My visit to Phnom Penh’s city dump, while upsetting, was not enough to put me off Cambodia, and as my flight to Singapore trundled down the runway I was determined to return for something longer than a holiday.
In the meantime, I had a couple of days in the ‘Lion City’ to contend with before arriving in Perth to begin what would no doubt be a tough, demoralising search for some gainful employment – a resource which had all but dried up back home.
Phnom Pehn’s airport is a basic, quaint place with light traffic and practically no amenities. Singapore’s Changi Airport, meanwhile, is a slightly different kettle of cod. Changi, southeast Asia’s busiest airport, has a swimming pool, gym, saunas, steam rooms, an embarrassing range of shops and restaurants, hundreds of free internet stations and recliner chairs complete with blankets dotted around the terminals. I didn’t want to leave.
The city-state of Singapore is the end product of a century of economy-driven multiculturalism in action, and there are few if any countries in the world quite as diverse. Native Singaporeans live among massive communities of Malay, Indian, Pakistani and ethnic Chinese. Westerners and Asians of every other hue are also represented in great numbers.
Singapore is the region’s wealthiest country – a fact evident on the drive in from the airport. The place is immaculate to the point of annoyance. It was amazing to think that it even shared a planet with ramshackle Cambodia, let alone a sub-continent. The trees that dot the roadside and motorway meridian are spaced exactly the same distance apart for kilometres on end, and the grass they sprout from is as manicured as a putting green at the K Club.
Strict – dare I say draconian – laws mean that crime, litter and other nastiness found elsewhere are for all intents and purposes non-existent. Sque-aky-clean Singapore is so displeased by those unsightly brown blobs found on the streets of every other city in the world that it even has a law banning chewing gum. Arriving with half a pack of Wrigley’s won’t get you banged up, but selling the stuff can actually get you sentenced to lashes.
There is, however, a complicated side to the city that I ran straight into, due to lack of proper forethought and planning on my part. My round trip from Ireland to Australia via Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore meant booking eight different flights as well as at least a dozen hotels and guesthouses. Because I only planned to stay in Singapore for two days, I didn’t work too hard to find well-located accommodation – I just consulted Google and picked the cheapest option that wasn’t too much of a trek from the city centre.
But Hotel 81 on Geylang Road proved difficult to find, because there are eight of them. Eight of the same hotel, built to the same cheapo design, on the one road in the one city.
I told my elderly taxi driver how ridiculous this was, after I jogged out of the fourth Hotel 81 on Geylang Road which didn’t have a room reserved for me, but he wasn’t convinced. He felt I should have come equipped with more information than the hotel’s name and road.
Luckily, the fifth was the one I was looking for, so I paid my argumentative driver and cast him out of my life forever.
The girl at the desk who checked me in was good looking, but with a fake plastic McSmile that made her look like a breathing mannequin. “So”, I said, “would you believe me if I told you that this is actually the fourth Geylang Road Hotel 81 I’ve visited today?”
“Yes sir, there are actually eight Hotel 81s on Geylang Road,” she answered, without acknowledging the weirdness of such a marketing strategy.
“How many are there in the rest of the city?” I asked.
“Oh, there are none, sir. All of Singapore’s Hotel 81s are on this road.”
“That’s weird. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
“Here is your key, sir – room 718.”
“Well I think it’s really weird,” I said as I took the key and picked up my bag. “Something should be done about it actually,” I continued. “Like maybe bulldozing seven of them!”
The lift, halls and corridors of the hotel were all empty – a fact which, I felt, confirmed there was indeed a flaw inherent in building eight near-identical hotels along the same nondescript street. But things were not to stay this way for long, and the thinking behind that weirdness would soon become apparent.
To be continued...
