Singapore, Singapore

Hello from Singapore... In Kuala Lumpur I did a spot of sightseeing and a lot of shopping! I bought some warm clothes in preparation for Australia's winter, plus a pair of sneakers as the soles of my ballet pumps have peeled away after three months' of hardcore walking in countries without pavements. My big toe is poking out of the left shoe so it's time to say goodbye... Apart from shopping I went up Merdaka tower "the 4th highest tower in the world", and took loads of pictures of the city as the sun set, and wandered around Little India, Chinatown and the colonial district. I met up with Azmir, who is a friend of a friend, for a tasty Malay lunch, had a good chat and evaluated KL and life after Warwick... Good thing I found plenty to do because I had to clear out of my hostel for a day because they were fumigating the rooms! They claimed that all KL hostels underwent fumigation regularly, but I'm not so sure.. Interestingly I didn't see any bugs until after the alleged fumigation! They probably fumigated them out of hiding...

In Melaka I bumped into the Aussie family I crossed the border with! I was tempted to run and hide to avoid another recitation of South-East Asia's currencies, but I braved them and they were rather sweet, bubbling with recommendations of what to see. Melaka was overrun with tourists, many of whom were Dutch - they obviously feel they still own the place! ;-) and had some good sights, including the Stadthuys and the museums in it; a ruined cathedral on a hill; the Sultanate Palace; Chinatown; but I was disappointed that there was so much traffic, even through the nice old bits. In Malaysia everyone has a car, as opposed to Vietnam for example, where everyone has a motorbike - I really don't know which is worse! I think I was hoping Melaka would be more like Luang Prabang in Laos, but it lacks Luang Prabang's character and peacefulness. Apparently a lot of Singaporeans come to Melaka for the weekend - that's when everything is open, and they have the nightmarket along Jonker Street (which has loads of arty shops and some boutiques). It was quite fun, with loads of weird food, including fried egg ice cream, which is a deep-fried egg 'pocket' filled with ice cream - I watched a Malaysian girl eat it and she looked torn between disgust and bemusement and giggled a lot! Other delicacies included hot dog waffle (a hot dog sausage in a waffle), Cupcorn (a cup of sweetcorn), Magic Ice (flavoured ice lolly, including Durian flavour, which is an absolutely rank-smelling fruit considered a real treat in South-East Asia), pineapple tarts (Melaka is number one for these, which have a pineapple jam topping and I've been eating since my scuba dive, when they had them on the boat), radish cake (a white spongy mass which is fried and cut into squares), and rice balls (made of ground rice/rice powder, taste like knoedel), which I ate with wonton soup (yum). I saw two stalls selling rock hard caramel-stuff, which they had to chisel off a block (!); it really would have made any dentist weep to see it. There were also live bands, mostly headed by large sweaty American guys, whose repertoire was limited to old-school rock covers, but fun to watch (I liked the Bob Dylan covers at least). Also fun to watch were the elderly Chinese men sitting on plastic chairs and smoking and watching the bands with impassive faces - you'd think they weren't that bothered but I think they were actually loving it! My suspicions that Asians have inherently bad taste in music were finally confirmed when I saw Modern Talking CDs for sale (cringe-worthy German band that should be taken outside and shot).
I stayed in the Eastern Heritage Guesthouse which the American girl in the Cameron Highlands had said was ok. The building was a stunning old Chinese-style house with slightly shabby rooms and open-air bathrooms on what could be a great balcony looking out over the rooftops - I found myself looking at it and making restoration plans, which makes me think I might have the dreaded Hendry-house-'fixing' gene! Aaah! Luckily I will never have enough money to buy a house, ha ha...

My border crossing to Singapore was another interesting one... the Malaysian border check was easy and we zipped through no-man's land, then to the Singaporean check-point. As the bus driver handed me my backpack he said I had twenty minutes and after that the bus was leaving, so if I missed it I'd have to wait for the next one. I went in and there were huge crowds waiting, and the only queue that was moving was the Singapore-passport queue, the 'all other passports' queues were jammed. After a while they turned one of the SP-passport queues into an all-passports checkpoint so I slipped over and the queue started moving. Ahead of me I saw one other Westerner who was on the same bus as me and noticed he had an arrival/departure card, which I didn't, so I went over and asked him where he got it, and he said he'd been given it with the bus ticket in Melaka. Obviously they'd forgotten to give me one... So I had to get out of the queue and find one and fill it in, then back into the queue, through the check point and through customs, and of course the bus had gone when I got out. About five others from my bus had also missed it (mostly Malaysians and Singaporeans on holiday, no backpackers at all), including the Australian guy from the queue. They were all rather confused and worried - I was the only one who'd been told what to do if we missed the bus so I told them another one would be along soon and we waited... The Australian turned out to be from Melbourne, now living in Perth, and was a retired hippie who'd done the trip I did in the 70's, when he said his bus in Laos was shot at... this time round he was just on holiday to Singapore (which he hated) and had popped up to Melaka for a couple of days. He also said that lots of Malaysians commute across the border every day to work in Singapore for higher wages, so I dread to think what the border would have been like on a weekday in the morning or evening!
When we got to Singapore I checked into Bugis Backpackers, which is a nice enough place in a good location between Little India and the Colonial district/city centre. The mixed dorm is noisy (which I'll have to get used to for Australia) but clean and the bathrooms are decent (last time I saw a cockroach in my bathroom was in Songkhla so I'm hoping that was the last!). A poor little Korean guy was asking me how he can phone his parents from here - obviously I look like a seasoned backpacker; I think it's my scruffy look. Makeup? can't remember what that is... same goes for sleek hair or wrinkle-free clothes or having clean feet :-)
This is the most expensive capital I've been to in South-East Asia. There are loads of hip Asian teenagers (they all smoke! this might be what happens if you ban chewing gum?!) and glamorous girls and sophisticated women running around (always shopping...there's a real spend, spend, spend mentality here) and the malls and subway are crowded. The malls are extremely disorienting! You can walk into one and wander about aimlessly and suddenly you've crossed into the adjacent one without knowing it and are in a completely different street because they're so big! Lots of Western clothes at Western prices... and fun food courts where you can eat pretty much anything. If I'd come here straight from the UK I would probably not be enthusiastic about it but after everywhere else it's civilised and nice and easy to get round. True it lacks character and is basically a big shopping center, but the river front is quite nice, and the Asian Civilisations Museum I went to yesterday kept me occupied for over four hours - it was really good and had loads of interactive displays. I suspect they plundered every other museum in South-East Asia because they have all the best artifacts from the countries I've been to... maybe that explains why all other museums so far have been a bit mediocre! However they also know how to display the items properly and write informative blurbs. I think the other countries just aren't quite as slick and up to scratch on Western-style museum culture, but on the other hand they make up for it by having beautiful things like temples and old buildings to stumble across on the street (for free! take that, Singapore). I also went to Raffles Hotel and had a Singapore Sling (cliché, I know, but it had to be done) and am checking out the Botanic Gardens today. Tomorrow I'm going to the art gallery here and hope it's as good as the museum. Then it's off to the airport (nice and easy on the MRT/underground) and next stop Oz...