach."
Cara : "Oh right, can I book two seats then please ?"
Operator : "I'm sorry, but we cannot take bookings over the phone. You will need to book them via our website."
Cara : "We've been trying to do that for 2 hours and it keeps crashing on us before we can complete the booking."
Operator : "Well you can come down to our offices and we can book the tickets for you."
So we jump into a cab and race round to there offices in downtown Kuala Lumpur.
Cara : "Hi, I'd like to book two tickets for tomorrow's 8am departure to Singapore please."
Operator : "I'm sorry but all our coaches are fully booked for tomorrow."
Cara : "Oh right. But I spoke to you on the phone 10 minutes ago and you told me there were 6 seats still available."
Operator : "That's right. We have 6 seats available on the 8am departure."
Cara : "Okay, so can I book two of them please ?"
Operator : "I'm sorry, but you will need to book them via our website."
Cara : "Really ? You told me on the phone I could book them here, as your website isn't working."
Operator : "That's right. I can book them for you here."
Cara : "Excellent. Can I book two then please ?"
Operator : "Certainly, madam. That'll be 420 Ringit, please ?"
Cara : "Excuse me ? Your website says it's only 70 ringits per person."
Operator : "That's right. 6 tickets at 70 ringit per person comes to 420 ringit."
Cara : "But I only want 2 tickets."
Operator : "Oh, but you just mentioned 6 tickets."
Cara : "No, I said you told me there were 6 tickets still available."
Operator : "That's right. We have 6 tickets available on the 8am departure."
Cara : "So can I book 2 tickets please ?"
Operator : "Certainly madam. For which departure time ?"

…and so this went on for what felt like hours. We had spent half of our budget on internet cafes, telephone calls and cabs, and all to book two bloody bus tickets. To be fair, the coaches themselves were fantastic. It was just the teensiest bit more comfortable than most of the bus journeys we have taken. Seating was 3 abreast on the upper deck of a double decker with each seat being a large, reclining, leather armchair, and even I had enough legroom (almost). The following morning at the stroke of 8am, off we went down the main highway towards the border. 4 hours later and through Malaysian border control, we crossed the very long bridge which constitutes the official border crossing and into Singapore. Being officious, efficient Singapore, we had to collect all our bags off the bus and go through immigration and customs on foot. Of course they don't provide luggage trolleys ! Whilst putting our bags through the X-ray machine, we noticed the guy in front of us was getting a bit of a grilling by one of the officials. Having a quirky legal system, there is no permitted duty free allowance between Singapore and Malaysia on their land borders. Arrive by plane or boat and you're fine. Arrive by bus and you're screwed ! This guy had the audacity to try and bring one, yes one, bottle of wine through customs. The 'smuggler' was attempting to explain to the official that he travelled between the two countries all the time and had never been pulled up for the odd bottle of wine before. What he thought he was saying was : I do this all the time and nobody has told me I can't. What the official, who looked like he exited the womb on time and by the rule book, was hearing however was : I smuggle things into Singapore all the time ! The businessman continued to protest his innocence but it was no good. As the customs official held up the offending bottle of wine in much the same way as he would handle a large bag of illicit drugs, you could tell he was already mentally putting on his rubber glove. If the couple immediately behind them were watching this unfold whilst there bags passed through an X-ray machine, and desperately trying not to look like they were smuggling 114 pirated DVD's across the border, I imagine they might have been getting a little nervous at this point. I imagine they would have also considered themselves very lucky if they managed to walk through without so much as a raised eyebrow just as the 'wine smuggler' was being dragged off to a side room.

Once back on the coach, we carried on into central Singapore city where we were met by my friend Rob. He took us by taxi back to his apartment in a nice, old colonial building, down a very funky side road near Chinatown (How can you have a chinatown district in a country where 77% of the population are chinese ? That's like having Cockneytown off Leicester Square). As soon as we arrived, we dropped our bags and darted straight out of the door again. Rob was flying back to Malaysia that afternoon on business so we only had a few hours to get lunch and a few beers before he had to shoot off to the airport. So Rob, his girlfriend Rina, Cara and I spent the afternoon in the bars of Boat Quay. A bit touristy but it was great to be able to drink draught guiness again. However at £15 for 2 pints and 2 halves it was a bit of a shock to be back in the real world once more. Fortunately for Cara and me, Rob was letting us stay at his apartment while he was away so we saved a fortune on hotels, which we put to good use in the food courts and bars of the city.

I don't imagine you'll be reading this in any tourist pamphlet, but one of the greatest thrills of staying in Singapore was that we were able to use a real washing machine and have clean clothes again. This might not sound like much to many of you, but anybody who's spent time on the road will know that not having to apply the 'smell test' to what you wear can be quite a giddy experience (not to be confused with the 'smell test' itself, which will just make you dizzy !) So, most of our first full day in Singapore was spent doing laundry. Not particularly exotic, but quite necessary ! Cara was starting to give off fumes and I was attracting flies. It's staggering what a really clean pair of pants can do for your state of mind. Once done with domesticity, it was time to pound the pavements again and explore the city. Obviously, when I say explore I mean go shopping. Cara wanted to hit the clothes shops again and I had discovered that Singapore had an entire 6 floor shopping centre devoted entirely to gadgets. I was in heaven !

One of my favourite aspects of Singaporean life is that they have more places to eat than they have people to eat there. Every road seems to have a food court, which is essentially a large collection of food stalls under one roof, as well as a trillion restaurants and take-aways. It seems like you could eat in a different place every meal for years without ever visiting the same place twice. Needless to say we ate. Continuously. Cara favoured the barbequed stingray but the Singaporean laksa with raw cockles had to be my top choice.

Singaporeans' attitude to climate control is an interesting one. They don't have air-conditioning, they have refrigeration ! Taxis, shops, restaurants and underground stations are all blasted with a stream of air cold enough to make you look like you're smuggling tic-tacs up your shirt. Singapore is the only place I've ever been to where you can sweat and see your own breath at the same time. It was also nice not to have to haggle for everything any more. The downside of this however is that everything in Singapore costs much more than anything we ever haggled for elsewhere, with the possible exception of taxis. Singaporean taxi drivers are the only exception to rule 13 in our Rules list below, as they are far more likely to tell you about the best places to eat than they are of ripping you off. Some people believe the Singaporeans are a naturally polite, law abiding bunch but I happen to think the fact you can be shot for chewing gum might have something to do with it. They apply the death penalty to everything from drug smuggling to wearing flares, and even farting in public can land you with some pretty serious jail time.

One of the places Rob recommended we visit during our stay was a bar on the 70th floor of the Swissotel. He reckoned it had amazing views of the city and was THE place to have a drink and see the sunset. What's more, happy hour was from 4pm - 9pm so even scruffy plebs like us could afford a few drinks. On the downside, they had a dress code and my uniform of shorts and flip-flops was not welcome. Cara had a new dress she'd acquired that very afternoon, and she did look fantastic in it until she stood next to me ! The only things I could find to get me through the door was a pair of hiking boots that had last been worn on a muddy mountainside (and still had half of it stuck to them), and a pair of skanky combats with zip off legs. Nice ! So off we set. Cara looking like a party girl and me looking like a scarecrow. We took the lift and shot up to the 70th floor, only to find there were actually 2 bars and a restaurant there. Bugger ! We looked into one but it was packed with after-workers and didn't offer much of a view of the sunset, so we moved to the other bar. It was almost empty but the far wall was built entirely from glass and the view was incredible. It all looked a bit posh and I stuck out like a sore rhinoceros, but Cara charmed us a good table. We settled into a couple of armchairs right in front of the window and browsed the cocktail menu. The price list looked like the blackboard in a physics laboratory but they were half price during happy hour so what the hell. Cara ordered a silly double entendre and I had something effeminate. The waitress called me "sir" and pretended not to notice my muddy shoes, so I knew we were somewhere posh. We spent the next hour or so watching the sun set over the harbour and the skyscrapers light up. Singapore is a city of high-rises and it looks at its best at night. We took a few cheesy, touristy photos and asked for the bill. It was at this point that we realised the bar we were in was not the bar with the happy hour, and that the price list had not included service or government tax. Priceless ! Our 3 drinks cost us the same as 8 night's accommodation had cost us on Koh Phagnan. Was it worth it ? Well actually yes, it was. How often do you get to drink on the 70th floor of a skyscraper ? Especially after you just spent a month living in bamboo huts. And to be quite honest with you, being a skinflint gets pretty tiresome after a while.

We didn't get a huge amount of sight-seeing done as we spent half our time in the shopping centres and the other half in the food courts. I spent hundreds of pounds on electrical gadgets I don't need, Cara filled her bags with more clothes and Rina showed us where to find the best food stalls. I had a stinking cold, Cara had found out our flight was overbooked and we were flying on standby, so we decided to bail out a day early and come back to the UK. We took a taxi to Changi airport and spent the next 3 hours sat on our arses waiting to find out if we would get on the flight to Frankfurt. We did, and the kind people at the check-in waited until 20 minutes before take-off to issue our tickets, so we almost had to run all the way to the plane. By the way, our final baggage check-in came in at a whopping 50 kgs (we left home with 32). So our extended trip slumming it around southeast Asia ended in a couple of Business class seats to Germany. Cara flattened her bed and went to sleep, I helped myself to the airline's supply of shiraz and watched some seriously cheesy movies until the early hours. I woke up an hour before landing with a very ropey hangover and a rather fetching red wine crust around my mouth. I don't think the business lady next to me appreciated waking up next to the creature from the black lagoon, but there you go. After a few hours waiting in Frankfurt we were off again and soon we were coming in to land at Manchester. It was raining. And cold. This was England alright !