Well, the rain DID stop - quite quickly, actually. It's weird - it suddenly buckets down, then just as suddenly stops... I think somebody upstairs is playing with us...
A thought jumped into my head, which brought some positives after a short phone call. TRAVEL INSURANCE COVERS YOU FOR DELAYED LUGGAGE! So, we are able to spend up to $250 to fit ourselves out with the necessities. That's good. Very good, because shopping in Singapore isn't cheap, unless you go to the dodgy cheap shops... with names like "Singapore's Cheapest Shop" and "3 for $10" (a slightly more expensive version of the $2 shop).
After breakfast with Fiona's brother and his family, we decided to hit the town (well, the nearest bits of it, at least) to see what was on offer.
I walked into the Sim Lim Square electronics centre at about 9.30am. Unfortunately, I still had my digital SLR camera hanging around my neck, which did to a local camera shop salesperson what the grail shaped beacon from 'the castle Anthrax' did to Sir Bedevere the Chaste - made him, well, a bit too excited (this is a Monty Python reference, for anyone who cares).
He swooped upon me like a seagull on a stray chip, trying to sell me the most expensive lens on the shelf. I asked how much it was, and he didn't tell me - he wanted to SHOW me how good it was. After playing along for fear of upsetting him, he finally revealed that it was $785 - ie WAY outside my budget. When I said it was too much and I didn't have that much money, he took this as haggling, and offered to trade in my old zoom lens, which is made in China - nowhere near as good as his made in Japan version... I shied at this, saying I didn't have enough money, so he brought the price down to $650. I said I couldn't afford it and started to look around his shop, when he accused me of wasting his time, complaining that he had offered me a good price, and that I should get out of the mall and drink coffee until after 11am, when the pretend customers come in. So apparently, only REAL shoppers come early in the morning, and you aren't allowed to enter this complex without buying anything until after 11am. Weird. In fact, Singapore on the whole is pretty weird...
Afterwards, my rancid feet were getting to me - my Keens outdoor-type suede sandal things do not absorb the stench from well worn feet - so every time I take them off, anyone in the nearby vacinity is confronted with some odour akin to a punch from OJ Simpson - if it knocks you out, you are lucky, because you won't feel the killer blow about to follow. Dodgy analogy, I know - but it's nearly 11am, and my body still thinks it's nearly 1am...
What was I saying? Oh yeah - feet. I went for a pedicure, which was great, but I still had the Keens odour repellant issue, so I had to get some new footwear to battle the chemical warfare I was waging on Little India.
With this done, and a brand new purple, shimmering toe-nail only slightly tarnished due to the impossibility of nail varnish drying in 90% humidity, we embarked on a search for food and some more replacement clothes, for those of us unfortunate enough to be deprived of our own.
Sophia and Felicity opted for a very courageous lunch - Burger King (I hear your gasps of horror - how can they eat such food? I'm not sure, myself). Florry and myself had some lovely deer and a weird dish called 'cereal prawns' - deep fried whole prawns covered in something similar to crushed cornflakes. Very yummy - I was even brave enough to eat legs, shell and tail - I couldn't bring myself to devour the heads, though. Those beady little eyes reminded me too much of the shrimp on the last few Muppetts productions... whatever his name was...
We then progressed to the Singapore Botanic Gardens - an amazingly humungous place which, out of kilter with everything else in Singapore, doesn't cost you to visit.
It does cost you, however, to visit the Orchid part. But it is AMAZING. Apart from all the weird plastic looking flowers, the glee that Sophia and Felicity showed in the cool room - a very wet and artificially misty glasshouse - was worth the ten dollar entry fee in itself.
It was quite rewarding here, also, to watch an annoying little American kid throw a tantrum, and make his baseball go into a large pond. I'm not sure whether or not his father retrieved it, but if I were him, I'd have thrown the kid in and left him there to be sucked to death by the resident catfish and turtles. Surely one less would contribute to making this world a better place?
From here we went to the Night Safari at the Singapore Zoo - a Hollywood inspired production with staged appearances from a wide variety of nocturnal and omni-urnal (I made that word up...) animals who when you walk (or ride in the 'tram') past, are thrown food by keepers to make them move so that customers get their money worth.
The 'tram' ride was interesting - mainly due to the weird guide who kept reminding us that we were "very luck tonight" in his somewhat camp, over-enthusiastic, Americanised-Asian accent. We weren't lucky - it was no coincidence that the keeper was standing with two elephants by the side of the road... it was not luck that the tiger was given the world's largest blade steak for dinner right next to the viewing platform... and as for those bloody tourists who kept flashing their cameras off every two minutes, despite being reminded not to every other two minutes...
I also made the brave-ish decision to try sting ray for dinner. Luckily, I also ordered another dish of lamb satay, as the sting ray was weird - very salty like dried fish. Sophia was SOOO brave that she ate a microgram of it, smothered in satay sauce. Felicity, on the other hand, ate a small portion purely for bragging rights over 'Dan the Man', I think. Good work girls!!!
In typical Singaporean fashion, it started to bucket down with rain just as we were leaving the zoo. Luckily (luck? this a first on this trip!) we had already made it into our maxi taxi, and for once, I arrived first. Only because I was sitting in the front seat, but still, it's a win. Every other taxi ride, Florry and I have had a slow driver who has gone the wrong way. But we got good advice and instruction in the finer points of Singapore's culture, so it's been worth the extra 20 cents we've had to pay each time!
Our taxi outdrove the rain, emerging from the deluge into dryness. We got out of the taxt, into our guesthouse, only for the rain to catch up with us. But we made it back, dry and tired, ready for about 4 hours' sleep followed by a 3.30am wake up call to be ready for our 6am flight to Siem Reap tomorrow morning.
Who knows where the luggage is... who knows when we might see it next... who knows when I will next get to write anything on this blog...
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