27th Thursday - Singapore - eye clinic

Thursday 27^th March

Our last day at the Tanglin Club, yesterday…

Oh so sad…

Where have all the flowers gone??  Where did the time go??

Enigmatic Islamic calligraphy

We haven’t even swum in the pool…too BUSY.  Also we just loved our big spacious room, with the desk, the viewty,* the bath, shower, ironing board and…the great big clean white bed with PERFECT pillows!  And HBO on the TV!

Our plan was to leave tomorrow for a Big Adventure – a flight to Medan,** in Indonesia, followed by a (possibly bone-rattling) four hour bus trip to Lake Toba, a serene and fascinating outpost of civilisation surrounded by jungle inhabited by…many MANY orangutans.

But…no… a spanner in the works!

How fortunate we are to be in Singapore right this minute when Pete is displaying symptoms of a torn retina in his OTHER eye.  Eye no. #1 got fixed in October in Tasmania; now Eye no. #2 is in need of repair. 

WAS in need of repair…

It is now all fixed, thanks to speedy ophthalmologists #1*** and #2**** at the Eye Hospital.

We spent many hours in the hospital, waiting waiting waiting…

We were very hungry because we had missed breakfast – too busy playing with our viewty, shower, ironing board, kettle… The downstairs shop did offer birds nests…

Umm…no…

I got desperate enough to buy a toasted sandwich from this machine:

It was…nasty…

By 2.30 we were all done and dusted.  Pete had had his eye lasered, had made an appointment for next Tuesday (1^st April,) and had paid a bill for more thousands of dollars than you can imagine (over TWO thousand, in fact…we are very much hoping our travel insurance will cough up.)

So we have to stay here in Singapore…but, sadly, NOT at the Tanglin Club.

Onto the MRT trains in search of accommodation… we rather fancied Little India – roti canai for breakfast!  Yum!  We wandered around (Mad Dogs and Englishmen. It was very hot…) and finally settled on a room in the Grand***** Chancellor in Little India.  We had a choice of:

$250 per night official rate

$200 daily offer

$170 if we booked on the internet

$125 if we went with some soliciting scalper-type Indian men on the street…

So…guess which one we went with??

We will be there tonight, faintly mourning the extreme luxury of the Tanglin Club, the serenity of the Heeren House…But all will be well!

In the MRT we were fascinated by this schoolgirl, scooting along the hallways reading from a slim volume of verse in Mandarin script.

She did NOT break her stride!!  Along the hallways, down the stairs, onto the escalators without ever looking away from her book…

Today is Meriloy’s birthday.

She is my friend of many years, and she is still full of enthusiasm and a feeling for adventure.  I got an email from her today, saying;

We are headed to the mainland in our camper and will get to Sydney for the writers festival in May.  Later in the year we are going sailing in the Bonofacio rally.  I am excited for me.  We also have a villa in Sicily for a week and plan to do a cooking tour of India on way home.

It is beautiful in Tasmania at the moment. Best time of the year I think.

I rest my case – Meriloy is enjoying life and embodies infectious enthusiasm!

And will we go to Medan/Lake Toba, next week after Pete's 1st April check-up??  Watch this space...

* I still think viewty should be a dictionary word…thank you Felix, aged three when he coined it!

** Lonely Planet says of Medan…

Medan is…somewhat mythical in travellers’ circles, regularly popping up in ‘What’s the worst place you’ve ever visited?’ conversations…

Oh goody (But I reckon Pete and I have been to WORSE places, quite happily…)

*** Elaine Chong, on her FIRST day in Singapore after seventeen years in Melbourne – she was recommended by Pete’s wonderful retina specialist in Hobart.  Synchronicity and serendipity that she just happened to be in Singapore YESTERDAY was her first day at work!!

**** Edmund Wong, Senior Consultant and a very speedy worker

***** Not all that grand…