Singapore

Customs

It never ceases to amaze me how easy it can be to gain entry to another country. The press, with such broad coverage of the Nguyen Tuong Van case, would have you believe that you basically get strip searched. The reality is a far cry from this. In fact it was easier for me to pass through passport control and then customs (through the "Nothing to Declare" doors) than it was to leave Australia - where my luggage was scanned, everything metal I was wearing removed and my deodorant confiscated for not having a lid. Mind you neither end was particularly difficult.

A Pleasant Surprise

As I went to collect my bag (one of very few on the belt - evidently most from my flight were going on to Vienna) I notices out of the corner of my eye someone moving vigorously through a glass wall. Succumbing to human nature I looked and there was Adrian Tan (my host here), who had come to pick me up despite the arrangement of taking a taxi to his house (it was midnight after all). Adrian drove me across Singapore to his flat where he and his Mum Eliza have been wonderfully hospitable since.

First Impressions

Air conditioning is deceit. Walking through the airport doors was reminiscent of my travels in North Western Australia in 1995. It's like God just took a long and very hot shower and fogged up the whole country. After a couple of minutes I was back in the air-conditioned comfort of Adrian's car. The temperature never drops below 24 (very late at night) and never rises above 34) and the humidity is suffocating.

Driving on major routes and at night it was impossible to determine what Singapore was like and only the immediate similarities and differences were noticeable - British style road markings, sky-scrapers which could as easily be Sydney as Singapore and much more high-rise accommodation than you would ever find in Australia. My tour-guide host informs me of a number of almost-superlatives along the way: "This used to be the second tallest residential building in the world... etc etc" - come to think of it, I would do the same in Melbourne.