East Coast Vibe

Known as the East Coast, it's actually the South Coast stretching eastward from the CBD (Central Business District) pretty much from the fringe of the central area (where the Singapore Flyer is) all the way out to the end of Singapore, to where Changi airport is. That whole stretch is mostly residential with some high technology, entertainment and a red-light district (apparently) thrown in. The main claim to fame is that there is a beach; a thin strip of gritty sand between the grey/brown murk of the straits between Singapore and Indonesia where the cargo ships anchor waiting for their turn in port.

Thus the East Coast has the closest thing to a riviera that Singapore can muster. Big industry is zoned elsewhere and the investment is directed to cycle paths, bicycle rental kiosks, restaurants, camping, alfresco BBQ pits, chalets and even a water skiing pond (you are dragged around by an overhead wire).

Saturday we had a morning appointment just in from the beach and afterwards took a nice 5m walk back towards town. Everyone should do this periodically because it proves Singapore can be normal and fun. Joggers suffer in the heat but the determined ones manage a pained, sweaty shuffle. The sand is only 25ft across but it soon fills up with tents and huddles of young people hanging out, picnicking. Some intrepid swimmers brave the gloop; this ranges from Chinese in Lycra cozzies to fully dressed Muslim women sitting up to their waists, splashing around with the kids. Inline skaters, roller skates, the odd skate board and many hired tandem bikes with the poor guy at the front doing most of the work.

One word of advice; even on a cool, overcast day, walking in the shade of the tree canopy, wear a hat.

China Graduates

My recent posts on Hong Kong and China were really only pond-skipping a few impressions of changes in the last 10 years. In more reflective mode, I am struck by how little Hong Kong has changed since reunification in 1997. It's still pig ugly above the ground floor glitz and is a tiring, heaving mass of people, tourists, delivery guys, self-appointed recyclers, copy-watch vendors, tailors and potholes. Cellular antennas crudely bolted to building tops point their signals directly down into the tight, old streets or, when mounted at street level, point up at 45deg into the glass skyscrapers. The new airport is a vast improvement over the old Kai Tak "strip of fear" and the AsiaWorld Expo next door is even better than the visually awkward, downtown Convention Centre. They still do a mean Double Skin Milk desert, almost as good as the Guangdong shops. HK is more exciting than Singapore, but also more tiring, ruder, dirtier and the weather (i.e. pollution) is astonishing.

China, on the other hand, feels like it has come of age. So many things have improved and developed it's hard to relate. If you want, you can talk about the quaint anachronisms that persist such as the office worker eating lunch from the obligatory oval lunch box (rice, green veg & a couple of strips of pork) while sat on the Ronald bench outside McDonalds; there are kids in punky hairdos jaywalking across roads openly ignoring the traffic cop and his hi-viz flag. People still fly kites over the river but now they're plastic sports models, not traditional square bamboo & rice paper. Poor people scratch out a living, collecting cardboard and scrap metal at the base of Executive Condos.

But these are old images with new twists and the juxtaposition of traditional and Western is no longer even news. When I first visited in 1991, China was badly under capitalised and with a vast labour pool, really would employ 6 women with scissors to cut a lawn (I have the picture). There were spittoons everywhere, public buses needed to be pushed up hills and all cars were Government vehicles. But there was a collective hunger for better times which has blossomed into the current national pride, so much pride in fact that the sense of hurt over the disrupted Olympic Torch tour is in danger of escalating out of Beijing's comfort zone.

As a footnote, much as I enjoyed the retrospective tour (despite 3 days of wicked gastroenteritis) I am glad to be back in Singapore. It's home, it's safe and the sun is shining but modern China left a deep impression on me. China has embraced capitalism and nationalism to become a self-sufficient and bold world player. Learn Mandarin, go East.

Two great takeaway ideas from the trip: the electric scooters in NingBo and the stencil of a house fly on the urinals at Singapore's Changi airport; it just invites you to take aim and thus ensures as splash free a visit as possible. Both are winning ideas.

Terminal Confusion

How hard could a 10 day jaunt to Hong Kong be? Quick taxi to Changi T3, drop off fellow traveller and then SkyTrain to T2 for shuttle bus to the Budget Terminal as per instructions. Except JetStar flies from Terminal 1, so back outside onto the same shuttle to T2, then the cute, runs-on-rubber-wheels Skytrain over to T1. Talk about unnecessary. Fortunately it's all eTicket these days and without check-in luggage I was in the 25min immigration queue tout suite.

The lady at the neighbouring check-in was being stung S$200 (£70) for excess baggage (box of business samples). Seeing me unencumbered, I was propositioned as a courier but declined on good sense grounds and departed with sympathies towards her wallet.

The departure lounge had free, working Internet access and a free, non-working drinking water fountain. Given the restriction on carrying fluids onto planes it was misjudged priorities.

They called for boarding, starting at the back; there's only about 30 rows in an Airbus A320 so first up were rows 20 and up. But this is a budget flight from Singapore to Hong Kong so the passenegers are a cosmopolitan lot and announcing only in English is, frankly, a mistake. English speakers in rows 20+ and everyone else in all rows raced forward with those ineligible for boarding being asked to wait (in Cantonese). The effect was to create an increasingly dense scrum of people just standing around the door, each held by the invisible force of authority like mimes pressed up against glass windows. Welcome to queuing, Chinese-style.

The flight was okay, 3hours, 20mins but JetStar takes no frills flying to heart. There are no drinks, snacks or food available free of charge on board. Canned drinks: S$3. Tea: S$3. Mars bar: S$3. Tiger beer: S$4. Hot meals: S$8, Those in the know, despite several announcements to the contrary, brought food with them but you can't bring drinks, hence the skewed priorities back at the terminal.

The Chinese aunties all had plastic bag bundles of green vegetables as hand luggage and bid a collective "bye bye Singapore" on takeoff. About 1 hour to go, I had the thought that being stuck in a confined space, surrounded by strange people speaking in tongues, unable to leave and at the mercy of the staff is possibly as close to being in an insane asylum as most people experience.

No frills landing means no jetway, but rather bus to the terminal, mocking the efforts of the people who pushed their way along the aisle to get off quickly. All airports look the same these days because the design requirements are the same. Dash up to immigration and you were cattle-prodded into what turned out to be 3 or 4 TensaBarrier mazes with, in our case, 1 guy, yes, 1 immigration official on duty processing the queue. To say the crowd was restless is an understatement. The Aussie cricket team dispersed through the queue kept up a running commentary, checking their watches anxious that the bars were going to close. When a second immigration official turned up he received a round of applause and assorted "Good on yer mate" endorsements. I got through in 45mins which I felt was lucky in the circumstances.

I think we were ripped off on the transport into town. The (newish) airport was an engineering marvel at the time, levelling mountains and reclaiming acres of land. The train was HK$90 each (£6) but would drop off at Kowloon station so add HK$40 for the taxi to the hotel. The bus was direct drop off but HK$130each. Still, a bit of devine intervention on the way into town as the driver triggered the Gatso on the approach road to the pretty Tsing Yi suspension bridge. That'll teach them to overcharge tourists.

Two Stories

1. The new Airbus A380 started service with Singapore airlines a couple of weeks ago and was an instant hit. People took their kids to Changi airport to watch it fly as if it was the Great Exhibition of 1851. As you know, it's big (compared to a 747, it's wider & taller but shorter) and the plush upper deck has separate, twin "cabins" with seats than become effectively a double bed. And many people have had the same thought, prompting the airline to issue a request that passengers behave only in a way that respects other passengers and aircrew.

As one couple interviewed after its maiden flight to Sydney, pointed out

... they make it romantic and ply you champagne, everything in fact except serve oysters. What do they expect?

2. The Malaysian ruling party, UMNO, is having their conference at the moment (imagine a 1970's labour conference in Blackpool but with more hats). One of the delegates who spoke during the debate on religion (!) was Madam Zaleha Hussin, a representative from Kelantan, who complained about the uniforms of AirAsia's (local budget airline) stewardesses. She was unhappy that they wore fitting skirts that ended slightly above the knee.

"They expose their calves, thighs and knees".

The UMNO assembly speaker, Badruddin Amiruddin went further to say that "the skirts were too short and exposed women's private parts".

Budget, Low-cost or just Cheap?

I took a Tiger Airways flight the other week and therefore used Changi's Budget terminal for the first time. That's what it's called: "Budget". Getting there involved taking the bus to the main terminals then getting on a shuttle to the Budget terminal. If I'd know that's what it was, I could have saved myself 20mins by getting off the bus on the main airport access way and crossing the road to it.

It's a new (2006), purpose-built facility, but looks like a low, converted warehouse-cum-shed painted in bright yellow with the logo and tagline "Pocket the Difference" all over the place. "See the Difference" more like. The plaque says it was opened by the 2nd vice-minister for paperclips or something.

I think only Tiger Airways flies from there. Check-in was a 25min queue with the usual delays from people trying to check-in over-weight cases or trying to take over-large items as 'hand carry'. [BTW, I saw an extreme example of this recently at Heathrow with a couple trying to check-in 2 cases of 34 and 37Kgs. The legal maximum for a single item is 32Kgs (Health & Safety), so they had to remove 7kgs (while standing at check-in) just to get to legal, and would then still be 24Kgs over their ticket allocation.]

Departure lounge is Okay with a reasonable selection of food, drinks, dodgy souvenirs and a handy money exchange kiosk. Queuing at the gate, our documents were checked again by the same ladies from check-in and I wondered if they were the stewardesses as well (they weren't but it was shades of Bob Newhart's Grace L. Ferguson Airline & Storm Door Co.). It's a walk yourself to the plane job; no jetways. On-board, they spent 15mins going up and down the plane checking seat belts, electrical items (Airbus A310, so no phones, iPods, games etc), kids, tray tables, luggage etc. I haven't seen such dumbing down in cabin crew since I last flew on China Southern in the late 90's.

In-flight, everything costs extra (drinks, snacks) and officially they ban bringing your own on-board but it was a well ignored rule, not least by me.

The return is similar and the Duty Free shop in the luggage re-claim hall is really cheap (£6 for a litre of Gin!), so there's a huge queue being served by staff displaying a level of work disengagement normally reserved for Soviet cabbage farms.

The final security X-ray was the slightly apologetic affair that characterises Singaporean officials who know their processes inconvenience the many to catch the few. Apparently (given our port of embarkation) they were on the look out for illegal "snakes in liquor bottles". Being verifiably unencumbered by pickled reptiles, we were free to beat a hasty retreat from the yellow shed.