14 april 2008

our last day in singapore. (i know, finally, right?!)

we get up, have a delish breakfast (cheese and pepper omelette, made to order, and a huge pile of noodles - the perfect blend of east and west!), finish packing and check out, leaving our cases to collect later.

then we set off to look at the merlion, the symbol of singapore: basically a big lion/mermaid hybrid.

we take lots of pictures of the new, larger version and look at the smaller original.

there are loads of tourists, and a man from thailand sits down next to my dad and snaps a picture of the pair of them together. we have no idea why.

then we walk along to boat quay — or was it clark quay? one of the two quays, anyway –and look around. as we walk along the quay, we are hassled at every turn by restaurateurs trying to lure us in. “you want food madam?” no thank you. “drink? we have tea, coffee?” no. i am hungry but i’m more concerned that somewhere in the last few years i have become a “madam”… this hard sell approach is everywhere in singapore, part of the bartering culture and a little odd considering how polite everyone is here. there is just no taboo against aggressively trying to sell something, but for a reserved brit it’s hard to take in. in my culture, polite = leave me alone. here, polite = be nice at all times… but still try to SELL.

perhaps weirdly, we decide to eat lunch in o’brien’s, an irish sandwich bar we have in the UK. i have a fishfinger and cheese sandwich with ketchup, one of the oddest things i’ve ever ordered. (made a few, but never had one made for me). nice though!

we only have a couple of hours left now, so we decide to do the one thing that’s been missing from the trip (at least from my perspective): a visit to sim lim square, home of everything electronic, electrical and technological. we go by underground, and are overwhelmed by the size and scope of the place.

this one huge mall has to have the biggest selection of technology available in one place, ever. somehow i restrain myself from getting a mini-PC (they have a lot of asus eePCs, which are so tiny), an ipod nano and a tiny-looking 1TB external hard drive.

on the down side, this mall has the worst toilets i’ve ever seen/used (enough said), and the most off-putting food court:

(speaking of shopping, i forgot to mention it in one of my previous posts, because i can’t remember which day we went, but i feel i must give a mention to a store called mustafa. just down the road from our hotel in little india, it’s like wilkinson’s on steroids. you wouldn’t believe the choice: you can change money, book a holiday, buy luggage, clothes, cameras, toiletries, basically everything you could ever want. it’s open 24 hours a day and continually heaving. it’s a tourist attraction in itself: a must-see).

finally, it’s time to head back to the hotel, buy a little budda in the gift shop, and head to the airport.

australia ahoy!

lately i’ve been fascinated by diablo cody. i love her punk/goth/rock style, the fact that she’s my age and an oscar-winning screenwriter, and that she is witty and brash and cool; cool enough to blog about how dorky she sometimes feels, which just makes me like her more.

i found her fascinating before juno won its mucho awards, or before i read her book. i’m interested in her life, in how she got where she is today, and the fact that she changed her name to the spanish for “devil”.

but i was in no hurry at all to actually watch juno. partly because everyone kept talking about how witty and edgy and brilliant it is, and it always gets my back up when everyone tells me how much i’ll love something. and partly because i felt a sense of ownership, like: ”i knew about this movie months ago! i know so much about it i don’t even need to see it!”

but mostly it was ‘cos of the whole pregnancy-plot thing. as i once blogged for the guardian, hollywood has trouble handling unwanted pregnancies.

of course, i watched it in the end.

» more…

an article of mine is in the telegraph today, talking about online confessionals such as postsecret.com**: forgive me world, for i have sinned…

*she said, sacrilegiously.

** should have added that sooner, for the google traffic ;)

i was trying to sign into my email account dianeshipleyworks, but for some reason i keep getting an error message.

then i saw what i’d typed by mistake: dianeshipleyrocks.

right, where were we?

11 april 2008 (continued…)

so we walk, and walk, and walk, and walk. and eventually (after “just a few minutes” in my dad’s parlance and “absolutely bloody forever” in mine) we reach our bus stop. my feet are on fire. i get the same (attractive!) effect i got in new york, from loadsa flying plus loadsa walking: ankles like watermelons. i do not want to walk any more.

luckily, i did not have to. we sat at the bus stop and studied our timetable and map. our singapore airlines-provided hop-on, hop-off bus would arrive in twenty-five minutes. okay. we sat, and we watched the traffic: cars, buses, and the occasional rickshaw. my favourite was the man on his bike… smoking a pipe.

finally, our bus came.

here my memory has a major lapse, and my notes fail me: i’m not sure where we went first, or what we did when we got there. presumably, it was something good, as everything was running smoothly (at this point). but after we had been to this mysterious place, we hopped back on our bus to go to chinatown. and came into contact with the rudest bus driver ev-ah (singapore airlines ruining their reputation, again!)

this bus is supposed to be free for people on stopovers with singapore airlines, or $3 if you’re on holiday with singapore airlines. despite my being on a stopover, our new driver decided arbitrarily that i had to pay $3. because i had an electronic ticket, i think. (i wondered afterwards if he could read?) he was quite hysterical, grabbing my arm and shouting, “ma’am you are not on a stopover just ‘cos you come to singapore! holiday is not a stopover!” he stopped the bus and showed me a green boarding pass some other people had - i did not have one, therefore i was a dirty liar, was the implication. not wanting to cause any further commotion over a $3 fare, we paid, but seethed a bit. then we went to chinatown.  

in chinatown, we walked through the outdoor markets, looked at some of the ornate temples, were blasted by the incredible heat (and rained on a bit as well) and i saw the biggest/scariest terodactyl-sized bug in the world, which made me scream and run around and shriek “it’s not on me, is it?!” which is always fun.

then went to a “hawker centre”, a kind of pre-food court food court, with the tables crammed in and around the stalls. hectic, cramped, not the cleanest place in the world… but cheap. i had something called hainanese chicken: plain boiled chicken with rice, basically, plus a coke to pep me up. then i used the toilet, which i had to pay for. there were big red flies in my stall with me, and i ‘went’ as quickly as i ever have in my life. *shudder*

i know some people love authenticity and realness when they travel but i love posh hotels, starbucks and homogeneity. what can i say? i’m culturally corrupt and morally bereft, and i like it that way.

we then walked to a shopping centre and looked at some technology (they had lots of littletiny notebook computers, and i wanted one), before catching our bus back. or trying to.

it was twenty minutes late (or ten minutes early, and the previous one was missing), and guess who the driver was? this time, with our $3 tickets, we were free from persecution. but not to worry: some other tourists were being persecuted instead! the driver from hades stopped the bus again to have an argument with an older english couple, who he said weren’t on a stopover either (and yet they were). unlike us, they just refused to pay. “sue me,” the older man said, “you’ll lose.” we bonded with them and their friends about how none of us wanted to fly singapore airlines ever again.

thankful at least that we could relax for a while, we sank back into our seats, planning on staying on until the place we got on, and having a nice look round singapore on the way. but when we got to the botanical gardens, the driver announced “everyone alight and wait for next bus! EVERYONE ALIGHT!”

so we had to alight and join the people who were already waiting for the next bus - which equalled more than one busful in total. everyone looked unimpressed. we got a taxi back to the hotel in the end. i checked in, napped, we had a meal at the hotel and we both had an early night. it had been a heck of a 24 hours.

12 april 2008

today we did something really cool: went on the singapore flyer. it was excellent - much better organised than the london eye, and 30 metres taller, too. we saw pretty much the whole of singapore, including a new ‘floating’ football pitch - not sure how that will work, but fun all the same - and all the construction for a massive new casino/hotel complex. apparently the chinese are mad-keen gamblers. who knew?

the sky was bright blue, the sun was out, it was a gorgeous day, hardly a cloud in the sky… perfect weather to see the city. and then five minutes after we got off the flyer, there was thunder, lightning and torrential rain for the next two hours. we sat around and waited for the weather to abate a bit, but it didn’t, so we headed off to the legendary raffles hotel, my grandad’s stomping ground just after world war two. and the home of the singapore sling cocktail.

as our taxi pulled up, a man in ornate indian (colonial esque, very un-pc) costume came forward with a huge umbrella, and ushered us inside. i could get used to that! the interior is so gorgeous, with chandeliers and plush carpets and really lovely architecture. then you walk around the back and there are loads of shops. pretty, pretty shops.

we went to an upstairs bar and had singapore slings (let’s not mention the price) and an intense heart-to-heart. as ya do. then we trolled around the complex a bit more (was still raining) and headed to orchard road, the main shopping district: one long, long, longlong row of high-street shops, designer shops, and huge mall after huge mall. it’s a shoppers paradise, but not a place to find bargains. i went into a tiffany shop for the first time, but didn’t/couldn’t indulge.

we had hot chocolates outside a cafe and watched the frenetic world go by, and i didn’t want to leave.

13 april 2008

no rain today, for the first time this trip. hotter than hell, though. we went to jurong bird park, which was fab.

there are some birds (varieties of toucan mostly), who make a nest and then the woman barricades herself in until the eggs hatch - for months on end, she never leaves and the man has to bring her food. but if anything (like death) happens to him, she is is faithful and will never accept food from another suitor… and then she and her babies die. plus, there’s a bird called “mad woman bird” because it behaves erratically. erm, patriarchy much?

we saw some non-sexist displays too, like beautiful flamingos, and we fed the lorikeets, which snatched a feeding bowl right out of my dad’s hands, to my amusement.

we had something to eat and i had much fun in the gift shop (my dad, not so much) before heading back to the hotel to soak my book and read my feet. or something like that.

domestic violence seems to be a hot topic again lately. and for good reason: it needs to be. according to charity women’s aid:

“At least 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence in their lifetime and between 1 in 8 and 1 in 10 women experience it annually. Less than half of all incidents are reported to the police, but they still receive one domestic violence call every minute in the UK.” [emphasis mine].

there’s very little humour to be wrought from the situation, you would think… but the daily mail, or more accurately, author wendy holden, had a go: labelling marian keyes’s new novel this charming man, which tackles domestic abuse… (wait for it) “hit lit.” (’cos it sounds a bit like “chick lit”, see?) puke.

serendipitously, my feature on domestic abuse outreach services is in this month’s copy of mental health today magazine, and it was the hardest thing i’ve ever written: gruelling, upsetting and the most serious piece i’ve pulled off so far. i hope i did the topic justice, and that the title (not mine) isn’t too flighty, as i’m sure it wasn’t intended to be.

most of all, i deeply hope wendy holden somehow comes into contact with it…

read it here and here if you’d like.

update: the new york times gets it right.

i don’t think i’ll be winning a travel blogging award anytime soon: it’s five weeks today since i left home, and i’ve blogged about my travels exactly once (and i hadn’t even got on the plane at the end of it).

i have however, been keeping a travel diary - with a notepad and pen and everything. i’ve decided that the best way to share it with you is to write posts which include a few days at a time (that way, i might have finished by next october). i’ll continue writing other posts (when i have time) in between the travel ones and i will edit my diary entries somewhat so that i’m finished before christmas.

i hope you enjoy them - either way they will be a useful keepsake when i’m 90 and can’t remember my foreign adventures… let’s start at the beginning, with my arrival in singapore (aka: the molten centre of the earth).

travel log, part one

10 april 2008

on the plane to singapore:

very impressed with self, as my theory of seat booking was correct. i wanted an aisle seat, so chose a row where only the window seat had been reserved. the middle seat would be a last-resort booking for anyone, right? right - huzzah! no-one was in the seat next to me, so i could spread out with my stuff instead of having to duck under my seat to get things.

the man in the window seat was either a big drinker or a nervous flyer, or both: he consumed at least three gin and tonics and three glasses of wine, then promptly fell asleep (and! as far as i can tell, he didn’t, um, “go” once…) as i can never sleep on a flight, i watched lots of stuff on the seat-back screen: ’til death, 30 rock, rules of engagement, back to you, pushing daisies and two eps of sex and the city. i also saw most of a julie delpy film (which i didn’t like much) and juno (which i will be writing another post about soon).

i wished i had my laptop, my carmex and my meg cabot, but i coped.

11 april 2008

before i knew it (okay, it was a long time, and long overdue, but i’m skipping ahead now) we were landing in singapore. the pilot announced it was 26 degrees celsius. “that’s not too hot,” i thought. then i realised: it’s half past five in the morning. after disembarking, i had a short wait at customs and a shorter wait at the baggage carousel, before hefting my heavy suitcase over to the exit, where my dad stood, in his sheffield united t-shirt and shorts. hugs ensued.

stepping out of the airport, i couldn’t believe the heat. it doesn’t creep up on you but blasts you like a thump to the face. we dived into a taxi and twenty minutes later we were at our hotel in little india. everything looked - unsurprisingly! - indian, which was weird for a city whose main occupants are of chinese origin.

back at the hotel, it was about 6.30 AM, and i wasn’t feeling my best. my room wasn’t ready yet, so my dad went for breakfast while i showered and had a snooze. then i dressed, my dad came back, and i acted like i was ready to sight-see, despite feeling like i’d been run over…

for most features writers, the glossies - those monthly women’s mags printed on paper as shiny as their nickname implies - are a holy grail. we all want to write for them, for the cash and the employment but most of all for that lovely feeling you get from seeing your name in something with such a huge circulation that you actually read.

while i have been lucky enough in the past to snag an eighth of a page in essentials, and a half page in company, i hadn’t really “cracked” the glossies. i’d never got a page of my own.

until i left the country.

ironically, the month my first full-page feature appears in a monthly women’s mag… i’m on the other side of the world. if you are not, i encourage you to pick up a copy of this month’s easy living (the one with marriella frostrup on). anyone else who is interested, can read this lovely scan (thanks, mum!) instead: get to grips with your iPod. (click with your mouse to bring up a magnifying glass icon, which will let you enlarge it).

next month: i make my prima debut - and won’t be around to see that, either…

when someone reads an article then says “wow, this sounds just like you,” you can’t help thinking they’ve seen your incredible potential. that they’ve just read about some fabulous journalist-author-whatever who had one or two struggles on the way to a hugely happy life and kick-ass career. someone you can model yourself on, and use as an inspiration: like marian keyes, arianna huffington or nora ephron.

of course, that’s never the case. someone has read a piece about a woman who also likes to wear black trousers, or who watches teen programmes they are really too old for, or has had depression for as long as they can remember.

it’s this last thing that most recently reminded someone of me.

at first i was a bit insulted… so it wasn’t something about a fabulous person, but about someone suffering from self-doubt and an all-pervasive sadness? bummer.

» more…