Wednesday 5th December 1984 - Singapore
We slept like logs last night and
only the 07.00 alarm woke us up. Had a substantial American breakfast,
including pancakes with maple syrup, and then set off on our free tour of the
city. What a bunch we are travelling with!! Most of them were moaning about how
cold it was in their rooms (as if the air-conditioning was not controllable!)
while others were muttering about our guide, a very pleasant Chinese girl
called, phonetically anyway, Nee. We found her very pleasant and informative. (But even those who travel still tend to
think in racial stereotypes – something
we found lingering 16 years later on a visit to Vietnam when there were South
Africans in the party.)
The tour took us first to the
Botanical Gardens and the orchids in particular. They are Singapore’s
national flower and grow in great profusion all over the place. So many of them
are truly beautiful. Seemed a bit lost on some of our philistines however.
Incidentally, before I forget, I must just jot down a couple of fine
malapropisms. One was Margaret last night – “I don’t mind prawns but don’t like squib at all.” The others have
slipped my mind for the moment, but there were some other beauties.
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| The cows outside the Hindu Temple - no not the ones on the pavement - the ones on the pillar! |
From the gardens we went into town
via some splendid suburbs with huge houses and substantial gardens, most of
which were owned by embassies. We had a quick tour of the town, stopping off at
a large Hindu temple right in the middle of the city. There was not much
traffic about because shops only start opening at 09.00 – 09.30 and some later
still. There were a few trishaws though, with their peddlers/drivers, mainly
elderly, looking very solemn and wearing, more often than not, a ‘hard hat’
from a building site. Not that it would be difficult to get hold of one in Singapore.
Never seen so many buildings going up all over the place.
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| The Hindu Temple |
Next stop was Mt Faber, the local
high spot which is about as high as the Kopje in Harare. There wasn’t much to see from there
but it gave us a bit of a view of the city. Back in the bus we set off for Tiger Balm
Gardens. I could have
spent a lot of time there, but we had the statutory twenty minute stop and a
return visit was out of the question as Rab was not at all keen, to say the least.
The Gardens are like an early prototype of Disneyland,
but with no moving parts. There are statues everywhere, some of everyday scenes
in different parts of the world and some of unusual animals. Then there are
various mythological scenes as well. All fascinating I thought, even if it is
all a little tatty and run down now, with paint peeling etc. there were three
or four snake charmers at the entrance to the Gardens but they weren’t
performing and Rab wasn’t too keen on watching them. You could have your
photograph taken with a snake around your neck, but no one in our group was
that keen – and I was forbidden to be so stupid!
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| Chinatown |
That was the last call of the tour
and after getting back to the hotel we set out for Peoples’ Park where, Rab had
been told, she would find a good selection of material. (Rab was an inveterate collector of material to feed her sewing habit.
A very skilful seamstress, she enjoyed making her fine quality clothes with
material garnered from all over the world. It is amazing how heavy material can
be when packed in luggage.) The cab was quite reasonable we thought at
S$2.30 but we went first of all to the Peoples’ Place – the new one – which was
full of very interesting little shops selling everything. We soon found our way
to the older building and, since it was about 15.15, had a very tasty sweet and
sour pork with a couple of Tiger beers for S$15.00.
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| A watchful eye in Chinatown |
Rab was in her element after that
because there must have been between 600 and 800 little cubicles in the
building, all selling a variety of materials, with very little apparent
duplication. We had covered a quarter of one of the four floors when we had to
stop to get back to the hotel for our evening excursion. I fear that we will be
going back there!!
We all gathered in the lobby at
17.15 for our starlight cruise on the
harbour. This was an optional extra at $28 each. As we set off the heavens
opened and it came down in buckets., as it did when we arrived. It is now clear
that it does this every evening. The traffic downtown was pretty horrendous and
it took us about one and a quarter hours to get to the quay. Peter, Margaret
and Jennifer (who is a matron at Edenvale
Hospital as it turns out)
seemed to have been celebrating something because they were very merry and
festive. Got on my tits a bit actually because they were very giggly and were
mocking Richard in a most cruel way behind his back.
Our junk finally arrived and we set
sail, after having transhipped “due to technical reasons” to another vessel.
There was a bunch of Italians aboard plus other odds and ends but our group was
the noisiest by far. So much so that I beat a retreat to the upper deck since
the rain had stopped and enjoyed the view. It was not really that spectacular
but it was very interesting with hundreds of ships anchored in the roadsteads.
Unfortunately the sunset wasn’t too good as there was still a lot of rain and
thunder about but I got a couple of shots which should turn out OK. We had
dinner aboard, which was sweet and sour pork (again!) but it was pretty poor
quality. As we passed the container dock, the fire boat was practising which
made quite a sight. All in all we felt that the trip just wasn’t full value,
although I think it was worth doing.
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