Today is Sunday, we think, which means this must be Belgium.

Actually it turns out that it is Singapore. When we found out six months ago that Emirates no longer flew from KL to Melbourne and had shunted us on to an Malaysian Air Services flight, we ran around in circles screaming so we then thought it a better idea to take a Jet-star (Nice-ish, safe Qantas affiliate) to Singapore and then stay a few nights before catching an Emirates back home. Wrong on all 26 counts.  Firstly if you ever must travel from KL to Singapore, drive, it should only take 3 to 4 hours.  If you fly, its back to the airport, 1 hour.  Wrestle your luggage through check in at least 2 and half hours before take off. Walk for 15 mins over to KLA2 from where the Budget carriers leave, then walk all the way back to KLA1 because there is nothing to eat at KLA2 and then discover that the only thing you can afford, because you don’t want to get stuck with mounds of Ringgits, is Burger King. Wait on the ground for 15 mins ‘cos you can, stooge around Changi Airport waiting for a landing slot, thankfully a brief trip to through customs etc. queue for taxis, which was not too bad and then 15 min  into town arriving at 4.15pm which means its 1.5hrs longer than driving and the food would have been better. (Sorry, I mean would of been better. Must keep up with the modern idiom.)

Believing almost everything that I read on Bookings.com to be a reasonable facsimile of the truth and looking nice in the pretty picture attached we booked into the J8 Hotel. Townshend Rd. Lavender. Just a short walk from Victoria St and Raffles.

What ever you do, DON’T.

We were impressed, at first, by the nice, old style Singapore, location and the gleaming, trendy new foyer and trotted happily along to room 203. Ilze got in the door first, with her bag and I had to wait out in the corridor for her to unpack, literally the truth. The windowless room, clean and neat enough measured less than 3 metres square.  With one side of the queen bed up against the wall there was nowhere for two adults to stand, the remaining space being taken by the small cupboard with a bar fridge and safe.  When we finally got the door shut we found the WARDROBE, three hooks on the wall that appear when you shut the door but you can not get at them because that’s where the suitcase go until Ilze came up with the clever plan of putting hers in the shower.  At the foot of the bed was a two foot wide shelf on which was the phone, jug and other stuff that actually protruded out over the end of the bed so a pedi-dexterous person could make morning coffee just by kicking back the sheets.

It only took a few moments to realise that staying here was simply preposterous, so Pete, armed with his leckie pole took off to Reception and after threats of reporting them to Tipadvisor and the such, we were upgraded to their Gold Star Suite, which is about the size of a regular motel room and is adequate enough.  A check of the fire escape plan revealed that room  203 is the smallest room on our floor.

I was LYING about not reporting them but will wait till we get home.

The WHICH part is about how hard it was to choose a street cafe in which to have dinner.

We chose good, Sesame Pork ribs, Nasi goreng, (Fried rice to you lot) and Curried Hokein Seafood.

Ilze had Heineken and Pete had green tea, and I ain’t lion and just had the best laugh all day. Dr Microsoft wants to correct the menu to Nazi Goring and Hoeing Noodles. Might just try that tomorrow.

With apologies to C. S. Lewis,

Pete.