Now as I recall / We tried a million times

A few years back, on my first adult visit to Bangkok, we were hit by the normal scam merchants...the ones they now warn you about just about everywhere. On our first day we went up river to the Palace / Wat Po compex, as most tourists tend to. We were approached by a guy just off the boat. He was well dressed, charming, and very helpful.

The palace is closed today....it's the King's birthday and you cannot go in.

Back then, there weren't the multitude of signs everywhere warning you about the scams and the seasoned guys who do this as a con. Now they say things like:

Indeed.

But back then we listened, and he drew notations and circles on our maps.

You need to go to the this temple instead, and maybe to this place, where they've got a massive sale on gems. Oh look, here's a Tuktuk...this guy will take you for 10 Baht...

I may be the sort of guy who'll buy a long playing album off anyone who tells me it's a must have instant classic (and yes, I know you own it already, but it's remastered, ok?), but I'm not anyone's random tuktuk passenger, so we declined. The next guy down the road told us it was open but we were inappropriately dressed, the next guy said it was closed after midday, and so on....

The next day a very friendly, slightly overweight woman approached us in Siam Square...closed till 11am said she, flashing her Tourist Police ID.... the sort we were to discover you can buy anywhere in Khao San Rd... and suggested we go in a friendly taxi elsewhere until it opened.

The scam, of course, then develops in one of several directions, many of which involve fake gems or angry salesmen. Some involve doped drinks with removed wallets and passports, and so on.

The Thai police mostly have a policy of warning and then going 'stupid bloody farangs' if you don't pay attention.

I wonder what the near future held for this happy couple, far below the Skytrain concourse we were on near Chit Lom Station last week. This extraordinarily helpful businessman (don't you ask why they're so helpful?) spent the best part of ten minutes drawing on their tourist map, pointing in directions before sending them on their way. By the looks of their 'we're in the tropics now' dress and manner, they'd just arrived on a long saved for holiday after a trip to the city from whichever country town in Australia or New Zealand they lived in (note the very snatchable purse over her shoulders). The grandchildren and the extended family had all seen them off for the big OE.

And what an adventure was in store.

Shortly after leaving Mr. Helpful, the two, no doubt commenting to each other as to their luck in meeting such a decent, and thoroughly generous guy, likely a businessman out for a coffee, happy to assist a couple of Bangkok novices, conveniently bumped into another helpful local (gosh, they're everywhere)-the woman in the photo below:

And oh yes, a little older, and a little chubbier, but it was her....the nice lady from the 'Tourist Police' a few years back, still helping out confused looking tourists. A few minutes after this shot was taken, she hailed a convenient cab, and sent these two on their way....to either, if they're lucky, realising that the gems they bought are rather overpriced bits of glass, or, if they are less fortunate, waking up 24 hours later with empty pockets and maxxed out credit cards.

There was little we could do beyond wave and hope.

What can a poor boy do / 'cept play in a rock'n'roll band

You said the things you did in the past / Were all because you're living too fast

The question I found myself asking over and over again this week in Singapore is “Where all the tourists?”. The question, of course, has an obvious answer, but still, in a place that is normally swarming with Ockers and Swedes in stubbies and Nikons, it was a tad disconcerting.

We could’ve swung a Moray Eel around at the normally overflowing East Coast Seafood and not hit a single Swede or elderly British couple (fondly remembering empires lost).

Bali has had a fairly substantial downturn in tourist numbers too, regardless of the ‘official’ figures you read. One only has to look in the restaurants, wander the streets, or look at the beaches to know that something ain’t right. But, unlike Singapore, Bali has a safety net, that being the always dependable Australian budget tourists. When all else fails (and Bali has been trying to move itself a little more upmarket in the last couple of years, with some success, hence the thousands of villas and the collapse in infrastructure in the new villa areas), it can always turn to the package tourists from the working class ‘burbs of Perth and Melbourne to swamp the island in their search for Bintang T-shirts and “platting of hair”, god help us all. And if you check the uglier side of paradise, primarily the hellholes of Tuban and Kuta, there are increasing swarms in the DVD shops and the Oz Steak Bars.

So Bali gets that…that and the niche tourists, like the not insubstantial pink tourist market and the European trust fund babies who come every year to add to the traffic mayhem.

Singapore on the other hand has really painted itself into something of a corner. It’s far too expensive for the low-end tourists from Geelong or Blackpool, and rather unwelcoming to the gay, and the wild and free Euro babies.

But for all that I rather like it. That is, I like it rather more than I used to like it. Sure it hasn’t put behind it all the things that have always driven me rather crazy about the place…the rules, the odd design overkill, the rules, the excessive orderliness, and the rules.. are all still scarily evident. But somehow it seems to have developed the beginnings of a soul, an edge, or at least it’s managed to pull that edge back to just underneath the politically ordained veneer that has stifled it for the best part of three decades. There are those who say it’s always been there, and maybe it’s just me, but either way, I’m happy to have finally made its acquaintance.

Rule number one in every Asian city is to sidestep or ignore the guides, online or in print. This rule just about translates worldwide but, from experience, is most especially relevant anywhere in Asia. There are, for example, some pretty worthy online guides to any experience you’d want to have in London, NYC or Sydney. Not so in Asia, where local knowledge or informed exploration are your only choices (perhaps excluding Bali where the established guide books are perhaps your best chance of avoiding the inevitable overcharging and scams that face a novice here, and there are really no reliable online guides).

Singapore in particular is a place where avoiding the restaurant and bar guides, tearing up Time Out, and dumping the Lonely Planet are really compulsory if you have designs on doing anything outside the square or seeing the something that isn’t ordained as the accepted tourist experience.

Our only foray into Time Out’s recommendations was a trip to Divine, the bar in Parkview, a building that, in a very Singaporean way, apes Deco to excess, but thoroughly misses the point and the essence of what they are doing. It ain’t the Chrysler Building as much as it tries.

In the same way its always worth taking a rain check on the gruesome swilling tourist / expat tack / sleaze along the river at Clarke Quay, Boat Quay and Robertson Quay.

Much more satisfying and, for want of a better, less overused word, sophisticated, are the groovy little bars found around the southern and eastern ends of Chinatown, in the maze of little streets full of intriguing design bureaus, bookshops, cafes, restaurants, boutique hotels, and, yes, bars.

Or the new, lets pass on the banana leafs and mass market slop please (like the awful Mutha’s in Racecourse Rd), cuisine orientated Indian eateries around Little India.

We always start our arrival into Singapore with a fight with the hotel. It’s a tradition. Hotel check-in staff are, almost without exception, rude, inflexibly rule-bound, and unhelpful. Service is little more than an early chapter in the corporate rule book they read and then forgot (I have to be fair, The M Hotel is been a happy exception….they even sent a girl to my room at 1am one night…Are you Mr. Rao said the smallish Indian lass. No, said I rather sleepily. She looked relieved when I shut the door, but I guess she still needed to track down the aforesaid Mr. Rao for the rendezvous. At The Meridian on Orchard (a dump if ever there was one, but reassuringly overpriced as hotels in Singapore tend to be) the doorman asked me if I’d need anything extra later? I simply pointed to Brigid and explained I was well covered.

And so, yes, The Amara said we could either have a smoking room with a double / king bed or a non-smoking with twin beds. That we’d ordered non-smoking with a king and pre-paid for such seemed irrelevant. If you want that, you need to pay $100 more…

No sir, yes ma’am, sorry sir repeated the rule bound James, a junior manager, as he remembered by rote, chapter 6 of the rule book, the one about loudly angry foreigners threatening complaints to all and sundry.

This is between you and your booking agent, sir.

We made a substantive (but very calm) noise and then made some more and said we’d be back in an hour for our double bed in a non-smoking room or we would make a fair amount more.

Noise works in Singapore. It ain’t properly covered by that chapter in the rulebook. No one complains in Asia, most especially in Singapore where national compliance is taught from birth in the state sanctioned birthing units, and then drilled in for the next two decades.

On return, we were gathered by the general manager and escorted to his desk. He said he had something to show us and we both expected it was into a soundproof room to allow us to make our noise as loudly as we wished before we were ignored again and herded to out defined twin room under threat of expulsion for non rule compliance.

But, no. Hell, no! I don’t know if it’s the lack of tourists, or the beginnings of a new national spine, or a re-written rule book (scribed by someone bought in to advise on these sorts of things), but he took us to the 16^th floor, the Club Floor, to a non-smoking king bed with a view (of a construction site to be sure but it’s better than looking through into another smoking room with twin bed, or worse, a non-smoking room with a double bed that we’d been refused).

Is this okay?

What’s the catch?

None. Would you like free Internet?

Yes.

What time is your flight?

7pm.

Would you like 4pm check out?

Uhh, yes. No catch?

No. It’s offered with our apologies.

To anyone who’s spent anytime in Singapore, the above is bizarre, almost certifiable.

Then Mr. Habim (that was he) let it slip:

I lived in Jakarta for 14 years.

Ahh, so you’ve encountered service before…….you bloody boat rocker, you.

Either way, it does make you feel better about Singapore.

I bought a 320GB travel drive in Funan IT, perhaps the best IT centre on the planet but also, traditionally, the rudest and most unhelpful.

Don’t buy that one sir..this is much better value, faster and cheaper.

I was floored again.

And then I got the warm and fuzzies, a glow of positivity, at the quite extraordinary new National Museum of Singapore, which, amongst very much more which I simply didn’t have the time for, leads you on a interactive history of Singapore quite unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere…with dozens of audio and visual alleyways that demand you go down them and I’m not one to refuse.

The impossible had started to happen. I began to feel good about Singapore (feelings that may only have been submerged since I’d spent several years there as an Air Force brat, in the days, when, as seems inconceivable now, New Zealand was tasked with defending the island.

I’m really not that sure I’m comfortable with my new found affection for the place.

Oh operator's manual / I'd just fall apart without you

God knows how many times I’ve been to Singapore in the past few years, my overflowing passport seems littered with stamps from their reliably welcoming immigration staff (New Zealand could do well to send theirs to study how its done). Suffice to say it seems thoroughly routine these days and I’ve grown to quite like the conformity of it all after the often dysfunctional chaos of Indonesia.

Another reason to like the trip is the exit out of Denpasar. Ngurah Rai International Airport provides one with a bizarre mix of humour and frustration. The frustration comes mostly from the creaky bureaucracy of the place….the six levels of officialdom one has to pass to get out is just another sign of the bureaucratic overkill that Indonesia inherited from the Dutch which they’ve managed to add bewildering and confusing layers to with no rhyme or reason.

But even here the humour creeps in. On leaving the Indonesian resident has to pay an exit tax equivalent to two and a half times the average monthly wage. There are a variety of reasons put forward by the government for this but needless to say none stand up to much scrutiny and in a land like this if you have the right connections or bucks you can easily get an exclusion stamp. Indeed in Indonesia if you have the right connections you can become a government minister as recent statements by the Minister of Aviation are evidence, ability or commonsense being irrelevant to the job. But that is an aside.

You can also get an exclusion from the exit tax if you have a tax number, so, as usual, I wandered across to the Fiskal office with NPWP card in hand to get the exclusion stamp. When I arrived the two guys running the office were, like two spoons, wrapped together asleep on the floor. There was a pile of cash on the top of the photocopier next to them and the door was open. I banged on the window rather loudly and they woke, rubbing their eyes. I thought about offering them Rp20,000 for a posed asleep photo, for use herein, but thought that it may have been pushing it.

They studied the passport and our marriage certificate (married men can take their family out free, married women, even if they are the breadwinner, cannot. Women have a different status here, a mix, I guess, of an Islamic philosophy ingrained in the central government, and the saying heard here that the Dutch packed up logic and commonsense and took it with them when they left in 1949. You do wish that somebody would ask for it back).

Still yawning, the guy stamped my departure card without asking for the ‘processing fee’ others have had to offer.Upstairs, after the counter for airport tax, and the immigration officer, unsmiling, which is unusual these days as someone seemed to have implanted these formerly sullen guys with personalities in recent months, we wandered through into the departure zone and noted a couple of new shops to add to the grossly overpriced food and duty free outlets (champagne for US$120 a bottle anyone, or a bottle of water at five times the rate outside the doors of the terminal).

Yes there is now a brand new store selling pirate DVDs next door to departure gate 4. After a what-in-gods-name-were-they-thinking moment, and noting the endless displays of single packets of cigarettes (at twice the non duty free price), shitty Javanese made Balinese souvenirs, shitty Javanese made Australian Aboriginal souvenirs (why? I can’t answer that), and the large carved penises that if you look closely are bottle openers, you pass two more officials, one to take the airport tax sticker you were just given (to prevent the first tax collector stealing the money we are reliably told) and one to take the departure card that the first immigration officer studied earlier.

And you’re in.

I enjoy the flights to Singapore on Singapore Airlines. It’s a relatively civilized airline, unlike, say, the shitty Malaysian Airlines flights into KL (crap Airline, crap service, crap airport) full of Indonesians flying full of hope into Malaysia, about to have their illusions shattered by Malaysian labour practices.

SA offers practiced smiles, legroom and good food.

But mostly, on SA from Bali, I enjoy the people watching, and extra mostly that means the Russians, who feed from this onto some flight to Vladivostok or somewhere else northerly and obscure out of Singapore

They were there this time in some numbers and if you ever wonder who buys all that overly branded fake designer tack you find in the dozens of ‘Versace’, ‘Armani, ‘Paul Smith’ and ‘Prada’ stores that fill the streets of Bali, then look no further than the Slavic tourists heading home.

We also wondered how the two Japanese girls managed to get their breakfast boxes, complete with 300ml orange juices past the promised ‘heavy and through’ security and 100ml liquid paranoia with multiple x-rays. I guess it cost them a smile and perhaps a pastry or two.

Two and a half hours later, after an aborted landing due, we, were told due to crosswinds (I suspect an Indonesian airline would’ve landed anyway) which meant a massive surge upwards when we were less than 10 metres from the ground and a loud uneasy silence in the cabin, we were through the ridiculously fast arrival process and in a taxi on our way into Singapore city.

Hicks from the Sticks.....

There was a mixed reaction tonight to the Government's announcement that the titles of Dames and Knights are to be restored to the New Zealand honours system.

[From Mixed reaction to reinstatement of titles - National - NZ Herald News]

I'm not sure whether to squirm with embarrassment as a New Zealander or smirk (perhaps a little too smugly to be sure) at the parochialism of it all.