Last Request - Part One

I'm just about to leave - here's a load of stuff I forgot to say.

$3 Singaporian dollars is about £1.

I finally bought flip flops that don't tear my feet apart. But not just any flip flops. White and gold flip flops with bottle openers in the soles. I think they'll come in particularly useful, given I live in a cold country and don't drink a lot of beer.

The Asian Civilisations Museum demanded lots of reading, which I didn't give in to. Instead, I crouched down at the intricate dioramas and pretended I was in an opium den too. And I got to dress up as a Torajan warrior. The waistcoat thing didn't quite fit me though. I think it was made for a six year old.

Changi Prison is again, a lot of reading, but it's a sobering reminder of what people had to go through in the POW camp that was run by the Japanese during WWII. If you're interested, read 'King Rat' by James Clavell, or you can watch the film of the same name. I don't know if either are any good, but I'd wager the book's better. The best thing about going to the Prison is that you pass the real, modern day prison, which has cool signs outside. The guards look like they're threatening to shoot people if they don't do a silly dance:



We went on a day trip to Johor Bahru, in Malaysia, so you don't have to. It was a dump. BUT, I did get a whole page of stamps in my new passport. There were three other good things about the day:

• We saw the equivalent of a Securitas team leaving one of the huge malls with the days takings. Except, instead of seeing one guy in an armoured van, and one guy with a helmet holding a secure briefcase - we saw one guy with a shopping trolley full of cash, and another with a double-barrelled shotgun, heading towards one of those tiny vans that would fall over if you lean on it. Hmmmm.

• Massages. A 'sports massage' that lasted an hour and a half was £11, which was a bargain, of sorts, depending on whether paying for pain is up your street. At least it was cheap. I can imagine Max Mosley paid a bit more for his shenanigans. It was very tranquil and relaxing until the woman started poking the ends of my toes with what felt like a knitting needle. That is what's called 'acupressure', apparently. I then got dumped in a small, lime coloured room for five minutes to recover from the ordeal. Then the lady came back in to crack my bones, although I didn't know that at the time. I can crack a lot of my bones myself, but she was so determined to get more cracks out of me that she decided that standing on me was the only way to achieve this. I then got given a cup of nasty tasting leftover pasta water to drink, which I can only suppose was to relax me even further. I think it was Ginseng tea. I would recommend the experience nonetheless.

• There was a whole arcade full of Japanese sticker printing photobooth machines, so we thought we would get some done. But it was all in Japaneses and therefore rather confusing. Apparently Doki Doki! is Japanese onomatopoeic for 'rapidly beating heart'. That's the gayest thing I've ever heard. Apart from going into a Japanese sticker printing photobooth in the first place.


Right, that's too long already. I'll post again soon with some more of the stuff that I forgot to write last time. Otherwise you won't read it.