James and Tim's World Tour 2012: Welcome to the pleasure dome

Wednesday, 26/09/2012 – 104 A.D.

I’m not sure when I first woke up to the Asian dawn. At some point approaching morning I am positive that I opened my eyes to see the dark silhouette of my brother get out of bed and go to the window and take a look outside. Not sure if he then went to the lavatory, but I went straight back to sleep. Thing is, Tim swears blind that he didn’t get up once in the night. Either he is sleepwalking, this hotel room is haunted or the doxycycline is weaving its eerie magic.

Neither of us slept perfectly last night, but at least we slept. We may as well have been lying on planks of wood, the beds are that hard! Every time my heart beat against the mattress I could hear the bed springs noisily responding. Singapore is an extremely humid part of the world and I looked out of the window to see monsoon-like rain coming down. Although it didn’t last for too long, it made us take our time getting up, which we needed. Breakfast television in Singapore isn’t up to much, but at least it’s in English. They get eight free channels here, one of which is Channel 5, for some reason. And even though it would be a 30 degree day here, it’s still never quite warm enough to enjoy a cold shower…by the time Tim located the switch for the heater I’d just about stopped shivering. That said, even with the switch down it was lukewarm at best, but the temperature of the water is unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Given that I’d eaten six segments of dark chocolate for breakfast, we needed to get out and purchase supplies from the nearby shopping mall. If there’s one thing Singapore has it’s shopping malls – they are everywhere! It might have something to do with the citizens having the third highest purchasing power per capita in the world.

An aside – I wonder if the UK has anything of the highest per capita in the world?

As you can see from the above shot, this particular mall wasn’t particularly crowded. I know it’s a Wednesday morning, but you’d still expect more of a turnout, and some of the upper levels were totally devoid of customers. Maybe it’s because they’ve built too many, which wouldn’t surprise me as, after only being here for 12 hours I get the impression that expansion is the name of the game around here. The road is being dug up all along the street our hotel is on and the horizon is dominated by new skyscrapers spring up from the ground. Anyway, back to the mundane – we were able to find a supermarket that provided us with sarnie-fodder, so a reasonably typical British lunch is still on the cards in this far off mysterious land.

Back at the hotel we asked if they had any laundry facilities as the humidity was already starting to make our shirts stick to our backs. Alas they had no such facilities, but the reception guy directed us down the road, take a left, then take a right, two more lefts, back round the corner, another left, then a right, under the bridge and…we gave up trying to follow the instructions and went back to hand washing and hanging the clothes from the air con vent in the room. Some things never change! Oh yeah, and just to add, we got around using those towels by imagining that the dark stains came from contact with a rusty nail. Anything else is too hideous to contemplate, even for Asia.

Still easing gently into the Singapore experience, we had but two goals for the afternoon - to find the visitors' centre and locate a Barclays cash machine, of which there appeared to be a couple spread across the city. Unfortunately we went on to accomplish neither of these goals, but we got a general feel for the place. One of the big issues with being in Asia is being wary of drinking the water. Tim had a very bad experience in India and doesn't want to take the chance here, despite every website we look on saying that the tap water is fine to drink. Because of Tim's graphic description of what he went through, I'm playing it safe by boiling a kettle's-worth and then pouring that into my water bottle. Unfortunately in a humid climate of 30 degree heat boiled water can take a long time to cool down, and every time I went to swig it while strolling through the city I was effectively having a warm drink. I've since solved this problem by investing in some extra water bottles - as ever, it's a learning curve.

Still heading vaguely in vain to the visitors' centre using another dodgy Google Maps photo on Tim's phone, we walked through Burgis Junction, which contains outdoor market stalls and the odd nutter prancing about waving birds feathers and shouting in one of the other three official languages of Singapore besides English - Chinese, Malay and Tamil. Part of the markets is indoor and as we entered we were immediately attacked by all kinds of smells,some of which were so potent they could have punched us on the nose. It was a real assault on the senses. It was also slow moving through the crowds and I immediately went into one-hand-on-camera-and-one-hand-on-wallet-mode. Rearrange the words "thumbs", "like", "out", "stood", "sore" and apply them to the two of us.

By now the afternoon was getting on and the visitors' centre wasn't where we thought it was. Neither was the Barclays Bank, and if we don't use one of their ATMs then we have to pay additional fees. Progress was slow, not necessarily because of the heat, but from having to stop at endless pedestrian crossings to get across the street. No one seemed to be jaywalking and we weren't going to take the chance in a city state where you can get locked up for chewing on a Wrigleys Extra. But it wasn't all in vain as we came across the infamous Raffles Hotel. I may look out of place standing outside such a prestigious establishment, but one day I'll be in there and sipping Singapore Slings until I'm too drunk to say my own name, let alone, "Im staying in Little India, please can you call me a cab so I don't have to navigate those endless pedestrian crossings." One day, Jimbo, one day...

We got back to the hotel in time to skype our parents before they went on holiday to Spain. And then we sat down to our laptops and started planning our next moves across this great continent. I’m all for a bit of planning – came in handy in whatever the job I used to do was – but so soon after arriving we’re already thinking about moving on? I guess that’s the way it goes on The Road. After a couple of hours I went out for a walk around the surrounding streets as the hustle and bustle of the locals continued into the night. The people do try and get you to come in and eat at their establishments, but they’re not pushy about it when you say no. In fact, I really like the vibe here already – if all of Asia is like this then we’re going to have a lot of fun together!