Universally Singapoor

Friday 7th January

I seem to be getting worse and worse at updating this blog, there just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day, that and the fact that I am habitually lazy.

Well Singapore came and went and we are now in Phuket (apparently pronounced poo kit which sounds like a medicinal constipation remedy) so I figured I had better get something down in writing again.

After picking up our luggage we made our way across to the MTR and headed towards jookoon, a place that insults two ethnic groups in one foul swoop. We headed to china town and our ultimate destination for the evening the Fragrance Hotel-Saffire.

Our window had a great view over the splitters at Fragrance Hotel-Sunflower enabling us to stick our noses up at them.

The Fragrance Hotel-Sapphire was so posh that you could even rent rooms out by the hour, which I assume means that once you have spent 60 minutes in here you are so overwhelmed that you need to leave and go back to your boring lives.

I would love to say that we immersed ourselves in culture and obtained a good insight into the plight of the average Singaporean, however the sad truth of the matter is that we did the two major tourist attractions and then headed out.

The first day was spent at the Singapore zoo, one of the best in the world, and it was great to see a place that actually gives the animals room to breath and run about.

We had brought a dual ticket which incorporated the night safari, a complex adjacent to the main zoo that provides a tram journey around the park to witness the animals during their most animated hours.

In true smith form we were lucky enough to have been sat in a carriage with an Indian tourettes family who proceeded to shout out random words for 40 minutes non stop.

I even did my best 'Darren angry face' at them but it seems that this was something that they were accustomed too and just shouted "giraffe" back at me loudly.

Prior to this we had been to watch the animals of the night show, during which the host had asked for a volunteer to get up on stage and hold the 15ft reticulated python that they had just pulled out from under a seat.

After my fantastic hair cut in china I seem to have built up some resistance to public humiliation so I jumped at the opportunity, however I hadn't really heard the announcement correctly before leaping from my seat.

What they had actually requested was a 'macho man from the audience' and what they actually ended up with was me, rotund lard arse boy!

So after some ritual humiliation whereby they got me to strike some of the lamest muscle man poses ever witnessed by a mostly non english speaking audience, I finally got the opportunity to be strangled by a giant amphibian.

On the way out of the auditorium some kid kept on punching me in the back and when I turned round his dad simply said "he just really wanted to meet macho man".

I wouldn't mind but it really hurt, they seem to breed very strong three year olds here!

The following day we headed out to Sentosa island to go to universal studios, not to be confused with universal studios in the US which I believe is a theme park that has working attractions.

Basically everything we went to go on was in various stages of breaking down, broken, unfinished or unstarted, even the rapids were going to close because of "in-climate weather conditions"

That's right you wouldn't want people to get wet when they are on the rapids now would you!

I have never really understood these rides, you line up for about three hours to get wet, then right at the last minute everyone in the queue buys a bloody poncho to stop them getting wet.

You see their faces getting off the thing, "look at me, I haven't got a drop of water on me but you have a wet arse, ha ha", seriously it makes no sense to me whatsoever.

At least that's my excuse being the only one on our ride who squelched for the remainder of the day.

Anyway, that was pretty much Singapore, it's clean, it seems nice and I am sure there is loads and loads to do there, but we were too busy having names of animals yelled at us and queuing for broken rides to notice.