Singapore - the urban jungle.

Singapore island is a green tropical island. Flying in, it has palm trees and is densely forested in many area. Singapore city is totally different. It is a mixture of many cultures, but tries most hard to embrace western culture. The city governors have tried to sanitize the old parts and install ultra modern architecture, to bring it up to date. Unfortunately this has made it interesting purely to lovers of high rise tower blocks and shopping malls.

You can do three things in Singapore city.

Work very hard - the singaporians have a business minded 'success' culture that makes every one a shop keeper or entrepreneur.

Shop until you drop - singapore will soon be one huge shopping mall. It already has many, each the size of Oxford street and regents street combined. Some of these are linked together. You can buy absolutely anything at bargain prices here.

Out on the streets, beware that it seems like every 10th shop is a tailor with a salesman outside, who can make you a lovely suit for £60. Just what I need when its this hot and steamy.

Eat yourself silly - between working hard and shopping, you need to eat. This place has eateries that appear out of any spare nook and cranny. There's food from all cultures, from McDonalds to fish and chips, from Indian to mexican. I still don't understand how these shops continue when many that we passed regularly where permanently empty -such is the power of the singapore dream to try and succeed.

The strange thing is, that in the city of Singapore, we noticed no petrol stations, no supermarkets and no recognisable houses (some blocks of flats). Its as if singapore is a commuter town only, that caters for the business men and middle men who are the life blood of the city - but has no 'real' population at all..

30th June:

The Airport was surprisingly modern and comfortable. Not your usual grubby Mediterranean airport full of overheated travellers, queues and Passport control, officers who couldn't give a damn. Here you had orchid lined moving walkways, NO passport control queues and a very pretty passport controller who wished me a happy birthday (tommorow) and wanted to know what the boys had got me for a present. Welcome to Singapore!

The Hotel was fully booked and so we got an upgrade to 'orchid club' status. This meant that we had to travel to the 7th floor, but got fine views over the swimming pool, a building site and beyond. Hey, this is the high life!

We explored the surroundings, and in between the high rise blocks and ultra-modern shopping malls, we found a street market selling all the fake cloths you could hope to see. We bought some'designer' jeans and three trendy tea shirts, for the equivalent of £20! Andrew found some 'burberry wallets' for a few pounds, the real things cost hundreds (we later checked up on at the airport)

We are 7 hours ahead of England, and so where short changed for today, but tomorrow we get busy hitting the sight of Singapore.

1st July. (my xxth Birthday)

A quick whizz around China town. A strange mix of old and new. Much of the older buildings have been replaced and sanitised by the concrete shopping malls. The markets have been replaced by what resembles a multi-story car park, where all the parking bays have small shops and stalls chaotically bidding for your custom. The food areas have a small kiosk selling one or two dishes to eat on tables set out on the path way. We tried one of these, tempting us with a delicious platter of prawn, noodle and other unidentifiable food stuffs. When we got the bowl, the appetising dream picture became a stew in reality. It tasted good, but not seeing any local branch of the advertising standards authority, we didn't attempt to complain about the presentation. It was cheap though.

Later, we where told that these stalls are given ratings by the local authority on their standards. A or B is very good, C is dodgy and D is to be avoided at all costs, as they have been given two weeks to clean up their act. If you cant see the sign, it probably means they are not A/B rated. We didn't notice any of these signs!

We set out for the Orchard road shopping district to suss out all these shopping malls. But the (Indian) taxi driver convinced us that we would be better served by the local 'Mustapha' (honest!) shopping Mall. This shopping shrangrila would supply us with any thing we wanted. Apparently it was built up by a local entrepreneur who started out selling tea off a barrow. He seemed to have a lot of respect from this taxi driver - as sort of Hindu Richard Branson. The taxi driver seemed to embody the spirit of singapore. He had tried to succeed with some business ventures, but despite every thing he said he didn't have the luck to succeed. I told him that you need hard work and luck to succeed, but his reply was you can work as hard as you like, but, like his cab, you dont get anywhere if the break is on. A quick check of the break lever confirmed that it wasn't on, and it was only the traffic that was holding us up.

The mustapha centre was a department store packed to the rafters with any thing remotely saleable. A bit too bazaar for us.

Round the corner was Little India. Leave your shoes at the door to see a brightly coloured Hindu temple with garishly coloured statues and paintings. No freezes depicting the Carma-Sutra here so we moved on.

That evening we had been recommended to go on the night safari around the local zoo. It started with a buffet lunch, and then we were hearded in the direction of the trams. This was entertaining and tried hard to give the appearance of showing off a lot of impressive animals in a natural setting from the comfort of a seated tram/buggy. It was interesting to see the animals in an unnatural twilight, as they where much more at ease and visible than the half asleep animals you see in conventional zoos. But, it was all a bit artificial. Not quite a Safari. The stage show afterwards was good. Plenty of well trained and entertaining animals performed in a disney-like stage show.

2nd July

We took a boat trip around the bay to turtle island. This was in a boat imported from China with red tile roofing and dragons and paintings. Battling with cargo ships queuing up to get into the port of Singapore. The trip included 'high-tea' on the boat. A quaint remnant of British colonialism. It gave a good view of the port and a reminder of the sea trading basis of Singapores existence.

Off the boat and down the waterfront was the Arts center. It looks like a spaceship has landed. It resembles a smelly fruit, the durian, that he natives seem to love. It is Singapore's attempt to raise the cultural level in the same way that the Sydney opera house did for Sydney, but it's nowhere as elegant.

That night we eat out at boat key - THE place to go for restaurants. The seafood restaurants are packed like sardines. Outside each is a helpfull soul who desperately wants to tell you why his restaurant is better than the others, - 20% discount, free round of drinks, sir wonderfull food, just step inside. It was difficult choosing while trying to fend off these persistant salesmen.

We eventually got a really good deal (well the owner insisted that we had) and next to the waterfront as well. It was good - with an amazing variety of fish dishes. The two business types at the next table recommended the peppered crab, and where busy tucking into same. It resembled an all in mud wrestling match with claws, bits of shell and spicy sauce covering plates, hands mouths and shirt fronts. It looked great fun, but tonight I wasn't interested in re-discovering finger painting so went for aquatic life with endoscelatal physiology instead.

Coming back to the hotel, we risked taking one of the pedalled rickshaws on offer. This was a hair raising trip through the evening streets of singapore in a tricycle made for three. We had two of them, and the drivers competed to find the quickest way through the traffic. Up pavements, over red lights, between diesel emitting buses, they didn't care. Just to make sure everyone within a few blocks knew they where coming, they also had very load music pumping out. This wouldn't have been so bad, but each rickshaw was playing something different. What do you do? lay back and enjoy the ride!

3rd July

A short day, as we have to get to the airport to fly to Cairns (Australia).We ventured out to Ruffles city. This is a very posh shopping mall ,owned by the owners of the Raffles hotel. This mall is as expensive as the street markets are cheap. Specifically designed to flease the Raffles clientell of maximum hard currency. Very nice though.

Raffles Hotel is a wonderfull oasis of calm in a bustling city (hey, I ought to write their brochures). It has rooms surrounding a court yard of palm trees and wrought iron decorated bars serving, amongst other things, the famous Singapore sling. Being midday, we had the nonalcoholic version , the virgin sling. I kept the glass. If I get the glass back to England in one piece, it'll be a miracle!

Guess what, the plane is delayed. 60 passengers from Dusseldorf have to make the connection to our flight, and their flight is delayed. Luckily, singapore airport has laid on a 'Spiderman' show for our entertainment. Yes, some yanks prancing around in lycra suits pretending to be superheroes. Well, so much for authentic singapore culture.