After an awful eight hour wait, Qantas gets its plane going. To make up for this discomfort, Qantas hands out a piece of paper apologising for the delay. It seems that this piece of paper is what differentiates a full service like airline Qantas from its budget offshoot Jetstar. Certainly the budget hotel in the red light district of Singpore that Qantas put up its passengers missing the flight to India doesn't. A lady going to India with her baby was so put out by the hotel decided to wait out a full day at the airport rather than stay at this hotel.
Singapore provided instant amusement. coming out of the airport, we narrowly missed having to get into a cab with washing hanging in the boot. G couldn't have tolerated having his luggage share space with somebody else's washing.
G and I stayed at a budget hotel of our own as we hadn't booked the flight between Singapore and India with Qantas. Called Hotel Fragrance Crystal, it was situated in the red-light and very ethnic area of Geylang, with prostitutes and pimps plying their right opposite the hotel in the shelter of a conveniently placed decrepit building.
The hotel smelt of stale smoke and could perhaps be hiring out rooms by the hour. However this is doubtful, given the other patrons of the hotel seemed respectable people, there on business. The rooms were small and shabby, but this being Singapore, everthing worked- air conditioning and hot water. There was a price list tacked on the door pricing the various items in room (TV, DVD Player, bed, pillows, curtains).
G was interested in Singapore for its shopping and was disappointed. After a hugely overpriced breakfast at a cafe in the Mariott Hotel, where a glass of water melon glass cost $Sg10, we went to various shopping malls and discovered that while Singapore does have everything, the prices aren't worth the inconvenience of carting goods back to Australia.
In the afternoon, we made some ticket changes for Glenn at the Emirates office in this overblown building in xxxx. The lobby was massive, encrusted with faux-brass fittings. A huge plaza outside featured large copper tinted statutes of the great men (no women) of history, none of whom had any assoication with Singapore or indeed with each other. It was odd to see Abe Linchon standing next to Plato, Mozart and Beethoven.
We had dinner at a roadside diner, near Tajnong Pagar Road. For the cost of a single water melon juice earlier in the day, G and I had a subtanstial meal with a coke each. I was surprised by G's readiness to eat 2 kinds of lukewarm pork from a road side eatery in tropic Singapore with nothing to kill the bugs but the carbonic acidity of coca cola. The food was excellent. I had two types of tofu, scrambled eggs with rice and lovely young okra that were easily the best I had ever had. I suppose roadside diners can't afford food poisoning and certainly not in Singapore.
Afterwards we walked along Tajong Pagar road looking for some gay clubs mentioned in soom guide book, but found nothing but some reasonable examples of Colonial Architecture and more bridal shops that Singapore even with its large population could possibly need.
We had a Singapore Sling each at a fancy pants club and neither liked the pink cough syrupy concoction on offer.
taking a cab back to our budget hotel, we walked past the pimps on the off chance there would be some guys on offer but alas only women were offered. There seemed to be an awful lot of guys hanging around. The pimp to whore ratio seemed rather high and maybe they ought to consider increasing productivity by having the pimps also pimp themselves. they were cute enough.
Back to airport for a jet airways flight to Delhi.
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