Wednesday PM Singapore

Waiting for airport pickup so spending another 'ten dolla' on this!

some more strange things from yesterday. heat brings out people - mainly women - with umbrellas. Little India as you would imagine it. An assault on the senses - colour, smells, sounds - it's Diwali so lots of lights! China Town definitely the best. Visited it twice yesterday. went to Taoist temple in the day. Red the dominant colour - lots of paper lanterns - ok to photograph as long as no-one praying. Guide says Singapore a very tolerant place religiously. Hindu temple next door! can't get over the cows on the roof. China Town by night fantastic. narrow streets filled with all imaginable shops, stalls, restaurants - wanted to eat it all but having meal as said earlier (see Racist Aussies!). Fresh produce everywhere. Men offering to make me a suit there and then. Trying to sell me elctronic goods. Fabulous. Passed bric-a-brac stall twice before I worked up the courage to purchase. :Looked at copy of Thoughts of Chairman Mao - 'original signed copy , Sir' - before settling on my good taste purchase of the trip so far. A Chairman Mao alarm clock! complete with picture of yer man with his arm waving to the seconds. Classic! now for the haggling. How much I enquired into the newspaper at the back of the shop. A face enmerged, looked me up and down, thought "Gotcha" ( or whatever that is in Mandarin) and said "twelve dolla'. No way I thought! ' I'll give you ten' I bargained fiercely. 'Done' he grinned. Outside I thought 'you fool, you should have offered him nine!' Clutching my clock, little knowing even if it worked, I hurried away. probably worth about three I thought. still it was a hag if not a full haggle! turns out it did work, alarm and all. unfortunately I set it going and the only way i could have stopped it would have been to drop it out of the hotel window 11 floors up! it ended up buried in a towel in my case. Mao would not have been pleased. Conficious he say ' Western fool victim of own stupidity!"

slow day today after all the rushing yesterday. A couple of hours at the Raffles Hotel, a tour of the National Museum at my own pace, and a nice calm cool swim.

Raffles Hotel. Where do I start? colonial past gone modern. Indian servant in white Raj uniform at the door - marked 'residents only' - poilitely guided me to the Long Bar home of the famous Singapore Sling. slightly incongruously Beyonce is playing in the background as I enter. i sit beneath mechanically operated 'fake' reed fans which give the impression they are keeping you cool but really it's the air-con. bar offers snack menu that includes fish and chips - colonial style of course. all tables are wicker as are chairs - which arenot v ery stable as at one point I lean forward and the chair shoots out from beneath me depositing me on the floor! I bounce to my feet like Cassius Clay - float like a bttuerfly! - as I am surounded by concerned waiters and waitresses. Luckily my drink - if not my dignity - survives! Tables have boxes of unshelled peanuts on them. tradition has it - my Aussie 'friends' let me in on this one - that you eat the nuts and throw the husks on the floor. constant background crunching noise as people make their way about. I join in happily, confident that this is the only place in Singapore where you are actively encouraged to litter without fear of having your hands chopped off!

at airport now where internet is free - no dolla! - and have time to kill before 4.5 hour flight to Darwin. Back to Raffles. finished my fruit cocktail reasonably slowly so as not to look as if I was thrown by my acrobatics. leave when everyone's back is turned but given away by peanut shells crunching beneath my feet! 'Safe journey Sir' the staff chorus. the hotel is a huge white marbled maze. i find my way to a balcony and take soome photos. nearby is a sign for the 'Raffles Museum'. worth a look i think. disappointed to find that the hotel was not founded by Sir R himself who shuffled off this mortal coil when his very own 'ticket' (geddit!) came up at he age of 45 - in deep debt too....the British Gov charged him for buying Singapore! - some time in the mid 19th century. The hotel was established by the Houdini Bros (wrong name but I will check later) early in the 20th C in a chickenshack (that one's for you Rosie!) next to the harbour. over a century later it is still owned by the Hiduja Bros - sorry that's Peter Mandleson territory - and has taken over the world. Not only does the hotel itself occupy land the size of Texas, but there is the Raffles Tower, Raffles Boulevard, the Raffles Medical Centre, Raffles on Ice (made that up) etc etc. Sir R would have been proud of the Gamja Bros but for the fact that they have made a pile of cash out of it and he didn't. Still he has a statue and the hotel named after him. The Ouija Hotel Singapore just doesn't have the same ring does it.

lots of famous folk have stayed there including Noel Coward (plus 'friend'), Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill, that Royal that abdicated and ran off with the American, Trevor Howard, Hayley Mills, Kylie (probably), Elizabeth Taylor - oh, and the Japanese....did I mention them before?

leaving there after a trenmendous thunderstorm that hel;ped cool us all down i reflected what it meant. A vast colonial edifice - no, not Sir Stanford Raffles - marble pillars and floors, sumptious restaurants and shops, palm trees and exotic plants, staff dressed to serve the Raj.....a bit of a contrast with two things I sawon the way there. One was migrant workers building pavilions on Singapore Cricket Club. they were on a break and in hammocks below the scaffolding to keep out of the sun. a fag and a bottle of water - no gin slings here! the other was a frail man walkiing by a litter bin. he had a drinks can in his hand and approached the bin but instead of putting the can in he reached in and took another one out, then just walks on. he clearly knew where he was taking them. It reminded me of what our guide had said yesterday. credit to him for beoing proud of his country. No more beggars on the street he said. The Gov banned them. the police arrest them. Just where do they go then? They clearly exist!

spent the rest of the afternoon at the National Museum. Very high tec exhibition of Sinagpore's history. Especially interested in the fall of Singapore in 1942. Basically two things happened. Churchill decided not to risk the navy in defending it - only sent a token force - and the Japanese commander ourwitted his British counterpart. GB had far more troops etc and could easily have repulsed the invasion....but Japanese commander had got to 'gates' of Singapoer so fast it shook the British commander so that when the Japanese commander offered them a chance to surrender...well, the rest is history. Japanese occupation was brutal. Thousand were shot out of hand. Troops were force marched to their deaths. Women and young girls forced into slavery and prostitution - if they were lucky. Lots of first hand accounts in the museum tour. chilling really. how they took us back after the war I don't know, but they did. more irony of course in that Singapore cannot ignore modern Japan as an economic rival and sometimes partner. Deep feelings must be being surpressed by some of the population thoough.

museum teeming with perfectly turned out school children. guide of course tells us that Sinagapore schools the best in the world! noticed 'edges' to uniforms - trainers, wearing of ties, some jackets - youth will push a bit even here.

final reflections on Singapore. Exciting, bustling, colourful, hot, sticky, wealthy, clean, busy. They seem to want to put the whole of the city underground as there are huge building projects everywhere. Lots of reclaimed land from the sea. ordered - a bit too ordered for me - low crime - that's good - hard on drugs - good too - generally safe. but peel away the skin, and I am not too sure what will be beneath. off to OZ now where everything is 'in yer face mate!' Ta ta for now.