Our trip down under

A day in Singapore

Thursday 4th Oct 02:00 (Singapore time)
Not bad.  Five hours sleep, but now we are awake. Wide awake and it is only 2am. Great. And Pamela's Cold has developed somewhat to watery eyes and a bad head. We decide not to fight it and lie in bed for a few hours, reading and playing on the laptops - i had found an unsecured wifi to access internet with; thanks Mr belkin54g of Singapore.

8:00 Book finished and RSI developing, Pamela had managed a few more fitful hours sleep, we get up shower  and dress.  While Singapore is very cosmopolitan and nothing would be said, we do respect other cultures as much as possible so Pamela makes sure she wears clothes that are light and airy (it is VERY hot and humid in Singapore) but cover her arms and go down over her knees.  It also makes sense as the sun can be very harsh and being blond she would burn in minutes.

9:00 Quick tidy of the room and we are out on the streets of Singapore (Breakfast not included in the room).  We had decided to take a wander to Orchard Road and have a look at the shopping Malls then go up to Scotts Plaza where a very good food hall, that locals go to, would feed us.  We had decided to skip breakfast as Pamela was not hungry (thanks Cold) and I just wanted to start working on my beer belly.

We wandered down Serangoon Rd from Kitchener Street, through the middle of Little India with its myriad of small shops selling everything from Mobile phone covers to finest silk saris and a thousand and one different spices.  Old colonial buildings nestled between 80's shop arcades and housing developments.  Different smells; cardamom, turmeric, cotton, hing, chilli, cumin, coriander wafted around and every now and then our feet would feel an icy waft as a shop door opened and cooled air would flood out and sweep over them.  Singapore has a big Carbon Footprint mainly due to air-conditioning.

10:30 Reaching Bras Basah Rd we turn right and start to slowly walk up Orchard Rd.  Shopping plazas everywhere!  Singapore is affluent.  Very affluent!!BOSS, Calvin Klein, YSL, Rolex, a shop for every brand-mug is everywhere.  Overweight middle aged men with gold dripping from their wrists and fingers wearing badly fitted designer shirts, trousers and unmatched shoes wander in and out of the shops.  Women, wives or mistresses, in front of them carry loaded designer bags filled with expensive clothes they will never wear. As we reach Cuppage and Midpoint plaza's the number of Brits increases.  Brit tourists, wherever they are, always seem to stand out!  Embarrassingly so.  Don’t these people own mirrors?  A typical Brit abroad is overweight, has bright white skin with little red pimples and stoops.  They wear trainers, socks pulled up, shorts and a t-shirt.  But it is the stoop and gormless face that really typifies them; again I have that 'we are doing the right thing getting out of Britain (the 'Great' went a long time ago!)' feeling.  At least the Aussies abroad have a bit more go about them and care about how they look!

We continue up Orchard Rd in and out of Plaza's, people watching and sneezing.  The heat and humidity getting really quite intense.  I catch reflections of myself in shop windows and note the white skin, trainers, shorts and t-shirt, then adjust my posture (I have never denied being a hypocrite!).  I make a mental note to join a gym in Canberra asap.

12:00  Pamela is getting hungry.  Pamela has simple needs, food when hungry, water when thirsty and sleep when tired.  If any of these is not forthcoming she gets, lets say, 'prickly'.  Good timing, we reach Scotts Rd and turn right heading for Scotts Plaza.  But where is it?  It should be between Tangs Plaza and Far East Plaza; but all that is there is a building site.  Pamela, starting to get focused asks a drinks seller.  I realise a Plan B was needed and that I have about 5 minutes before life starts to get difficult.  Luckily I had noticed a food hall under a non-descript plaza at the top of Orchard Rd.  Just as I am being given my 2 minute warning we find it.

12:20 The food hall turns out to be great and filled with locals, always a good sign.  A large area under a shopping plaza it is filled with table's and chairs and bordered with small Asian food stalls; Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Japanese, etc...  Fantastic, always great places to eat.  We both decide on Korean and I have a beef noodle thing and Pamela, being assured 'no meat' has a veggie Korean stew.  The food is fantastic, my beef noodles accompanied with little fried fish and other unknown dips its great.  Pamela tucks heartily into her veggie stew as I blow my head off with a chilli ambush!  As i'm recovering and regaining control of my eyes (where had that come from!!!) Pamela grins and holds up a clam shell from her 'veggie' stew.  Pamela, a Yoga teacher, doesn’t eat meat or fish.  She is not a screaming 'Meat is murder' veggie, she just doesn’t eat meat or fish - fair do, each to their own (I actually quite like it as it limits my red-meat intake and means when i do eat meat or fish I enjoy it a lot more!).  'Oh well, thought it tasted a bit fishy' she says.  As she has eaten three quarters of it its not a problem and i finish it off (very tasty actually, especially the baby clams at the bottom).  I've always thought how lucky I am that Pamela is not a 'raging' veggie in that if she does accidently eat some fish or meat then it is not a big issue; obviously she doesn’t carry on tucking in but also doesn’t go berserk like some veggies!

13:00 Fed (some more than others - i catch a glimpse of myself in a window again) we slowly head back to the hotel for a snooze.

18:30 Four hours sleep!!!  Ahhhh, how did that happen?  Lets hope we can sleep tonight, especially as we need to be up at 5:30am to catch the flight to Sydney! Damn!!!  After a shower and cleanup we again go down for dinner on the street.  Pamela had noticed a small Indian Restaurant called 'The Ganges' (thats original!!) on Kitchener Street; so there we go.  Turns out to be a great wee place, with a 'buffet' system.  The food is fantastic; you get a round metal tray with a cut banana leaf on and go along the food offerings dolluping straight onto the leaf.  Being Northern Indian it is 100% veggie, but dont think for one minute that it means tasteless!  I am a real carnivore, but the lack of meat here is totally unnoticeable, it is fab!!  We both have seconds and thirds before admitting defeat and leaving.  The owner genuinely pleased that we enjoyed the meal - these small family places are far better (and cheaper) than the larger more gaudy joints.

21:00 With the warm glow of having eaten well we wander into a large Indian shopping store - the Mustafa Centre.  After jokes along the lines of 'Musf-a-fa drink/burger/sandwich' we realise it is huge!!  In the  packed store you can buy anything from gold to tea.  The narrow isles have packed shelves.  A hundred different types of Dal (lentils), every flavour tea you can think of, fifty different remedies for any ailment you can have...  We end up spending over a hour just wandering around in total awe; this is sensory overload!  Every sense - smell, sight, sound, touch, taste - is assaulted.  This is a little version of India and it is fantastic!

22:00 Eventually we leave and return to the room.  After an enjoyable evening and good food we shower and pack, ready for the flight to our new home Country.  Sleep, thankfully, comes easily.

From UK to Singapore

Finally we are here. Mat and Pamela in our new home town, after two and a half years of slog we have done it.  Sunny downtown Canberra.  I'll skip the boring getting the Visa, selling house etc stuff and do it as a diary thing;

Tuesday 2nd Oct 16:45
Door bell at mum and dads house, where we had been staying for a week, rings. Dad had booked and paid for a local taxi to take us to Heathrow from near Winchester.  Heathrow is such a nightmare that he had decided that taking us was really a no-go and that a taxi would be much better.  We were grateful as emotional goodbyes at airports are ucky undignified spectacles, usually made worse by long checkin/security queues that make it all a long drawn-out experience.

We said goodbyes, hugged mum and dad and said that we would see them in a couple of years.  My parents are well travelled, having brought us kids up in Zambia in the '70s, so knew the score and there were no tears and bawling.  At least in front of us.  We were sad to be saying goodbye, but also we had to get out of the UK (don’t get us started on that!  Lots of reasons, and the 'weather' figured quite low in the list) and at least the Internet and Videophones would help make the distance much smaller.

At 17:03 on Tuesday the 2nd of October me and my wife Pamela waved goodbye to my parents as we were taken away in a taxi.

18:45 Arrive Heathrow after having some of our reasons (UK is full and transport a mess) for leaving re-affirmed.  Taxi driver has done the airport run many times and knew a quick way to the terminal.

19:00 Checkin to Singapore Airlines.  Hardly any queue and very quick. Checkin clerk points out that as we are migrating we could have taken 40Kg hold-luggage each.  We had found that out 5 hours earlier after much, and heart rending, 'optimising' [Goto http://www.iom.int for details] and getting the weights down to 21.7Kg and 22.3Kg!  But, as Pamela pointed out, we had a connecting domestic flight from Sydney to Canberra to do as well and so the 40Kg each may have been a problem there.  I asked if we could have window seats in row 60,61 or 62 - the only 'twos' (rather than three's or four's) in economy - but they had gone;  so seats A and B in row 45 it was.

19:35 The security fiasco (you cant help thinking that the terrorists have won they affect things so much!) of having everything checked and toothpaste confiscated over we finally get into the rip-off city of Heathrow’s Terminal 2.  I had come prepared; course-grain mustard cheese and onion, salami lettuce and tomato, and pastrami cheese and pickle sandwiches made with home baked bread fed the two of us as I watched All Creatures Great And Small on my Archos and Pamela had a manicure.  No paying stupid Heathrow prices for dreadful food for us!

21:15 After filling our bellies and watching daft travellers increasing their debts buying tacky overpriced rubbish we make our way to the gate.  No real sense of celebration or excitement, after nearly three years of ups and downs in the attempt to escape we just want to go.  Like cattle at a livestock auction we are called row-by-row to be transported down the metal tube and spat onto the plane.  No, walking across the tarmac and climbing the steps while smelling the aviation fuel anymore; those days are long gone, much more efficient and run-of-the-mill now.

22:15 No delay!  Dead on time (that HAS to be a first for us at Heathrow!), the plane moves from its stand with the obligatory safety video showing - my screen doesn’t work, not a problem as I have 40 hours of TV programs recorded on the Archos but lets hope i don’t need to use the safety information.  I am by the window on the left side of the plane, next to Pamela who is chatting to an Aussie girl next to her.

22:37 As the plane rises up thru the low cloud I say a mental goodbye to Britain as my last sight of it is a traffic jam on the M25. I smile to myself, we are doing the right thing, staying in the UK would have driven us to drink or turned our brains to mush.

Flight is uneventful, I sip on G and T's and watch episodes of All Creatures Great And Small, Bergerac, Taggart, Poirot and The Profesionals while Pamela sleeps (as usual on flights).  Food is quite good and washed down with copious Claret and brandy’s - 'don’t drink alcohol on flights', what tosh!

12 Hours later arrive in Singapore, on time, pleasantly inebriated and very tired.  Maybe i should have slept more and drank less - still, wouldn’t have been half as much fun and as we have to have the window blinds down all the time now during the flight I cant watch the world go by anymore.

Wednesday 3rd Oct 18:00 (Singapore time)
As usual at Singapore Airport, Immigration and baggage collection is a breeze.  The officials always smiling and wishing us a pleasant stay (as long as we don’t spit, swear, drop litter, chew gum, wear odd socks, walk on the pavement cracks etc...) our passports are stamped and cases collected.

As we walk to the taxi rank, Pamela realises we have no Singapore dollars!!  Doh!!  So much for seasoned travellers, we forgot to get some currency for Singapore.  Oh well, never mind.  We track down the ATM, draw out a small wad and jump in a Taxi to the hotel.  One tip for Singapore is make sure the Taxi driver turns on the meter, otherwise he will charge a small fortune!

18:45 The hotel, Parkroyal on Kitchener street, turns out to be ok.  It was 'automatically' booked by Trailfinders when we got the flights.  I had noticed it on the itinerary but hadn’t realised it would be booked and be part of the package when we paid (so, if using Trailfinders be wary of this!).  When i had looked at reviews, on the web, for the hotel i had been dismayed; I had never seen reviews this bad for a hotel.  We are not 'snobs', but we know our hotels; Pamela had worked as a chef in a Scottish highlands hotel and I (through work) have stayed over a thousand nights in hotels - and these reviews were not good.  Last time in Singapore we had stayed in the salubrious Copthorne Waterfront; much more expensive (the Parkroyal was only £102 for the two nights) but very good.  We had hoped to stay there again but Trailfinders had put paid to that and saved us a few hundred quid as well.

We checkin to the Parkroyal and take our bags to room 1207.  The bell-boy did offer to carry them up but I like to carry the bags; partly because I can never work out what the right tip is and always feel awkward when I do it.  To our pleasant surprise the room was ok.  Good size, stuff worked, half-decent view, was clean (although a very odd smell!  Not unpleasant, just odd) and the bed comfortable.  Windows were double-glazed, so the room was quiet as well.  Great, thanks Trailfinders!

19:50 Strolling around 'little India' we find a great small stall for some good Indian grub.  Forget the larger, shiny, expensive joints.  The small local eateries is where the real local food is.  And the taste is far far better.  And much cheaper.

21:00 Bellies filled and jet-lag tapping on our shoulders we retire to bed for night.