So we went to Singapore, sort of a gateway to the other Asian cities on our itinerary. We immediately made a bee-line to the famous Raffles hotel, a stately affair made popular by late nineteenth century literary stars. It was at Raffles that some schmo poured the first Singapore Sling – God bless his soul. The fruity drink was just what the doctor ordered in the sweltering, equatorial summer humidity.  The fans stirred the air and we stirred the slings.  All was well.

Raffles Hotel When We Got There

After raffles we sauntered off to the pristine wharf-side restaurant/bar area for some spicy noodles and questionable draft beer – all of which were grossly over-priced.  The city is nice, and clean, and orderly, and somewhat lacking in anything remotely interesting.  Oh, perhaps I am being too hard. There were some flowers and stuff. See? And there was a nice park, I suppose if you spent more time here...

The following morning, we cruised to Little India –which somehow managed to be a grimy little oasis in middle of the "Big Brother is watching sterility" of Singapore.

Was Little India a welcome relief?  Oh, probably not.  Nevertheless, we had a few beers (of course, straight from the bottle, ". . . let me watch you open them beers, fella") and listened to a bit of jangly Indian grooves.

As for the highlight of the afternoon - I managed to acquire some altogether snappy socks to wear with my sandals.

There We Go

I was the bomb. White legs, long shorts, camera around my neck, and proudly showcasing these beaut’s.

Fit right in – to the point that the indigenous folk frequently approached in their native squabble, expecting an informative answer.  I think.

Click

Then there was Chinatown with its traditional color, charm and odors. The area was pleasant, but still relatively sterile – like a Chinese food court in the local mall.  Here we managed to get our grubby paws on a slab of pork-ish stuff, something that had been sitting around for weeks until it was nearly putrid, only to rebound into a semi-edible salty, oily wad of nonsense.  That made me sick enough to skip lunch, so it was a relatively good investment. We shopped and I bought some crap. Nothing good really. Did I mention that it gets very hot in July on the freakin’ equator?   Well, it does.

The next day, we skeedaddled out of Singapore bound for Bangkok…