Sat on a rooftop in Singapore, the sun only partially blocked by the verdant display from the window box, I struggled with a tricky question. Do I use the tumble dryer so that I can wear my jeans today, or avoid the risk of everything shrinking and hope it all dries more naturally.
The laundry in the hotel is by the rooftop pool. Between last night’s dancing and two weeks of walking in humid heat my jeans were grateful for detergent and water, and the machine fit the rest of my laundry too – including the two long sleeve white shirts that I haven’t worn since their last encounter with the Scrubba but that I was thinking were a bit grey.
The machine applies auto-detergent. I waited with fascination to find out how I’d be smelling for the next few days.
$10 for the wash isn’t unreasonable. $10 for the dryer makes it expensive. It’s still half the price of the ship laundry service, and twice the capacity.
The other challenge for the day is how to spend it. Washing would be done by 9.30am but what then? So many options, none of them absolutely demanding my time.
Instead I sat watching tiny ants scurrying on the roof. They seem to have made a home in the window boxes, which to be fair have more acreage than my back garden.
In the end I skipped the dryer, saved myself $10 and 45 minutes, and assured my clothes would almost fit for the rest of the trip. My white shirts are still grey.
The hour saved was spent trying to work out what to do for the day. Shorts would be fine, sandals matches half the locals, but I can’t walk far in sandals. 4km gives me blisters. So I went for the shorts, socks and walking shoes look, which earned me stares. That may be the style choice, the brightly coloured socks or the brightly coloured legs sticking out of them. My face and arms are a freckled brown but my legs remain mostly pink and hairy.
Walking through Little India at 10am I found it largely closed. No idea what the shop opening times are, maybe I got lucky to actually see them yesterday.
$10 got me a new usb c data cable, the added expense due to the word data on the packaging. The salesman wanted to be sure it would fit so took it out of its packaging and asked me for my camera. As I took it out of my bag and opened the waterproof cover to the usb port he plugged the other end into a power supply.
My camera doesn’t charge from usb. It definitely doesn’t charge from a 12v fast charge power supply. He jumped, panicked and yanked the cable out as I strongly stated, “No power!” Potential disaster averted.
5km into my morning I stopped at another mall, admired its suspended ball pit, spread over 5 storeys, slides interconnecting them. You have to enter at the top and can’t exit until you reach the bottom. It wasn’t open, nobody on it, no indication whether adults could play too.
At last I found a coffee shop, a Malaysian chain called Old Town White Coffee. I ordered black coffee. Today’s special was a sparkling mango coffee, a mix of mango, soda and cold white coffee, which I didn’t try. The black coffee was thick, strong and rich, so nothing like coffee from a chain in the UK. Easy to recommend, sadly harder to find once I get home.
Back at the hotel, my meanderings having brought me back to within a kilometre of it, the USB cable got properly tested. At last an off-camera back up of my photographs. Only 922, which is about 3-4 days worth in Iceland. I’ve been stuck in cities, no knowledge of street photography law, my camera seldom taken from its bag. That’ll change by the weekend 🙂
A quick scan through the 922 shows a mix of tourist holiday snaps, failed attempts, duplicates, one I like despite its flaws and two that I’m exceedingly happy with. On the whole a good return. Backing them up to my home NAS is a rather slower affair, over 15GB at around 500KB/s. Oh well, can leave the tablet connected overnight.
In other news, following my road crossing adventures in Hong Kong I’m probably now famous across China. Not that they’ll let me back into the country with the social score that’ll have given me.
The promised thunder arrived, occasional loud rumblings from above over a 2-3 hour period that didn’t coincide with the rain shower, itself thunderous as it hit the window.
Dinner was local to the hotel, a small place run by Indians that had only broken English. An extended Indian family filled a third of the place and two policemen sat there drinking beer, before pulling back on their yellow vests and leaving. Armed police and beer, what could possibly go wrong.
I went for a mutton kebab and Chicken Handi. They arrived at the same time, no rice, explaining the confusion from the lady that I wanted just one garlic naan. In the event that sufficed. The kebab was very tasty, a nice blend of meat and vegetable well cooked with good consistency and properly spicy.
The Handi was mild, my attempts to ascertain how hot each dish was beyond the woman’s English, each question answered by her reading out the list of dishes from the menu. It tasted ok, closer than I expected to a mild Indian dish at home, more korma than anything. While £15 for two courses (and coffee) seemed about par for the town I couldn’t help feeling a $12 burger would’ve been nicer.
It’s been a quiet day with only 7km walked, partly because I mentally just didn’t feel like doing much, partly because tomorrow’s going to be a weird day. Looks like I can get the Liverpool match against PSG on the hotel TV but that kicks off at 4am. Then I need to somehow wake up again in time to check out, then fill the day before flying out of the country at 8.40pm. I have plans 🙂 They made need adjusting to include finding wellies.
There’s also the issue of dinner causing distance from facilities to be a difficult risk. It’s one form of weight loss. So by 8pm I was tucked up in bed, but still writing this, an hour to go on the trans-continental photo backup, surprised the hotel management hadn’t burst in to beg me to let other guests use the internet connection. I’ve had over 3GB in downloads too: Rimworld will keep me going nicely through the next cruise.
Still in the same hotel as yesterday. If you want your room serviced you need to pretend you’re a small child and ask for someone to come and clean up after you.
11pm, still awake, ready to sleep. Sadly the Indians have finally woken up and some muppet is playing that horrible Indian music loudly in the street. It’s bad enough getting it from 3 foot high speakers in the storefronts as you walk past, this is just ludicrous. Given the street was dead at this time last night I can only hope someone does the same to him.