Off To A Singapore Start

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Interesting Singapore fact: Singapore is an incredibly fun and interesting place to be in, providing you're staying in a swanky hotel, make upwards of 7 figures a year, and do not, in fact, like fun very much.

The Journey Begins

Our epic quest starts, my friends, as ever, in the humble shit-hole of High Wycombe. I bid farewell for my brother (I was at an auction that was selling family members in return for expressions of goodbye. It is a biannual event around our parts) in the only way I knew how: by watching Terminator 2 and drinking beer, scoring us a solid 6 on the manliness scale - measured from 1 to Sylvestre Stallone. After a good hour's sleep, Mama Gamester awoke me from my final slumber in my chamber of old, for the Gamester family, by my return, will have moved from these lodgings to a new castle in the wilderness. That's "new castle" as in a castle that is new, not the other kind. We would never think of sullying the family name by moving anywhere that which is "North".

Anyhoo, I was dropped off, alone and hungry, in the barren landscape of Gatwick airport, with nowt for company but a Nietzsche book, a photo of Tom Gault I keep on me at all times (mostly for luck, but also for "lonely fun time"), and a small Hungarian man who creepily followed me round the airport. Eventually I boarded what turned out to be the greatest flight of all time: I actually walked past my seat in the plane cus I assumed I was still in first class. Emirates, we salute you. There were movies galore, and free alcohol to boot! And, if you got bored of booting it, you could drink it too, providing you kept it on the down-low. 6 hours later, the plane landed in Dubai, one of the most beautiful and enchanting cities in the world today. Naturally, I wasn't in the slightest bit interested, and so decided to stick to the airport, which in itself was pretty damn cool: they seem to have decided that having forests in the countryside is just too cliché, and so decided to stick a couple in the middle of the food courts.

What followed was 12 hours of blistering excitement, as I sat ALL NIGHT waiting for the connecting flight. During which time, I'm 78.6%!c(MISSING)onvinced I could've walked to Singapore. Luckily there were vaguely uncomfortable seats you couldn't quite stretch out on, which helped to while away the hours in an extended ritual of mild discomfort and hazy irritability. And a good time was had by all.

Don't Play Play! Wait for ME to come out first!

Eventually, I boarded the next flight and embarked on another 7 hour flight which, inexplicably, stopped for an hour in the Sri Lankan capital, which is called Columbo. Who knew? Anyways, I finally arrived in Singapore, the land of dreams. And by dreams I, of course, mean ferocious cleanliness and relentless fining. Seriously, there are fines for EVERYTHING out here, including eating on trains, eating certain fruits in public (yes, actually), chewing gum, smoking foreign cigarettes outside your hotel, "play play"-ing (whatever that is), and even rape! However, none of this mattered after 40 hours of traveling, as I stumbled into the outstretched arms of my brother Matt, and our compadré Alex Cooper, King of Men. The outstretched arms unfortunately took the form of a double-clothesline, rather than a hug (if you don't know what a double-clothesline is then you obviously didn't spend your childhood watching professional wrestling. Or indeed your teenage years. Or indeed your adult life. For shame). They had been traveling for many a night, but I will leave it to young Master Bunn to illuminate the happenings in his own blog, which should be up soon. I wouldn't read it if I were you: let's just say that they - literally - shacked up on a private beach together for a few days. Yeah.

Thusly we dropped my stuff off at the hostel, which seemed to be almost entirely populated with old people, bought some obscenely expensive larger, which came in tiny, coke-sized cans (bless those Singaporeans... Singaporese... Singaporites...), and proceeded to chat the night away and play PES, which is exactly what I traveled halfway around the world to do. Twas an awesome night though, and we hit the hay ready to hit our exploration stations the next day.

The mediocre amounts of exploration revealed none too much of interest, although we did battle a Lionfish (or a Fishlion - I forget which), investigated the infamous spikey-boob theatre, and were very, VERY careful not to play play at any point. It didn't take much to realise (even Matt figured it out) that Singapore is a very expensive place without much to do. Needless to say (unless, of course, you want someone who does not know it to know it, in which case it is needed to say, and seeing as this is a blog, this is exactly the case) we were eager to jet off to Vietnam the next day, where life is cheap and beer is cheaper. How very foolish we were.

Viet-non

Now, that night we had a brief check to see what the dealeo with Vietnamese visas was. And the haps, brethren, was thus: you have to go to a Vietnamese embassy 5 days in advance. 20 minutes of solid maths later, and we found out that 20 hours is, in fact, less than 5 days. Considerably less.

Emergency! First port of call? Praying! To the great god Google. It turns out that you can apply for a "rush visa" from a number of dodgy sites, the idea being that they sort the visa out for you at the other end, and then send you a letter to let you get on the flight. This still takes 24 hours, but it's all we had to go on. So, we emailed them, and, naturally got no reply. Still, we figured (for reasons that, in retrospect, have become obscure) that we'd fly the next day, and everything would be fine. Worst case scenario: we'd have to sit in Ho Chi Minh airport for several hours whilst they sorted us out. No smalls (as in, no Smalls. As in, no Biggy Smalls. As in, no Biggy. Nevermind). Or so we thought - or, as they say in France, "Ou quoi nous ponderons". As those of you with a fifth of a brain will have figured out, we were wrong. Edde, don't worry about it.

We arrived at the airport bright and early the next morn with a smile on our face (our one collective face: apparently faces merge after 36 hours of relentless exposure), and a spring in our step. Things were off to a good start when it turned out our flight didn't go from Terminal 1, or indeed Terminal 2, or terminal 3. Instead, it flew from a terminal known simply as the "Budget Terminal". Great. Only our airline and one other flew from it. Any-h-way, We headed to the check-in desk, where it turned out they wouldn't let us on the flight without the letter from the visa people. Bummer 1. So, Matt rings the visa people up, and tell that all the shit that be going down in da hood. They tell him to email our information to a different email address, and we do so. Letting the check-in people know the situation, they agree to hold the flight whilst we try and sort ourselves out.

Panic stations.

We ruthlessly took over a free McDonalds internet station from some severely pissed off 4 year olds, and got emailing these people. They told us that they could only send us the letter that would allow us to get on the flight if we've sent them the money. Makes sense. So, I attempted to send the money, but my bank, smoothly, has a panic and blocks my card from working, assuming I'm attempting to defraud myself. Bummer 2. However, after about 40 minutes of hasty to-ing and fro-ing of emails, the visa people randomly decided to send us the appropriate letter. Victory 1! We run to the check-in people, 10 minutes before the flight's schedule take off, and let them know the haps, and they let us go into their office to print out the letter. Victory 2. We log on, save the file, and attempt to print the letter. And then... nothing. We try 804 more times. No more luck. We try an 806th time. Nothing. So, they let us use another computer. It prints! But, instead of words, it decides to print a mush of black ink. Bummer 3. Panicking horrifically, they let us use one more computer. And... and...

Success! We grab the letter and run through the airport security, still with out hold bags, running to the gate where some guys grab the bags and put them on the plane. We run, we run, we run, and, just in time, we run on board the aircraft.

VICTORY MOTHER-FUCKING 3!

Overjoyed, we sat out the flight, eventually arriving in Vietnam. We get off happier than a badger with a matchstick (which, I am reliably informed, is very, very happy), and head to the visa pick-up, showing them our letter. Immediately, the angry bastard army guy on the other side asks for page 1. We don't have page 1. He isn't happy, but gives us the forms to fill out anyway. I'm not sure why he was so rude to us. What have Westeners ever done to the Vietnamese?

Most of the way through filling out the forms, the guys calls us over, and says he can't find our names on his database. Bummer 4. We explain about the emails and ask to use their internet. The angry guys refuses, but another army dude says it's cool and takes us to a computer place. I gave him the documents (which made me feel a lot like a spy, albeit a surprisingly boring one) and the phone numbers of the guys we'd been dealing with. He goes into a room (whilst meanwhile some strange comes up and writes Alex's name down...) and rings the visa guys we'd been dealing with. He comes out and informs us that, since the payment didn't go through, they hadn't sorted out the visas at the other end, despite having sent us the letter. So, the army guy took us, and mother-fucking DEPORTED our arses back to Singapore.

Bummer Number 4. Shit.

Super Happy Fun Times

So, miserable as hell, we flew back to a city that we can't even afford to drink away our problems in. For security reasons, and probably just to satisfy the universe's relentless sense of irony, I have to go back into the same office where earlier we'd been so happy to print out the same documents in order to give them to the Singapore security. We used the same McDonalds internet station to book another hostel in Singapore (Matt and Alex's third), and also met a lovely woman called Cheri who offered us any help should we need it.

That night, we ended up paying the same guys for the visas, thanks to Mama Gamester. What independent young men we are. Having (hopefully) sorted that out, we booked flights out to Vietnam for tomorrow, using money we definitely don't have. Hence we've spent today mostly trying to avoid spending any money, although we did go and sit by a lake and watch some badass kingfishers, which was cool. And definitely manly. Definitely. Shut up!

Tomorrow we (hopefully. Motherfucking hopefully) travel to Vietnam. The Great Conundrum, as of yet, remains unsolved.

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Comments

[Allie]

haha i can't believe you got deported. That's what they did to the criminals who are trying to kill bats when Ace Ventura is trying to save a sacred bat

[Dan]

Entertaining
Mr Gamester (the younger) you are keeping me very entertained with your travel-based yarns. Continue as you see fit. Have a great time!! Dan

[Mama Gamester]

Independent Young Men
Brilliant blog :-)