Thursday 6th December 1984 - Singapore
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| Shrine to Ganesh - my favourite Hindu deity |
Woke up late – 06.45 – and finally
made it to breakfast at about 08.30! had a substantial American breakfast. It
really is a delightful spot to eat, surrounded by the most exquisite orchids.
We started our day a little early by
local standards as most of the shops only open at 09.30/10.00 and some as late
as 10.30. anyhow, we browsed around Tanglin Centre, just behind the hotel and
gradually worked our way down Orchard
Road, bargaining furiously but buying nothing! The
trip of about half a kilometre took about two and a half hours and then I had
to leave Rab to go down to the local office to meet our man in Singapore, Steve
Moffat. (At this time I was working for a
large British international insurer. This was a fortuitous meeting with Steve as
three years later when were trapped in Britain on our transfer to Australia by
bloody minded bureaucrats, he breezed into town on leave and, as he knew the
Australian Ambassador in Britain well, we acquired, in twenty four hours, the
visas for which we had been waiting for three months.) He had tried to take
us out for dinner on Monday when we arrived, but because we had changed hotels,
we never got his letter – I gave TFC a bit of a rev (as Duncs would put it) for
this oversight. I was able to phone Matt from the office. He seemed to be OK,
especially when I said that I would buy his radio here. He was flying off to Cape Town today. Steve seemed to be a very pleasant chap
and I was sorry we had not seen more of him. He took me to lunch at a very nice
Japanese restaurant. The food was very tasty – raw fish (tuna, cuttlefish, A.N
Other) – followed by prawns and beef washed down with a bowl of soup (and a
couple of beers).
Steve lent us his driver Ali to get
me back to the top of Orchard Road
where I had agreed to meet Rab at the Baskin Robbins. I was a bit late because
the traffic was pretty heavy, but she wasn’t put out. Ali then took us back to
the Peoples’ Park, so Rab could get a bit more material. We also went back to
pick up Matt’s radio, only to find there had been a change in shift and price.
The quoted S$150 of yesterday had been upped to S$220. although this was
reduced on bargaining, it only came down to S$180. (Since this was our first trip outside of Europe and the US, the concept
of almost infinitely variable pricing was strange. We also found that the price
quoted on a return visit was always
higher than that quoted initially. Some encouragement to buy right away – if
the price was right!) we told them to stick it, although from later
enquiries it appeared that the S$180 price was probably the market price – at
least for foreigners! The fact that we didn’t really like the people at the
shop also weighed in the decision – they had tried to sell me time expired film
in the first place.
Having been on the go for several
hours, we joined the taxi queue – mercifully short – and caught a cab home to
the hotel. I didn’t mention yesterday that in orderly Singapore one
queues for taxis at a taxi stand. No hailing of a passing cab for the citizens
of Singapore;
no stealing another’s ride! Yesterday of course it had been raining – was raining – so as is the case
in cities all over the world, everyone wanted to catch a cab. The queue was
yards long, but the taxis came by pretty swiftly and we didn’t have to wait too
long.
While we waited, we were watching
some little kids motoring around in small battery powered cars in the nearby
square – how Matt would have enjoyed that a couple of years ago. We also
watched a couple of lads selling cakes and then nipping off smartish – it
turned out that they were illegal salesmen who just make enough cakes to sell
in five or ten minutes and then get cracking before the police arrive!
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| More Hindu Statues |
In due course we caught the cab back
to the hotel quite happily and then, having refreshed ourselves, set off for
another shopping centre – Centrepoint. We spent a few hours dickering about
video cameras because, having e established a basic sort of price in the
morning, we were now looking for the best buy. We had established a “going
price” of about S$2,900 and finally got this down to S$2,700 but decided to
sleep on it before committing ourselves.
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| Masks for sale |
At one of the shops a most pleasant
Chinese lad with whom we were haggling mentioned in the course of a
conversation that there was a very good Indonesian restaurant upstairs and even
wrote out a suggested menu for us! We took his advice and had a splendid meal.
The thing that stood out, apart from the food, was the table mats, which were
made to look like banana leaves. (We also
realised as we looked at the plates of food that we had ordered and the
equipment available to eat it, that we were as at sea as the Sri Lankan women
had been on the aircraft. What went with what? Which was the custard, so to
speak, and which was the gravy?) As I said, the food was excellent and we felt
quite guilty that we didn’t buy the camera from the lad. (Mind you, Rab had form in this regard. A charming saleslady at a shoe
shop in Rio de Janeiro
had directed us to a local restaurant and we left with promises to return and
never did.)
We got Matt’s radio/tape player for
a good price at another shop and I was pleased to find that it all worked well
when we got back to the hotel. There were pirated music cassette tapes
everywhere for which we paid S$2.50 each – about Z$1.80 – which also sounded fine,
so it was a good day’s shopping altogether. There were a few other things that
we bought too – a new suitcase, two handbags for Rab etc.
When we came out of Centrepoint,
there was such an enormous queue of people waiting for taxis that we decided to
walk back to the hotel and take in the foyer of the Dynasty Hotel on the way as
Lynn had
recommended this to us. What a place! – truly stupendous, with the piece de
resistance being sixteen sixty foot wooden carved panels from floor to ceiling
plus a huge gilt and crystal chandelier and Chinese carpets on the marble
floor. It was a shade too much for us, especially with the Imperial Red lacquer
abounding, but it was quite some place. The hotel and the shopping area had
some excellent Christmas decorations too and we were glad that we had walked
that way, tiring as it was.
Wrote a few postcards and got to bed
quite late.
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