Slightly sinful in Singapore

In which Ubergrumpy breaks the rules, and ends up in hot water

You probably know that sellng chewing gum is illegal in Singapore (fine: S$100,000). You may not know other things are forbidden; Feeding Pigeons (S$500), Walking Around Naked (S$2,000), Singing Obscene Songs (3 months in sing-sing), Annoying People With A Musical Instrument (S$1,000), and so on. The Walking Around Naked rule actually includes your own house. I didn't check on Walking On Cracks In The Pavement, or Wearing A Loud Shirt In A Built-up Area, but I bet they're frowned on too.

 Which has left me feeling a tad rebellious. Not that I'm proposing a nude banjo-backed rendition of Anarchy in the UK while feeding Juicy Fruit to pigeons in the Botanic Gardens; but it's so delicious to break the rules. Just a bit.

 Be careful though. Caught littering three times? Pick up trash weekly, wearing a bib saying "I am a litterer." (You'll struggle, mind, because there isn't any to pick up.) Graffiti? Caning. Drugs? Death. Blimey. I took all my Imodium on the plane in, just in case. Bonus: the Failing To Flush A Public Toilet rule (S$150) is unlikely to affect me.

 I miss an early opportunity for rebellion. We are staying with Mrs G's little sis and hubby, who treat us to a sumptuous dinner in a swanky rooftop place. No Twiglets here. Dress code: long trousers. I obey. But there are three guys there brazenly and blatantly flouting the rules in shorts. Buccaneers or what! But the meal, view, and company are top-notch, so I mellow out. My turn will come.

 And then little sis takes us on a walking tour of notable Singapore neighbourhoods. It's not all high-rise and superpowered here; there are elegant streets from a bygone era, now protected by the government, and very desirable, so colossally expensive. Little sis knows a byzantine route that takes in the best of them; but she likes to move quickly, and she is French, so crosses the road where she will. Whoosh! Ooh la la!

 In other words, little sis is a world-class jaywalker (S$2,000). This is cool. Vive la revolution!

I quickly learn an unwritten Singapore rule; the more your vehicle is worth, the worse you drive. Since even a Toyota Hybrid Roller-skate costs as much as a small house in Basingstoke, the average standard is, well, bracing. And on our walk the vehicles are premium. In the first hour I am almost run over by a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari, and a Maserati. What a way to go!

 It's a mighty workout, but we eventually find ourselves back at little sis's, in perfect time for lunch (did I mention that she's French?). First, a well-earned shower. Off with the sweaty kit, but I close the curtains first. Wouldn't want to offend the neighbours.

The Worst Hotel in the World

In which we learn that Vietnamese scooters are nippier than they look.

At the outset I should mention that the Vietnamese currency is called the Dong. In the hands of some, this may be an excuse for a stream of puerile jokes, but I shall rise above all that. Any double entendre is all in your mind, you pervert.

So: Mrs G and I are on Con Dao island, arranged at short notice. We scrambled to book a couple of different hotels. Hotel One was a delight. We've died and gone to heaven. Two blissed-out days, food, service, comfort, for about half the cost of the Eastleigh Econolodge.

And then we check into Hotel Two. 

They put our back up early, by insisting on being paid in cash. This puts a severe strain on my Dong right away. But, determined to enjoy my hols, I swallow my pride and follow the chain-smoking attendant to our deluxe beach view room. He throws my bag at the door, and after hovering briefly in the vain hope of some Dong, naffs off.

We use the plumbing, as one does. The plastic piping is all joined with electrical tape, so we're happy to know we won't be electrocuted by the taps. It's spectacularly leaky though; with that and the yellow water, personal hygiene might be a bit of a challenge for a day or two. Luckily Mrs G stole all the wet wipes from the plane on the way in. (If you've never cleaned your teeth with a wet wipe, you haven't lived.)

To be fair, there are some plus points to the room. The ashtray is empty, if not entirely clean; the mysterious brown stains on the sheet are at the foot end; there are sufficient lizards to handle the cockroaches; the wardrobe charmingly evokes an earlier era, when Formica was new; the fridge motor drowns out the pneumatic drills and the barking from the beach (of which more, anon). I plug in the thoughtfully-provided bedside lamp and blow the electrics. Kapow! Never a dull moment.

Ever cheerful, Mrs G pulls out my Dong and helps herself. "I'm off to the beach for lunch," she says, "coming?" We triple lock everything, clasp our valuables to our bosom, pack up the Twiglets, and head out. It's a short stroll to the beach. Intriguingly, where the neighbouring hotel has loungers, our beachfront has dog cages. The dogs look friendly enough so they are probably just mistreated pets, as opposed to, say, lunch.

We find a patch of sand free of rubble and plastic bottles, and pausing only to blow away loose cigarette ends and cotton buds, plonk ourselves down. Crikey, it's hot. I check my Dong for any signs of spontaneous combustion. We consider a swim but given the suspicious-looking pipes heading into the sea, think better of it.

Time for a getaway. We rent a motorbike. The rental lady scorns my proffered Dong; hard currency only. Twelve dollars and thirty seconds of perfunctory training in Vietnamese, and I am in the saddle! Oh yeah. I rev her up, run straight into a flowerbed, and fall off. Luckily I am carrying my wallet, and my Dong absorbs much of the impact. Thank goodness for my helmet. The hotel staff gather to pick me up, and oh, how we laugh.

Once the double vision subsides, and the blood is dry, we take to the road. The island's a hilly 'un, but with Mrs on pillion, and Dong by the million, what could go wrong?

How not to travel, Vietnam style

In which Mrs G loses her credit card, and UberGrumpy loses his cool

The week's scheduled visit to lovely Hoi An is off. Disaster struck, not once, but twice; a record-breaking cyclone removed the beach, and most of our hotel's roof; and worse still, Donald Trump is due to visit.

Luckily, politicos we ain't, and Mrs G and I love a good U-turn. Mrs G quickly researches Plan B; would a trip to lovely Con Dao island suit? Oh yeah! Book it! It'll squeeze the budget, but you only live once, right?

Hotel first; Con Dao is easily sorted, but we need one more night here in Ho Chi Minh city. We enquire; the place is mobbed because Donald Trump is in town. Only their Silver Suite is left. We book it. They add more hidden extras than you'd get on a busload of ladyboys. More budget squeeze, but no worries; who needs, say, booze when you're high on the atmosphere?

On to book flights. Mrs G finds the airline site a bit odd, with its adverts for casinos, fake watches and opium dens, and lurid offers to upgrade to massage class, all in dubious English. It can't be a scam, though, decides Mrs G, it's on a computer, and there are pictures of aeroplanes. She submits personal and payment details with gay abandon.

Of course it's a bloody scam. The tickets fail to arrive. Their phone goes unanswered. At about this time the credit card company helpfully shitcans our card. Oh how we laugh. It's cash, cash, cash from now on, with a 5% hit every time we use an ATM. That'll hit the budget; but no worries, as I have a good supply of Twiglets and Mentos, and we weren't planning on eating out.

But we are not easily daunted. Setting off for the airport ludicrously early, we find our booked ticket is indeed non-existent. Time to buy another one then. The helpful ticket lady suggests an earlier flight at 9:30. It's 8:37. A bit tight? No, she laughs, and starts typing. Same-day travel being a bit costly, the budget takes another mighty hit, but hey! Mrs G has some nice clothes we can probably sell.

Ten minutes and a lot of cash later, we queue at check-in. 8:54, and we head to security. There is a line about a mile long. Mrs G goes into action and hustles us to the front in true Colonial style. But the nice policeman spots that instead of "Grumpy, Uber", my boarding pass says "Grumpy, British". They've typed my name in wrong. Back you go, English pigs. 9:01.

Five minutes later we are back at check-in. They correct the boarding pass and a chastened airline lady helps us past the security line and back to the nice policeman. Luckily the full strip-down body search is pretty efficient and we are through! 9:18. Ignoring our sore bottoms, we run to the gate and yes! We've made it. 9:27.

Con Dao, here we come! I hope they like buskers. We're going to need some cash.

Dubai 7, Britain 0

I am a simple chap who likes a simple life. You know, pipe, slippers, Twiglets, that sort of thing. Mrs G, by contrast, is a restless soul, and has dragged me off to foreign parts again. “Stuff The Isle of Wight,” she said, “take me somewhere exotic. And I don’t mean bloody France either.” This from a Frenchwoman; so I knew she meant business. Either I maxed the plastic, or the monthly conjugals would be withheld indefinitely.

 Off we went then. Asia beckoned. Who to go with? Given that the World’s Favourite Airline now only offers comfortable legroom to infants, midgets, contortionists and amputees, we looked elsewhere. And found: Emirates! Being eco-warriors, we offset our vast carbon footprint by not mowing the lawn for a month, and we booked ‘em. Courtesy of colossal oil subsidies (oh the irony), their planes are fat and new and roomy, and they still offer life’s little luxuries, like flushing toilets, mostly sober aircrew, and fresh sick bags every flight, used or not.

 One drawback though. They all stop in Dubai. Mrs G and I stopped here on a previous re-colonisation of the Antipodes, and thought a three-day layover a good wheeze. Well it wasn’t. Unless you like shopping, a class system that puts Victorian England to shame, shopping, heat, shopping, sand, Chavs on rollercoasters, shopping, hotels you can’t afford, shopping, conferences for people richer than you, and shopping, it’s a vacuous, empty, soulless place. Think strip mall America, plus Disneyland, stuck in the middle of the Sahara. On the bright side, though, shopping is quite good. 

However, credit where it’s due. They sure can build stuff. Forty years ago Dubai was a creek, without a paddle; you couldn’t buy a coffee, let alone today’s haute couture and hauter cuisine at hautest prices. Wind forward to today. Dubai now boasts the world’s tallest pointless building, the only ski-slope in a shopping mall (how's that for carbon footprint?), artificial Islands shaped like palm trees, and a seven-star hotel shaped like a mighty sail. Crikey.

 We did visit the tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. We are lowly folk, so only paid one fortune to get to the 125th floor at midday. (You can upgrade to higher floors and/or sunset with more goodies for more cash, a la Dubai). But 125 is quite high enough, thank you. You’d be just as dead if you fell off. 

As for that palm-shaped island, don’t even think about visiting unless you have booked an overpriced restaurant, theme park, shopping experience, or hotel; otherwise, like us, you will pay for the train to take you out there (several classes of carriage available), disembark, then wander confusedly around a car park before taking the next train back. Oh how we laughed.

And then there’s the airport, where we are now. While Britain’s spineless politicos have argued about a new runway for Heathrow or Gatwick, Dubai has built seven. SEVEN. The international airport is so vast that the maps include the curvature of the earth. Probably. There is a lot of shopping. There is a whole separate business class airport, above the aspiring common folk, but constantly in their face, obviously. If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

 I could go on, but we have to hustle. Our flight leaves in two hours; we are at gate A3, and have to make our way to gate H308, or something. We will try to resist the tempting shopping. And like Hansel and Gretel, we will leave a trail of torn-up receipts and duty-free samples, in case we need to retrace our steps. Wish us luck.