Singa-Shopping-pore

24-30/Jan/03
Gamal in a fine city
Singapore is not only the self-proclaimed shopping Mecca of the world, the
cleanest capital on the planet or the only remaining capitalist dictatorship,
it is for and foremost a beautiful 'Fine' city: you can get fined for just
about anything:
Jaywalking, spitting, smoking, littering, chewing gum, drinking in the MRT (metro), feeding birds or stray cats, performing sodomy (gay, straight, all same same... cannot!), entering the city-centre without paying, carrying Durian fruit on the public transport system and urinating in elevators could all cost you up to S$1,000 (usd650).

Scared to death that we'd be stripped off our last remaining dollars or just simply shot on the spot we made sure we washed and ironed our clothes properly, put on our best appearances and attempted to behave (which turned out mighty difficult for Chris...).
Singapore is an amalgamation of tall high-rise buildings, food stalls, food markets, shopping malls, shopping plazas, a few shopping complexes and here and there a collection of stores gathered together in a shopping centre (the shabbiest of them would make Dubai's luxurious "City Centre" blush in total shame).
Everyone seems to be totally obsessed with shopping, buying, spending money, and eating.
In a conscious effort to melt in the local culture, we joined the Singaporeans
in their excruciating hardship life. So we went to Orchard street, and we ate, we shopped, we drooled, we walked, we saw, we bought, we looked, we bargained, we tasted, we stuffed ourselves, and managed to spend in 5 days twice as much as we had in 3 weeks in Loas.

As the little apartment of our host Jerome was already full, we slept at the
Mayo Inn, a simple Chinese run hotel on Bancoolen Street in the
"backpacker" district of Singapore - Channel and Louis Vuitton backpacks only, of course!

Gamal's Acheivements:
Apart from filling our tummies and emptying our wallets, our real achievements were:
- A visit to the super well done, wildlife filed and fun Night Safari
- A fun evening of cold Chardonnay and self-cooked food at Jerome's place (our ultimate dream for the past 4 months)
- A visit to the Boom Boom room, where an Indian transvestite put on a great show with his equally bent fellow group members.
- We finally saw The Two Towers (Lord of the rings) and Chris did not even fall asleep (well... almost)
- We managed to get a new palm, which fitted our old keyboard (we will spare you the long story of screaming, shouting, insisting and complaining by Chris- the-Arab).
- A visit to charming Little India and to buzzy China Town (Two districts that are the living proof that Singaporeans have obviously not been outside of their little clean protected goody-goody cushy island, and certainly never breathed the air of Delhi: the streets of little India are incredibly clean, they are free of the puddles of thick slimy greenish spit and they are filled with
charming tidy little colourful colonial houses. One could not avoid thinking
that this is what Delhi would look like, should it be under a strict autocratic non-corrupt capitalistic civilized 1st world government... but hey, some say
that that's what makes the charm and character of India (probably the same
people who listen to Michael Bolton))

And the winner is...
For us Singapore was a great break from our low cost traveling, and we
thoroughly enjoyed being back in the "real" world, well as real as Dubai is anyway.