Ten Pound Pom Read Free

myself very much. I like Singapore a lot. Tony tells me:
    –When I was in the marines, there was a kind of myth about Singapore about a building, a brothel like, called Four Floors of Whores. Each floor had a different kind of prostitute, y’know, straight, grannies, ladyboys. Don’t know anyone who ever found it but it was kind of a legend.
    –Four Floors of Whores?
    –Four Floors of Whores, aye. Wonder if it’s true. You hear all kinds of stories about these places. There’s one about Hong Kong – Backside Alley. You go down a corridoor, apparently, a long wooden corridor with holes cut in the walls and arses sticking out of them. You choose your arse and pay and the arse is yours.
    –To do what with?
    –Anything you like, I suppose. You don’t ever see the person, just their arse. Backside Alley.
    –This true?
    –Well, it’s what I heard. You hear all kinds of stories about these places.
    I drink more. Early hours, in a taxi, and the cabbie says:
    –Where you boys go now? Hotel?
    –To sleep, yeh. Knackered. Flew in from London the UK today.
    –I take you boys somewhere.
    –Where?
    –Special place. Very special place.
    –What, a club?
    –No club, no. Better. Special place – Four Floor Whore!
    –What?
    –Four Floor Whore!
    I turn around in my seat and my brother’s laughing.
    –D’you hear that? It exists!
    The cabbie laughs with us and shouts: –I am fifty-five!
    We go back and sleep. My sleep is deep and dreamless. Up, shower, coffee, wander, Buddhist temple, cab to Raffles Hotel for the lunch buffet. Another Singapore legend; I’d heard a lot about it. Travellers’ tales. Always wanted to try it. By all accounts, the Raffles lunch buffet is spectacular. It’s named after Sir Stamford Raffles, who founded Singapore in 1819, and it hosted its first guest in 1887 when, owned by the Sarkies brothers from America, it was ‘basically a commodious bungalow’, to quote William Warren’s Raffles Remembered. It was extended in 1890, with the opening of the Suez Canal. Somerset Maugham visited, as did Noel Coward, Charlie Chaplin, other luminaries. Occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War but re-opened for business in 1946. The Singapore Sling was, apparently, invented in the Long Bar, probably in 1915, by a Hainanese bartender called Ngiam Tong Boon, whose adept hand I’d like to warmly shake. The hotel is all balconies and fragrant courtyards and grandballrooms and marble balustrades and tinkling water features and by Christ it’s posh. Sepia photographs show famous personages and colonial types in white suits and pith helmets and handlebar moustaches. How did they stand this heat, dressed like that? Much dabbing of empinkened brows with silken handkerchiefs went on, I imagine. Much spluttering too, no doubt. Tight white gaberdine buttoned up snug to the extravagantly bewhiskered thrapple in 80% humidity. I can almost hear the harrumphing. I say, Carstairs! What is it, Carruthers? Tell Gunga Din to fetch another gin, there’s a good chap.
    Forty shops in the arcade. Souvenirs and collectibles and gourmet food, that type of thing. I buy a notebook whose pages are watermarked with a stylised drawing of a louche bespatted fellow holding a cocktail glass with the words ‘RAFFLES HOTEL – THE ONLY PLACE TO ENJOY A SINGAPORE SLING’ beneath. And the buffet, God, the buffet… you pay your fifty-two dollars – about twenty quid –and are ushered into a cavernous room cooled by fans and assailed by smells and colours and the dash of diners and cooks. It’s incredible. You pick up a plate and wander and fill it, eat, wander and re-fill, wander and re-fill, until you’re a balloon. Half lobsters. Oysters and writhing sushi. Roast duck and kimchi. Roast lamb and spuds, beef stew, carrots, green beans, mashed potato and gravy for those who want to do a rainy British Sunday in the tropics. Curried pumpkin soup, pork loin, crab claws, ratatouille and goat’s cheese pasta, smoked salmon,