When the Rain Stops Falling
The theme for the Montpelier School fete this year is be a celebration of different cultures, and it’s not surprising. There are thirty-four different first languages spoken at Montpelier and that does not count those, such as the Moodie children, who have a smattering of other second languages, in their case Farsi, the Persian tongue. It is a revealing insight into just what a multi-cultural city London is, as Ealing and in particular North Ealing where the school is located, just a few hundred yards from here, appears to be a predominantly white suburb, mainly of English and Poles. The extent of multi-culturalism generally in London shakes pre-conceived stereotypes, and it seems unusual to be in the company of white-skinned people none of whom appear to speak a word of English while others with very much darker hues speak either the Queen’s English or broad Cockney. Meanwhile, the Japanese dress and act more English than the English and New Zealanders persist in wearing long shorts and jandals.
The school PTA is asking for helpers for its fete and if we did not already have tickets to see Neil Young that day, we would respond to the call for volunteers to run the bar. Which highlights another cultural difference, and Marty is reminded of his trip some time ago to visit Fleur at her international school in Dusseldorf. He arrived late on the afternoon of their school fete to find the parents, teachers and supporters segregated into their respective national tents, drinking liberally, the Scandinavians particularly impressive getting stuck into schnapps like there was no tomorrow (and for some there probably wasn’t) to the accompaniment of raucous drinking songs. Such fun would be frowned upon in New Zealand, probably earning scolding newspaper headlines, and perhaps (or hopefully) the children confiscated from parents by an overzealous agency.
Late last evening we stopped for a modest supper at The Gallipoli, a Turkish restaurant in Islington, just down the road from the Almeida Theatre where we had gone, after an hour and a bit driving through the North London traffic, to see a production called When the Rain Stops Falling. Written by an Australian, Andrew Bovill, the play is set in London and Australia between 1959 and 2039 and follows four generations of a family in which the central character travels to Australia to discover something about the disappearance of his father twenty years earlier. The audience was audibly amused when one of the players referred to the book he was reading, The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, 1975 – 2015. The script was clever, the transitions between scenes in London and Australia, and the interweaving of actors playing the same characters at different ages, sometimes all on stage together, were impressive.
Again, like previous performances we have seen since arriving, it was sublime. One of the things about theatre in London is that many of the faces on stage are familiar and a look through the programme confirms this. One of the central actors, Richard Hope, has been in television shows and films galore; Eastenders, Midsomer Murders, The Forsyte Saga, Tipping the Velvet, Judge John Deed, Casualty, Bramwell, Peak Practice and Brideshead Revisited, to name a few. Similarly, one of the Australians, Leah Purcell, has been in McLeod’s Daughters, Water Rats, Police Rescue, The Proposition and Lantana, all of which should be familiar to New Zealand viewers or Nick Cave fans.
If it was an hour and a bit getting to the theatre through North London, we were smarter going home or so we thought, through Central London and down the A40, which passes not more than a few hundred yards from home, as we call this place since our colonisaion. That plan worked like a dream, until we got within about two miles where we wound up in a traffic jam, at 11.00pm. Two of three lanes were closed for no apparent reason and traffic competed for a place in the single open lane, the flow made worse by detours off the unimpeded A40 and onto slip roads with traffic lights which seemed to change colour with the frequency of a strobe light. Such are the perils of driving in a city of more than ten million people.
If the theatre at night provided a good dose of culture, so too we had seen an episode of Coronation Street during the day. Some six months since we have seen an episode, and with New Zealand screenings being one year behind the UK anyway, we expected to be hopelessly out of touch but not so. Ken, Deidre and Blanche are still there and still bickering. Some things never change.

Stayin’ alive
Life becomes more curious. We went to Primark last week, the store which prides itself on ethical trading which it defines as providing the best value for its customers but not at the expense of the people who make its products. Primark mainly sells clothes, but at low prices, and we went there as Kaelene wanted a pair of flat shoes. On arrival, the floor of the shoe department revealed that ethical practices may not be widely adopted by customers who appear to show not the slightest regard for anything at all. Many obviously feel free to try on footwear and other apparel and then simply discard items wherever they feel like. Discard may be an understatement, it looked more like the scene of a shoe fight; the floor was literally strewn with dozens and dozens of mismatched pairs of shoes, like stocktaking at The Warehouse in New Zealand, but on speed.
The shoe department is right next to the women’s lingerie department, with racks and racks of brassieres in all manner of ghastly colours. Shocking pink, lime green, canary yellow, turquoise, and mauve seem to be the fashion du jour . Bored, so rather than stick to shoes, Marty decided it would be more funto spend the afternoon encouraging young women to hurl unwanted or wrong-sized brassieres around the floor. Colourful, and entertaining.
As we hear reports of the weather getting colder in New Zealand, we are smug in the knowledge that it is spring in London, with predictions of a long, hot summer. The last few days have been so warm and sunny that we’ve all been gardening, or rather clearing out undergrowth both at the front and back of the Moodie estate. Their type of garden runs counter to all of Kaelene’s natural instincts, her view being that a natural looking, overgrown garden takes hours and hours of careful work and maintenance if it is to look the part. Being left untouched for three years does not quite achieve the desired result and has let the blackberry (or bramble as it is referred to here) gain the ascendency. A few more days and the garden should start to take shape, but already the freshly filled, squirrel and pigeon-proof bird feeders are attracting robins and other small birds back into the garden, and we’ve put out another feeder for the woodpeckers.
As an aside, it is good to note that, unlike the practice in Christchurch, the Greenford rubbish transfer station does not charge for the dumping of rubbish. Quite refreshing really.
Ealing is a very green and leafy part of London; we have what is called a nature reserve over the back fence, in reality a large tract of land protected from development and left in a natural state. At one end are allotments where locals tend their vegetable patches and the other end a huge park with sports grounds and large grassed areas. Through this runs the Brent River, a small stream along whose banks we have been walking in an effort to shake off the slabs of blue cheese and bread which have, without invitation, attached themselves like limpets to our hips and waists in recent weeks.
Pitshangar Village, the local shops at the end of Pitshangar Lane, is like an old-fashioned English village inside a vast city. It has an ironmonger, fishmonger, butcher and the Co-op grocer, a Polish bakery, betting shop and launderette, a couple of land agents and the local inn. Then there is the off-license bottle shop which always seems to have deals on New Zealand wines, at the moment, 40 percent off when buying six bottles and a very good special on Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. The Polish shop assistant wears a bone carving from New Zealand, and we overheard a French customer telling her that the Lindauer Special Reserve is as good as any French champagne. Unable to restrain ourselves, we agreed.
The warm weather means that the lads have been out with the top down in the Mercedes, but Martin and Marty lament that their pulling power as a couple of aging playboys has been dampened significantly by the child restraints in the back seat.

A bat out of hell
If it was considered that our comments on queuing and service in the United Kingdom were a little harsh, let us then add rudeness to the list. Consider this. We were innocently sitting in a Central London eatery having just finished a snack when a snotty, sour-faced young woman came up to the table and out of the blue, without introduction or pleasantry, launched into a conversation which went like this:
Her (very aggressively): Are you actually eating?
Us: No we’re not actually eating, we’ve only just finished (the crumbs weren’t yet tidied away or faces wiped).
Her (even more aggressively and increasingly red-face as we held our ground): Can’t you see that other people want your table? All the other seats are taken.
An older woman, a mother perhaps, sensing that the slovenly young thing was about to be served a lesson in manners (we were just in the mood), implored her to leave us, the inconsiderate people, in our seats as we weren’t worth the bother. 'Ere, cummon luv, ignore 'em, vey aint worf bovvering wif.
And off they went, both glaring in our direction.
But if this left a poor impression, the balance has been tilted for the better, all down to the staff at Chandlers, an ordinary looking pub directly across the road from the Ealing Broadway station. We stopped for dinner, the menu looked alright and so we ordered our standby favourite, scampi and chips. Behind the bar, were a friendly, chirpy woman and a thick-set, shaven-headed, bullish sort of a bloke, the sort we described in Thailand as looking like the stereotypical brick-built tattooed football thug. In short, and she was very very short, both were engaging, inviting discussion, making suggestions and ensuring their service was prompt and efficient. Right down to him giving articulate, confident advice on wines to us and other customers, completely defying the beer and curry image his physical presence portrayed. Marty said we were having a meal before heading off to Brixton to see New Zealand band, The Bats, he volunteered that he was from south of the river and double-checked our pre-prepared directions. Kaelene has vowed never again judge people (or whole nations) by their appearance.
As it turned out, the directions were fundamentally flawed. Drivers on the Victoria Line, the only tube to Brixton, were on strike, supporting one of their colleagues sacked for opening the doors on the wrong side of the tube at a station. It may have been justified, he may have had our sour-faced young woman on board and wanted shot of her, but the irony of our being wrong-footed by strike action wasn’t lost on us. (Can we ever trust unions again not to inconvenience us?).
The Windmill, a music venue in Brixton, is rather different to the Royal Albert Hall. It is one of those delightfully grungy places, described by Time Out rather indelicately as a gloriously lowdown, coolf**k venue. That was a compliment. Situated at the end of a street of houses, it looks like a disused garage or condemned house, inside it is an L-shaped bar, dark, with a low ceiling and small stage area in one corner. This is a serious muso’s sort of place. The Bats were the third act, following an earnest wrist-slitting trio called Mathew Sawyer and the Ghosts, and a rock band called My Sad Captains with a Daniel Vettori lookalike wearing a grey cardigan on lead guitar and vocals (they, the band that is, were very good).
It would be unfair for us to review the Bats. Despite Marty having been an acquaintance and Facebook friend of bassist Paul Kean for a number of years, we’ve not listened to their music and, in conversation before the show; Paul said we should not compare them to our previous night’s encounter with Eric Clapton. Not only had the group arrived in England that morning after a twenty-six hour flight from New Zealand, they don’t claim virtuoso status. That said, it was a sold out “ultra-rare performance from this legendary psychedelic folk pop foursome” and good enough that we wondered why it takes a trip to the United Kingdom to appreciate a home-town band.
There were though a couple of disappointments; we had to leave before the end of the gig to find our way home from the unfamiliar south side of the Thames with the Victoria Line tube down and us not knowing the fundamentals of the night bus service and, secondly, for Kaelene, that Raybon Kan hadn’t turned up. We had a spare ticket in case he was stalking her.

Wonderful tonight
It cannot be said we haven’t had a lucky life. And what a treat to have been in the stalls at the Royal Albert Hall last night to see Eric Clapton in concert, for us the first time live despite having been fans since school days in the sixties.
But first the Royal Albert Hall, what a venue. Almost 250 years old, it is a London landmark, a Grade One historic building and magnificent both inside and out. The auditorium is probably smaller in circumference than the Christchurch Town Hall, but is high with a domed roof and under that, from top to bottom, a viewing gallery, a circle, three levels of boxes, the stalls and then an arena. The seating and curtains are decorated in rich, red materials, the walls adorned with ornate plaster work, and, in the stalls each chair swiveled. We liked that.
And to Clapton, it was a sublime performance, the fourth night of an eleven concert season, and he looked relaxed in black shirt and jeans backed by two of our favourite session men, Andy Fairweather-Low on guitar and Steve Gadd on drums. Two hours of sizzling electric guitar and laid back acoustics, the set ranged from hard rocking versions of old classics such as Badge and Cocaine to slower bluesy numbers including I shot the Sheriff, Anything for your Love, Nobody Knows You and Layla. Then there were the cute bits; Happy Birthday for his Aunt Sylvia who it appeared from his gestures may have been in the audience, and Somewhere over the Rainbow a regular feature of shows since the 2002 One More Car, One More Rider tour. Interestingly there was a cover version of Bob Dylan’s Not Dark Yet off the Time Out of Mind album, replete with a Dylanish rasp. No show would be complete without Wonderful Tonight, one of the songs Clapton wrote for Patti Boyd after wooing her off then Beatle husband George Harrison (He also wrote Layla for her, as did Harrison with Something). Recently Marty commented to one of our children about how special it would make you feel if someone wrote such love songs for you; jaundiced, she retorted that she had a boyfriend once who did such things and it spooked her completely, she thought him obsessive. Perhaps he just wasn’t as good as Eric.
It is easy to love London when you are here, but it is a love-hate relationship and getting into the concert typified all that which can be so exasperating about the place. We brought tickets on-line which had to be collected from the Royal Albert Hall box office, in person and with the credit card used for purchase as proof of identity apparently to limit scalping and stop fraud. Fair enough, so we called in and queued on the Saturday before the Wednesday performance, only to be told that they don’t hand tickets over until show day. On show day we arrived nice and early, intending to collect tickets and then have dinner but, after queuing again at the box office, we were told that our tickets weren’t there, but at a drop off point which didn’t open until one hour before start time. So, another queue and, with that, our intended dinner was abandoned, eventfully forcing us to find sanctuary in a sort-of cafe bar deep in the bowels of the Royal Albert. It was a tatty place with a dozen or so bar leaners, mismatched with ordinary size chairs (figure that one), and the cost for a couple of sandwiches and two glasses of red wine a staggering 17 pound ($NZ44.20 on today’s exchange rate).
As for service elsewhere, we have been out shopping for a home printer and have deduced that customers are clearly an inconvenience to retail assistants. It is yet to be determined whether looking bored, uninterested, and being unhelpful is genetic or a learned behavior but, whichever, it is an art form, and getting useful advice is more painful than a trip to the dentist. It is little wonder that English jobs are being taken in increasing numbers by Poles and other East Europeans. Quite frankly, even a non-English-speaking Hungarian shop assistant would be of more use than the locals we awoke from their daytime slumbers in Currys and PC World.
As for us, we are far from ready for our travels to end and are looking to become useful members of society, anywhere but home as Mayor Tim would say. Marty has started editing and uploading photos onto the MoodieReport website, and is coming to grips with the intricacies of travel retail publishing, while Kaelene is learning more about shopping and good housekeeping - although it is debatable whether there is anything more she can be taught on these topics.

Weigh the Anchor
It is a blimmin’ outrage, a full page advertisement in Saturday’s Guardian newspaper having a crack at New Zealand’s Anchor butter in order to promote its own brand, Country Life. What is the world coming to and just how little respect is being shown for New Zealand, a country whose soldiers willingly laid down their lives in several world wars fighting for Mother England?
Boldly headlined, Revealed: Anchor Butter is from New Zealand, the advertisement begs the question of whether readers know where their butter comes from? And then it answers the question, claiming that 39 percent of people who buy Anchor butter think it’s British. The small print reveals that the 39 percent figure is derived from a survey of only 485 people, and given this is a nation of more than 58 million the sample is so small that our calculator hemorrhaged trying to figure out what proportion of the population it actually is. Given its size, the poll probably has a margin of error of 39 percent as well, but the feature doesn’t provide that statistic.
The Guardian ad is a mock-up of a newspaper page with a silly looking man bursting through pretend stories proclaiming: “So?! I buy Country Life cos I THINK IT TASTES THE BEST”. Country Life is British butter, and we learn it is or should be the natural choice for readers who prefer to support British farmers. Not that we, who ever we are, have anything against New Zealand; apparently it’s a fantastic place.
It may be that the sample was taken from idiots. Everyone knows that Anchor butter comes from New Zealand, even the judiciary in Dubai. We know this because once, when Jade had a slight difficulty with an expired work visa, she was required to have a rather formal discussion with the authorities and it transpired that the judge she appeared before was a keen fan of Anchor. Clearly a man with fine taste.
If we seem less than impressed, let us tell you about the weekend tube service heading into central London and home again to catch up with the cast, crew, loyal supporters and hangers-on (that’s us) of Ro Dalziel’s play Lost in Thought, and to say farewell to Lianne who is heading back to New Zealand. This exclusive soiree was being held in the bar at the Globe Theatre and we should have been able to get there by a direct ride on the District Line, but that was closed beyond Earl’s Court. The next best was to change to Circle Line but that too was closed for weekend maintenance, so we opted for the Jubilee Line which was supposed to only be closed beyond London Bridge, our intended destination. Only after we got off the Central Line at Bond Street did we discover that the whole of the Jubilee Line was closed, forcing us to take the Bakerloo Line and then double back on the Northern Line. As if this wasn’t complicated enough, we carefully planned the journey home, taking into account that the escalators at Bank Station were under repair and out of the question. So, across the Millennium footbridge we walked and alongside the Thames to Temple Station, only to find that closed. So it was another kilometer or so walk to Embankment Station and back on the Bakerloo Line to Tottenham Court Road, where we changed for the Central Line to home. Such a lengthy journey becomes very unsettling on the bladder, particularly made worse by missing a bus at Ealing Broadway, having to wait for the next one, and then with the bus we caught failing to stop as requested at St Barnabus Church, and going on to Pitshanger Village, all resulting in another ten minutes walking. For this remarkable service, the travel card fare was more than 6 pounds (or $NZ16), a fortune compared with our favourite buses in Abu Dhabi where, for a similar length journey, it would have cost 2 dirham or slightly over $NZ1.
It is as well our hosts, the Moodies are very tolerant, we were more than one hour late for a carefully prepared dinner of slow-cooked pork - but at least on leaving the Globe, Kaelene had a farewell kiss on each cheek from her new friend Raybon Kan.

The trouble with money
This may seem quite irrelevant, but it is estimated that Britons bring back around 920 million pounds or almost $NZ2.4 billion in currency each year from overseas trips and stash it away in drawers, never to be seen again. Multiply this across the globe and a large nation could probably be kept solvent with this forgotten cash, or at least one despot able to maintain a healthy offshore bank account. Although we are not Britons we are culprits, now having worked our way through seven and a half different types of currency in ten countries since leaving home in December. We each have a bag of assorted coins and notes which threaten to put us over our allowable baggage weight limits, and we’ve come full circle, because we are back to the euro and pound for the second time.
Each time we change country, as well as learning a whole new repertoire of pleases, thank yous and hellos, there is the challenge of mental currency conversations in shops and with street traders, and attempting to identify the value of coins. Coins from the United Arab Emirates, for example, have no recogniseable symbols to identify their value so, aside from the 1 dirham coin worth about NZ46 cents, those of other denominations simply accumulate unused.
And what of the other currencies; one euro, used across the EU countries, except for Great Britain, is currently worth about $NZ2.30, while the pound buys about $2.56. The euro and pound were almost at a identical value when we were in the UK in January and raises the question of why this remains the only EU country not to utilise the euro for general use. It’s not as though the pound has any great intrinsic or nationalistic value, even the French have given way and abandoned the franc.
One Omanian Rial, made up of 1,000 paisas, currently converts to $NZ4.38 (try calculating that in your head while haggling over the purchase of a Khangar, or traditional dagger, at Muscat’s Mutrah market), while the Egyptian pound is worth about NZ30 cents. One Thai baht is worth about five New Zealand cents, so twenty of them to the dollar makes for an easy mental conversion; the Singapore dollar slightly more awkward, each one worth $NZ1.15.
We described working our way through seven and a half different currencies, the half being Australia which doesn’t really count as, although passing through Sydney twice as we’ve zig-zagged our way between countries, we have only been there in transit. There, our exchange rate had to take into account the scandalous prices imposed by airport retailers, akin to being captured and held to ransom as café proprietors charge prices which make those on the Champs Elyse in Paris look modest – which might be alright if the ambience was the same.
Within days we expect not to worry about exchange rates and comparisons. Kaelene has invested in a winning British Lotto ticket and we expect that this investment, at one pound a line, will pay handsome dividends.

Dear sir or madam, will you read my script
It took me years to write, will you take a look
It’s based on a lawyer who is going mad
And I need a job, so I wanna be a play writer
Yes, a play writer
(With apologies to Lennon McCartney)

Lost in Thought
The playwright wasn’t eating and, despite obvious signs of distraction, insisted she wasn’t nervous as the rest of us shared delicious Chinese food in Ye’s Restaurant in St Paul’s Road in Highbury, just around the corner from the Arsenal football ground, and opposite the unusually named Hen and Chicken’s Theatre and Pub. It was the opening night of Lost in Thought, a play, in fact the first play, written by Ro Dalziel, the actress formerly known as Shortland Street’s Beanie Brown. She looked apprehensive and broke her self-imposed restriction from the pre-performance preparations and darted off over the road to the theatre the minute the box office opened.
She need not have been anxious. This play proved to be simply outstanding. Exceptionally well scripted and superbly acted, it is a story about a young lawyer, Megan, who has bi-polar disorder and while preparing for an important case has come off her medication and become confused and disorientated. It examines the effect on her, her boyfriend Ed who didn’t know she had the disorder, and sister Narella who is probably sick of looking after her and would rather party. This is the sort of subject matter that could easily become too intense and earnest but, instead, the play is compelling and deals with the bi-polar condition through clever and entertaining dialogue and direction. It captures with an unusual insight the quirks, the subtle and then dramatic changes in people with this illness so well that it could be from direct experience. It was, from our point of view, a flawless performance, well cast, well directed and a brilliant opening night. Both playwright and sister Lianne, over from New Zealand for the occasion, were positively beaming.
Of course, it should have been good. As we learned from the playwright herself no less, Lost in Thought took ten years to complete which is not very efficient at all by any good market model. Our calculation, in consultation with former Sunday Star Times columnist Raybon Kan, to drop a name, one of a number of Kiwi performers in the audience (and bar afterwards), shows that this equates to only seven minutes of performance time per year. At that rate it may be some time before the sequel.
Then home. An hour and a bit on the Victoria and Central tube lines followed by the E9 bus means we are back in London, jetlagged but here. Our plane from Singapore left more than an hour late on Monday morning, and then was further slowed by a headwind resulting in us missing our connection at Frankfurt and arriving at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 some four hours late. Still, with T5’s reputation it was a relief to find our baggage had arrived on the same flight, unusual we hear.

Marty Python
We can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the Kokusai Security Pte Ltd company can catch cheating spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, and partners, find evidence of adultery and provide pre-marital checks, and from the window of its offices in downtown Singapore proudly advertises its website: CatchCheatingSpouse.com.sg. On signing up to their internet site, you can receive a free weekly email newsletter that is absolutely jam-packed with the hottest information to help you catch your cheating spouse, plus true life stories of how people have caught their cheating spouses cheating on them. You can also take their notorious infidelity quiz and learn how to turn yourself onto a human lie detector. Amazing but true.
Our travels in Asia have come to an end, at least for a while, and a four-day jaunt in Singapore provided the easiest of transitions. Only with the greatest of reluctance did we shed the informality of our Thai lifestyle; we had forgotten how exhausting it is to cram in as much as possible into short stays, but we did it, comforted in the knowledge that the world is made safe by Kokusai Security Pte Ltd.
Back on the Singapore Airlines Hop-On bus, we journeyed to Sentosa Island, a sort of tourist theme park with resorts, a sky tower, butterfly farm, insect kingdom, cable car, luge, sky ride, lookout, golf club, dolphin farm, fort, historic displays, nature walks, segway rides, a flying trapeze, movie theatre, underwater world, and a huge Merlion, a cross between a lion and mermaid, the symbol of Singapore. With all the superficiality of the speed tourists that we are, we conquered all we needed of Sentosa in a little less than two breathless hours, including a close-up encounter with a large mottled Python.
Before that, we did the obligatory ride up the Singapore River in the unusually named bumboat, the description apparently somehow derived from the English scavenger or dirt boats which carried dirt and food to and from off-shore ships. These boats were also used for general river transport and these days seem restricted to ferrying tourists, few of whom it appeared were about judging by the large number of boats lying idle and the few actually working.
Of course, while sightseeing might be interesting, it seemed more fun relaxing at a riverside café for dinner, eating outside in the warm evening air, or catching up, again, with our friend Martin as recidivists in the courtyard bar at Raffles Hotel for a leisurely Sunday lunch. Ironically we met Martin as we were about to depart to stay at his house in London while he was settling in for a week’s work in Singapore and Mumbai.
We left Singapore Sunday night, or rather early Monday morning as our flight was delayed, leaving behind a country which is reported to have the highest per-capita execution rate in the world, averaging 13.57 deaths per one million people. According to Amnesty International, 420 people have been executed here since 1991, the hangings being carried out on Friday mornings at Changi Prison. The Chief Executioner apparently consoles those he sends off with a profound little ditty: “I am going to send you to a better place than this, God bless you.” Now that would be a good tourist attraction.

The lantern beckons
“The lantern beckoned him. The new ‘ah ku’ was pretty, fresh from Canton. High on opium, he made his way unsteadily towards the gas-lit brothel.” No, this is not an entry in the worst opening lines of a novel competition, but rather an introductory description to a walking tour billed as The Secrets of the Red Lantern of Singapore's Chinatown. Our guide, Helena, who, as it turns out, has a sister living in Woodend, Canterbury, takes us, as the narrative continues, “to where many men have gone before, tracing the the red light district in Chinatown from past to present, to learn about the colourful lives of those who were embroiled in its timeless drama”.
And it seems many men have gone before: “In 1887, the brothels in Chinatown were as many and as close together as the teeth of a comb. Combine that with the proliferation of opium and gambling dens, it was sin city. It is no accident that Chinatown was also known as Bu Ye Tian, The Place of Nightless Days. Discover vice and tragedy in the shadows of Chinatown by night. You will venture into the fringes where entertainment, in its rawest form, is still practiced today”. It was a wild time, one prostitute to every fifteen men and an opium trade run by the British, as much to maintain political control as the West’s modern-day management of some heroin markets.
Given Singapore’s conservative regime, it is something of a surprise to learn that prostitution is legal, but probably no surprise at all that the vice-squad systematically raids two brothels a week to ensure that their workers are licensed and have up-to-date health checks. The contradiction being that it is illegal both for women to solicit and men to purchase; apparently liaisons are arranged through some form of osmosis. Until last year oral sex was unlawful unless accompanied by penetration, a poster glimpsed through the door of one establishment advertising that such a form of sex only to be performed on clients suitably attired with a condom. We are not sure which flavor might be preferred.
These days Chinatown is being gentrified, quite beautifully, and as current brothel licenses expire they are not being renewed, with former bordellos being transformed into trendy boutique hotels. There are still the remnants though: in the “Blue Triangle”, we pass doorways where house numbers are illuminated in small lightboxes to indicate they are open for business, a yoga club invites passersby to “Kum In”, reflexology massage parlours advertise half-hour massages for $5 as if they could survive on that, and hotels offer rooms to rent by the hour.
Changes to the face of Chinatown do not mean that demand for commercial sex has diminished; it has diversified and developed its own particular class system. Twenty minutes of fun in Chinatown costs around $S40 ($NZ48) while at the fashionable Orchard Towers, a complex of bars and restaurants in the city’s fashionable shopping area eloquently dubbed the four floors of whores, clients can expect to pay $S200 for an encounter of limited duration or up to $S1,000 for the night. For the latter one might wish (or need) to take advantage of some of the traditional enhancements available, not only the customary antler velvets and ginsengs, but also such exotic delights as seal and deer penises.
There is apparently a local medicinal restaurant that offers diagnoses and traditional accompaniments with its cuisine. If a young man is not feeling on top of his game or, for example, is about to go on a hot date, he can tell the chef and something will be prepared to, shall we say, balance his “yang”. Our guide tells us that this was put to the test by one skeptical female journalist who requested the chef prepare a lunchtime meal to enhance her libido. The journalist reportedly returned to work and spent the next four hours under her desk, so aroused she was fearful of what she may do to any passing male.

The Singapore sling
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a special announcement. The trafficking of drugs into Singapore is a serious offence and carries a mandatory death penalty.” As if a special announcement on our Air Asia flight from Phuket to Singapore was not sufficient, the message was repeated on the immigration card. “Warning: Death for drug traffickers under Singapore law.” With such explicit cautions we have also avoided spitting or chewing gum in public, and Marty took the precaution of having his hair cut, fearing that any long flowing locks touching his collar would still be a summary offence as it was in the sixties.
The drug trafficking welcome was about as friendly as the staff at the famous Raffles Hotel where we stopped yesterday for the legendary, and obligatory, Singapore Sling. The hotel itself is rather grand affair named after Sir Stanford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, and was declared a national monument in 1987. It bills itself as the jewel in the crown of the country’s hospitality industry, renowned and loved for its inimitable style and unsurpassed excellence in service and facilities. But, we have noted before that those who flatter themselves with such vain recommendations are usually least qualified to do so. Those working in the famed Long Bar (albeit recreated in a new wing of the hotel, build in 1991) looked bored and, without exception, sullen, as though they did not want to be there. Had Kaelene not disturbed their indifferent air and asked what we needed to do to be served we could have died of thirst, or old age. Perhaps the lack of interest was an affectation, just as it is, seemingly, the way the floor is littered with the husks of unshelled peanuts, large boxes of which are on each of table. The Long Bar tradition of dropping debris on the floor must still be a very chic thing to do.
It would, though, be unfair to judge this city too harshly. We took a ride on the Singapore Airlines Hop-On bus, which for $S12 ($NZ 14) or free for Singapore Airlines passengers, allows a day of hop-on, hop-off travelling on two routes. One stops almost directly outside our hotel and runs through parks and gardens, down Orchard Road, the main shopping area, around Little India, then through the Marina Bay area, on to Chinatown and Clarke Quay, a trendy bar area on the river front, and then back home. The other route does a circuit of the city and then to Sentosa Island.
These services are excellent, regular, on-time and, at around one seventh of the price, leave the Dubai hop-on hop-off service for dead. They provide a good overview of a city which is not as sterile as often portrayed; it is leafy and green, and while downtown buildings and the shopping malls are ultra-modern, there are still the markets and ethnic areas that retain the charm, smells and allure of old Asia. The architecture in the backstreets of Little India is quite similar to Phuket and a real treasure.
Not to be missed is a ride on the Singapore Flyer, the local equivalent of the London Eye; it is an observation wheel which carries passenger in sixteen-ton capsules to a height of 165 metres (or 42 stories) and provides views across the city and on to Malaysia in the North and the Indonesian Islands in the South-East. The half-hour ride, complete with commentary, is apparently a moving centrestage of experiences we will never forget. What we won’t forget is the spa in the Flyer shopping centre where people can be treated, at $S38, to having "doctor fishes" from Turkey help promote blood circulation, ease psoriasis and minor eczema, lighten scars, relieve stress and smoothen skin. We watched as customers sat in the spa window with feet in tanks of water while fish, about three inches long, nibbled at their legs.
As for unsurpassed excellence in service, it would be hard to beat the Hard Rock Café where, universally, staff are bubbly, friendly and engaging, or even at Phuket airport where the sandwishes from their bekery are sublime. Raffles could really learn a thing or two.

The life of Simon
It may be that, in the main, we are deprived of other familiar human company on our travels, but we regularly indulge in a game of either assigning nationalities and national characteristics to people, or likening them to others. For example, our favourite at the moment is a man, perhaps in his forties, who is Adonis-like; handsome, square jawed, richly tanned and with an elegant mane of thick, blond hair. He oozes self assurance and each day he is immaculately turned out in different beach wear, sometimes twice a day. He is here with his wife and daughter, each of them quite beautiful in a Scandinavian way, blond plaits and quite perfect. We have dubbed him the Bounty Hunter after the American reality TV star we saw recently on Larry King Live, although Kaelene thinks that does him a disservice and prefers Fabio, the model.
Similarly, we meet people who are uncannily alike to people we know. A friend of Nicoles’ family, over from Tasmania for the wedding, is the splitting image of the father of one of Tim’s friends. But he didn’t just look like him; the way he talked, his mannerisms and even his interests were the same, and we struck up a good friendship made easier by the fact that he seemed so familiar. So too, on our boat trip to Phi Phi Island, there was a man who reminded us of the husband of well-know East Christchurch member of parliament. Again, it wasn’t just the physical appearance, but also in the way he carried himself and interacted with his group of friends. In this case, the similarity ended when, in a very Eastern European way, the man stripped for no apparent reason to a very unflattering, saggy pair of grey flannel Y-front underpants and remained that way for the remainder of the day.
Last night the tables were turned. Our bar has been colonised of late by some Australian couples who we hadn’t warmed to, one of each couple reminding us of disagreeable, former work colleagues. But it was our last night at the bar so we dropped our guard. As the conversation progressed, one of the men addressed Marty as Simon and his day was made by an affirmative response. Simon, it turns out, is a celebrity chef. Not that our man watches Simon’s cooking programme though, it just happens to be on Australian TV between AFL matches and he spotted the Simon in Marty immediately. It is hard to replay a conversation, but everything fell perfectly into place. Marty asked the man to respect his privacy on the basis of his need to have a quiet holiday, incognito, and said he didn’t like to talk shop but then gave carefully measured advice on local cuisine (expensive needn’t always be best, simple Thai meals at beachside cafes are right up there with the world’s best, and that it can be quite manly for Australian men to cook). Earlier, we had said we were travelling for a long time and that fitted too, the man understood that Simon was semi-retired these days.
A brilliant performance, and clear evidence that Kaelene is travelling with an unconscionable rogue, but we had no sympathy. Last seen our man was vigorously contesting the bar tab he had unwisely run up over the past few days, too much alcohol had clearly blurred his mind.

The sting
There is a very cute little girl, perhaps four or five years of age, who plays all day and long into the night on Bangla Street. Her mother sells fresh orange juice from a stall in between the Honey One Bar and the currency exchange, right opposite Scruffy Murphy’s. The girl, a skinny wee thing, is always immaculately dressed and spends her time skipping up the street, weaving in and out of pedestrians, clambering on stationary motorbikes, chatting to vendors and always badgering to take charge of the remote controlled toy buggy a young man demonstrates for sale on the road. Occasionally she amuses herself by sneaking up on patrons at Scruffy’s and startling them by pulling on their leg or bobbing up unexpectedly at a table. Last night she compared nail varnish with Kaelene (both toes and fingers immaculately done), before darting off into the evening. She is delightful, and we are thinking Madonna might want to adopt her.
This is life for many young children, accompanying parents as they work or even working themselves.
Some, who can be no more than six or seven, stop by bars and restaurants offering garlands of sweet smelling flowers for sale, and they are hard to resist. Although young, these children are no pushovers; they can bargain as hard as their elders, probably more successfully, as they apply a seemingly innocent charm and broad Thai smiles to clinch a deal.
Almost everything is available for purchase on the streets or in the markets, the novelty for tourists being copy-brand sunglasses, watches, handbags, and clothes, and they are everywhere, along with sarongs, fabrics, hammocks (heaven knows why) and souvenirs. And then there are the DVDs. While there are not too many titles on open display, there are plenty of stall-holders who, if the slightest interest is shown, will divulge their full array of wares in concealed, windowless, air-conditioned rooms. In the first, another child, no more than six, diligently packed DVDs and labels into wrappers while we browsed the current release movies and popular television series, all priced at 60 baht or $NZ3 apiece. For reasons we could not establish, music DVDs are more expensive, at 100 baht. Access to the second of these vault-like rooms was through a tailor’s shop where a small section of wall, with displays of clothes, opened to reveal thousands of titles. But if these businesses are intended to be discreet, away from the eyes of copyright enforcement authorities, a dead giveaway may be a sign displayed by another vendor: More DVDs available in my secret room.
Away from the markets are the artists’ studios, about a dozen or more, where stock paintings can be purchased, or where copies of almost anything can be commissioned, from Warhol and pop-art prints to old masters. A Picasso can easily be yours, once ordered it will take a day or so to paint and dry, or in our case we were sorely tempted by a brilliant caricature of Rolling Stone Keith Richards for 3,000 baht ($NZ150), four brightly coloured Warhol Chairman Mao’s for 4,000 baht, or Che for 2,000.
Already over limit with baggage weights, we’ve had to settle for a few wooden frogs and forty pairs of designer sunglasses.
On another note entirely, we were intrigued by a story in this week’s Gazette which reports a young Englishman arrested when leaving Phuket on 31 January and charged with being impolite to an Immigration Official. After being held in custody until now, he has pleaded guilty and fined 500 baht. But here’s the sting: He now faces a 20,000 baht fine for overstaying his visa while incarcerated.

Host responsibility
Patong is built alongside a stretch of white sandy beach, perhaps five kilometer from end to end, with three parallel roads running the length of the town and intersected by a few crossroads and lanes, or sois. One of these, Bangla Street, is closed to traffic after 6.00 in the evening and from then its party time. A map shows more than 180 bars in this one small area and they embrace an interesting array of names: Wet Dreams, G Spot Bar, Cheeky Girls, Dirty Deeds, Ooh La La Bar, The Love Bar, and Rock Hard A Go Go, a gentleman’s club advertising sexy lady dance shows. A sign fixed to a lamp post urging: Repent, the Kingdom of God is near, appears to have had no effect.
As if 180 bars isn’t enough, hotels, restaurants and bars dominate the two main roads, there are more at the edge of town, including one with the enticing name of Durty Munger’s, and then our Kiwi bar is further back behind the main markets among a cluster of perhaps thirty mainly Aussie-theme bars.
Host responsibility is a simple proposition, to extract as much money as quickly as possible from tourists, and it is a simple repertoire. Flatter the punters and engage them in games of Connect Four, a dice game called Jackpot, and competitions involving banging nails into a block of wood using anvil-headed hammers. It starts simply as fun to fill in time, but as the intensity increases wagers involve the losers buying a drink for the winner, and then rounds of sambucca or tequila, accompanied by the ringing of a gong and loud cheering. Naturally, the well-practiced bar staff have it all over the customers at games, but let them win often enough to keep them interested, and buying. And all the while the owner runs a tab, much easier than paying every time a round is brought - which seems to make sense at the time.
It would be disingenuous to say we hadn’t been caught, once, but we are old hands now and watch the staff work their charms on others. We just get chided gently for not calling in more regularly and then for not drinking enough. “Mamma, Pappa, you haven’t been here for three days, two hours and six minutes, and you’re just drinking beer, what about a tequila?” they say, declaring our guilt before giggling and regaling us with stories of their antics since our last visit. They may get the patrons absolutely hammered but, equally, they party hard themselves to keep the money flowing in. Winston Churchill would have been proud to have soldiers as willing to lay down their bodies in the line of duty.
It would be wrong to give a bad impression. Many visitors come with the purpose of drinking hard, and so they do, but it is in a relaxed, fun environment. Unlike New Zealand, there is no aggression and certainly no fighting and the bar owners and staff, while sharp, are also engaging and friendly in a genuine way. They are keen to give tips to ensure we get the most out of our holiday, the Kiwi bar owner introduced us to her children and one of the staff came in on her day off just to catch up when she heard we were there. On only our second trip to Scruffy Murphy’s, one of three faux Irish pubs in town, the wait person immediately recognized us and offered us a pint each of Singha beer, our tipple from the earlier visit. And it’s not that our behaviour had been memorable, it had been a modest occasion, but it does illustrate an attention to service and detail not usually found at home.
We have only three more days left here and one thing is certain, we are not yet quite ready to repent and find the Kingdom of God. And on a more practical level we also need to return when the Hard Rock Café re-opens after renovation so that Marty can add another shot glass to his collection.

Glasnost

In Soi Rommannee, which runs between Dibuk and Krabi Roads there is an exquisite little coffee house which goes by the somewhat out-of-place name of Glasnost. Sitting in a row of beautiful, ornate old buildings, it is dark and moody inside, with acoustic guitars and other stringed instruments around the walls and conga and snare drums in front of low slung, dark tables adorned with bric a brac, and wooden chairs. On the walls are old, decaying posters of Ella Fitzgerald and Charlie Parker, and sepia photos of the old town. Such chic would be at home in the sophisticated heart of Paris, but this is old Phuket Town.
The history of Phuket island, or Junk Ceylon as it was known, has its origins in tin mining from as far back as the sixteenth century, but it became more prominent with a mining boom in the nineteenth century when the island was settled by Chinese, Malays, Indians, Nepalese and Thais, called Babas. Phuket town was the trading centre, described in one guide as a hive of activity “where tin mine workers would buy essentials, sell tin ore and indulge themselves in less-than-exemplary activities. Theirs was a hard life and the comforts of alcohol, opium, women, and the chance to win some extra cash through gambling provided a heady contrast to the drudgery of tin prospecting.”
The town’s architecture is variously described as Sino-Portugese or Sino-Colonial, the latter apparently being the more accurate as there is, in fact very little Portuguese influence remaining. Instead, the design of most buildings derives from the British, with rich tin mining company owners having brought architects, builders, and materials from the nearby (then) Malayan island of Penang and built huge mansions and ornates in the old town. While it is plainly apparent that many of the buildings have fallen into a state of disrepair, some extremely so, it is good to see signs of restoration and heartening to learn that heritage orders have been placed on the whole area to ensure its character is retained.
Some of the filming of The Killing Fields, the movie depicting the reign of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, took place here, one of the old mansions being used as Phom Pehn’s American Embassy. Another place also used in movies is the Phra Phitak Chin Pracha mansion, which is of Italian style and said to be the most beautiful house in Phuket. Today a sign at the gate warns visitors they are not permitted entry, the mansion is in private ownership and currently being restored.
Next for us was a quick visit to the Phuket Thaihua Museum which depicts the Chinese history in the town with a magnificent display of photographs; the museum building itself having recently been given the Best Art and Architectural Preservation Award.
This is a town we were told held little interest for tourists and, while we may not have had a coffee at number 14 Soi Rommannee (it was too hot to accept the owner’s invitation) we did purchase water at NZ 2.5 cents per bottle and filled the motorbike with petrol for $2. Now that is our sort of town.