Welcome to Singapore!

There is a right frame of mind to enter a new country — wide-eyed, alert, well-rested, on the qui vive for new things to see, smell, taste, experience…

When you’re in this zone, a stamp on your passport is the opening of a new chapter. A news stand is a mine of cultural curios, intriguing gossip and local insight, a food stall is a buffet of delights, even the pictures on the notes in your wallet are a window into a new and alien culture…

And then there is the frame of mind in which I arrive in Singapore.

A mood somewhere between jaded and baleful, its woody core of arrant cynicism adorned with floral top notes of 5am-wakeup and too-much-to-do-before-my-son-gets-here.

You could bottle it and sell it.

Perhaps as Eau d’Ennuie.

Though I’m not sure there’d be many takers.

As I contemplate the prospect of the backpackers in which I will be staying to preserve funds for the important things in life (Universal Studios, brunch at KuDeTa, dim sum, cocktails, prawn fishing, shoes, books…) my mood descends further, from “Meh!” to “Gah!”.

I feed my last few rupiah coins and a solitary 1000-note into the charity box with a sense of loss. This isn’t a border crossing like our arrival in Timor Leste. This is a farewell to Indonesia.

I haven’t travelled overland to get here. I won’t be slinging our possessions onto our trusty bike and heading off into the great wide open.

All that remains of our bike, in fact, is a rather slender sheaf of Singapore dollars. A sum that looked much better in rupiah…

I won’t be taking a cab like a responsible adult. Nor will I be negotiating the MRT like a local.

Nope. I’ll be lugging my pack to something called a Beezy Bus.

A mode of transportation for which, the snotty side of me says, channelling Margaret Thatcher’s observation about buses in general, I am now over a decade too old. And which threatens, further, to be decked out in yellow and black stripes.

There’s a queue at immigration. A long queue.

“Gah!” I think, unmollified by the sight of the free sweeties, but cramming a couple into my mouth all the same. “Get it together, Singapore! What do you think you are? Indonesia?!”

The Beezy Bus carries me in solitary splendour from Changi airport into town, through a pathetic grey drizzle so reminiscent of England that I feel, paradoxically, cold, though the air outside is sauna steamy.
And, yes, I’m getting culture shock. From Indonesia, even cosmopolitan Bali, to Singapore is a short flight but a VERY long way.

Malls are to Singapore as casinos are to Vegas. The lifeblood of the city. The tourist draw. The locals’ weekend escape.

Malls form a web of subterranean arteries that transport folk from enormous block to enormous block in a state of artificial, aircon daylight, a space where time itself is slowed to increase consumption, and ATMs are signposted more times and more clearly than exits.
The Beezy Bus drives down wide, empty, grey, slow, wet freeways, with nary a scooter nor a speck of dirt to be seen, through canyons of grey, soulless malls, condos, office blocks, with barely a human being in sight.

“Where is everyone?” I think.

Singapore is the world’s third most densely populated country, after Macau and Monaco, but the streets are like Vegas at 10am on a quiet Tuesday, just with added rain and missing colour.

The drizzle picks up a little, but not enough to be anything more than irritating. I shiver.

My pack and I lumber from the Beezy Bus through a tantalising waft of curry — the real, slightly acrid, burnt-green scent of frying curry leaves — past an array of brightly coloured Chinese shophouses and into the backpackers.

In the right frame of mind, I think, as backpacker ghettoes go, Singapore’s Little India could be OK…

My eyes adjust to the living area. It looks like a student common room. It’s full of, well, young people. Sprawled on beanbags, hunched over laptops, chatting, conversing, hanging out, and generally *having fun*.

My inner Scrooge takes an instant and visceral objection.

Why aren’t they out and about doing things, the slackers? Why aren’t kids this age somewhere more adventurous than bl**dy Singapore?

WTF is WRONG with the youth of today?

No worries, however! My room is in a separate block.

“Great!” I say, chirpily, surveying my boudoir, which contains a triple bunk bed, a sofa, a mild smell of paint, and, umm, absolutely no surface on which to write. “What’s the password for the wifi?”

“Oh!” says the girl. “No wifi here! You need to go to the other block.”

This is, in my fragile state, not only a complete catastrophe but also an utter indictment of Singapore in all its “take-your-shoes-off-now” “don’t-smoke-here” “litterers-will-be-hanged” “don’t-mention-the-dictatorship” pettiness.

“What?!” I expostulate. “But on your website…. When I booked, I… Oh, never mind. Thanks.”

I have a job to “finish off” (AKA: “start”), and an evening’s bar reviewing to research. I also have a date to meet a friend from London in the swish and upscale bar he runs at 10ish, and have promised to text him my Singapore mobile number as soon as I have acquired said item.

But it’s raining.

It’s still bl**dy raining.

F*ck this for a game of soldiers, I think. I’ll watch a movie till my mood improves, and brave their bathrooms later.

Sprawled on my bunk in front of The Last Emperor, stinking of plane sweat and nicotine, I give myself a little motivational speech.

“So, you don’t like Singapore? Remember Cambodia? You thought you were going to HATE that, and you really liked it. Grow up, woman! Get a grip! There are worse ways to earn travel pennies than reviewing bars. Get up off your arse, to the 7-11 and buy a SIM card like a bona fide, location independent adult.”

I drag my sorry arse into the 7-11, where I find that buying a SIM card in Singapore requires documentation not dissimilar to that required to open a bank account in the UK.

But fifteen bucks and half an hour later, I have communications enabled.

I pick up a copy of The Straits Times, for the local and international news, and a copy of Hot, a Singapore magazine so obviously “inspired by” Heat that I’m surprised Bauer isn’t suing, for an update on some celebrities I’ve heard of and plenty that I look forward to discovering.

And so to food…

As I amble past the South Indian eateries with their wafts of turmeric and curry leaves, their cheap plastic tables, their Tamil language menus, with my newspapers under my arm, I feel — well, I begin to think that I might actually quite like Singapore.

There are endless stalls of shiny things, cheap jewellery and hair products, open air fruiteries, stands selling flowers for offerings, and PEOPLE.

Ooh, LOADS of people.

I pick a restaurant by smell, and wander in. I’m the only non-Indian in there. The menu is Tamil on one side, a Malay transcription on the other.

I go over to the trays of bubbling, curry-scented gloop and ask, “What’s that?”

The lady looks at me blankly. A couple of the diners look up from shovelling rice and curry into their mouths with their fingers as if to wonder what on earth this crazy lady is doing here.

B*gger! I thought everyone spoke English in Singapore. I try Bahasa Indonesia, which is very similar to Malay, another of Singapore’s four official languages. No dice.

Gah!

So I point. “I want some of that, some of that, some of that, some of everything, please,” I say.

“Ah!” She pulls out a plastic tray, a piece of banana leaf and five metal cups. “Thali!”

“Yeah!” I say, grinning with relief. “Thali, please!”

She bustles me over to a table, sits me down, smiling all the while. She slaps the banana leaf on the brown plastic tray, piles a mountain of rice and five metal cups of different sauces onto the leaf, and slops on a heap of dhal and a mound of spicy pumpkin curry.

It’s delicious.

I shovel down rice and curry and power through Hot magazine’s coffin-watching tribute of the week. I finish the rice, and the vegetable curries.

Her husband, grinning broadly, piles more curry and rice onto my plate. I wave at him to stop, sign that I’m full.

The cost of all this bounty in expensive, sterile Singapore? Four Singapore dollars, or just over two quid.

Singapore and me?…

Maybe we ARE going to be friends after all…