The Ministry

Well, I've finally been to one of the big "superclubs" - the Ministry of Sound. We decided, seeing as it was a saturday night, to go out and see what the Singapore nightlife had in store for us. We headed back down towards Clarke Quay, where we'd been the night before. Unfortunaltey , juts as we got there, teh group became somewhat split up, as just after the canadian guys headed off to get something in the 7-11, the heavens opened and it started pissing rain - and I means serious rain! So, it was left to me and another irish guy to hold the fort in the bar. While we were there, a fight broke out between a couple of brits (who else?). This guy and a girl were having an argument, and he ups and belts her - classy bloke! A bit if a scuffle ensued between him and her mates, which ended up with him being turfed out in the rain. A few mins later tho, he was back and having a go at one of the girl's friends! Bloody brits!

The rain eventually eased off a bit, so we decided to wander over to the other side of the quay to see could we find our canadian friends. there was no sign of them, so we decided for the hell of it to go into Hooters. Now, the whole concept of hooters doesn't really translate well to the asian market - Hooter's main drawing point is waitresses with big racks, and I have to say most asian girls, while cute, don't have the necessary attributes in this area. And so it proved to be! Nice girls, good looking and all, but lacking that one definitive hooters ingredient!

After hooters, Brian, the other Irish guy, decided that seeing as he's been awake for nearly 24hrs straight it was time to call it a night. I decided to explore the area a bit more tho, so we parted ways. I decided, seeing as I was only about a block from it, to head into the Ministry of Sounds, just to see what all the hype was about. Normally at home you wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting into a place like that with jeans, a t-shirt and an old pair of runners, but obviously Singaporean bouncers aren't such big pricks as the ones at home - in I strolled with no problems!

Inside was big - real big. The dancefloor for some reason had a turntable on it, and rotating slowly on top was one of them "smart cars". apart from the main dancefloor, there were 5 other separate rooms; a R&B room (absolutely packed), a had-core dance room, an "old school" room (mostly 80s music), a 2nd R&B room and then another one which was playing the same type of bland generic dance crap as in the main room (did I mention I didn't really like the music?). I had a feeling that the canadian guys would be around there somewhere, and sure enough, I bumped into them. One of them, Vance, was seriously off his head drunk, and was trying t on with everything in a skirt. This proved to be his undoing though, as his one big score of the night turned out ot be a thai ladyboy! Unfortunately for him, he only discovered the fact after he'd snogged "her"! :-) To make it even funnier, I had to stop him making the same mistake again about half an hour later, when he was hitting on a "girl" I'd been talking to earlier (the difference was tho that I'd copped early enough on that "she" wasn't a she!).

Happy hour kicked in about 2am, at which point it was "buy one get one free" on drinks. Too bad they don't do this at home! That helped the rest of the night pass rather smoothly, and so we stayed on til they kicked us out at 6am. An interesting night I reckon had been had by all - especially Vance! :-)

My first purchase in Singapore........

......was an umbrella!

Yup, just like when we went to Bandung, as soon as the touristy part of the trip starts, so does the rain. I decided to start the day by going to Chinatown (to sort of make up for the fact that I was staying in Little Riyadh!), and everything was going OK until I got out of the Dim Sum restaurant after brunch (Ok, I got up a little late......). As soon as I started going around the stalls, here comes the rain! At first it was OK, a bit of drizzle like you'd get back home, tolerable like - even more so than at home 'cos it was warm rain. (Warm rain? Who knew such a thing existed?). After a few mins tho, downpour! I was reduced to scurrying around under the awnings outside the stalls trying to find an umbrella. You'd never guess how hard it was to find such a thing as an umbrella among stalls selling all sorts of crap, but it was! It took so long that at one stage I said "screw this" and sat down outside a food stall for a drink and to wait for the rain to stop (it didn't).

Eventually, I found the umbrella, and having exhausted the pleasures of chinatown, decided to wander a bit more. I ended up down on the riverside along Boat Quay (tourist central, full of restaurants-cum-bars, all with guys outside trying to get you inside), and wandered along until I got to the Merlion, the big statue at the rivermouth which was the symbol of Singapore, a lion with a fish's tail (how drunk do you have to get a lion before he'll have sex with a fish?). After a few obligatory pictures, I decided I was fairly done touristing for the day, so headed back to the mosque for some dry clothes and a rest.

What country am I in again?

Well, I've arrived in Singapore, in one piece. It took me a bit of time at the airport to get my mind out of "work mode" - and I did have a good bit of time, as I'd allowed for an hour in the taxi to get from the hotel, but we made it in 35mins, which means I had a half an hour to kill before I could even check in! The flight itself was uneventful - everyone always rhapsodises about Singapore Airlines, but I didn't find them anything special. Maybe they're different on long-haul, all I had them for was an hour and a half. They had the in-seat entertainment system tho, which was good, but I didn't get much of a chance to play with it.

After I landed, I got out of the airport in record time, and onto the metro - at last! A city with a decent public transport system! 30mins from the terminal to the MRT stop my hostel was near! At that stage tho, things started becoming a little strange. I was staying near Little India, and when I got off the MRT I was faced with streets like Arab St, Baghdad St, Kandahar St, and Haj St, all of the restaurants were serving middle eastern food (with big signs in the window saying "Halal food") and within eyeshot of the hotel was one of the bigger mosques in Singapore, the Sultan Mosque, and just as I got there I could hear the "Allah Akhbar" coming from the Muzzein, calling people to prayer. So, despite me always considering Singapore to be a predominantly Chinese city like Hong Kong, I felt like I was somewhere in Saudi Arabia!

After I checked in anyway, I pretty much ended up going straight out. This is what I love about hostels, you always meet people who are up for a bit of a night out. In this case, it was a bunch of Canadians - altho not your ususal "aboot"-saying canucks, one was chinese-canadian, one was malay-canadian, one was indian-canadian, and one was a white guy! We decided to go into Clarke Quay, as the chick at reception had told us of a good microbrewery place there called "Brewerkz". Unfortunately, in our wisdom, we decided to walk in as it didn't look that far on the map, forgetting about the 31 degrees and 70%+ humidity outside. 30mins later we stagger in the door of the place, shirts sticking to us, half dead from dehydration, and in need of liquid sustenance. Luckily, they had it in spades for us in the form of a "tower of beer", effectively our own mini-keg of beer, big enough for 2 1/2 pints each and at S$80 (or about €40), pretty good value). After that, some other bars were visited in the area, and bed was hit around 1am-ish (I think).

(and yes, that is to scale - that pint glass is sitting right beside it)

All in all, not our usual introduction to singapore!