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Published: August 13th 2006
Ahh, civilisation.
I seem to have gone from one extreme to another as I sit back and sup my Singapore Sling in the time-warped colonial settings of The Long Bar in Raffles; the origin of Singapore's most famous cocktail. If only I'd packed my white suit and matching hat, Mr DelMonte style....
Amazingly I exited Bali with almost no problems regarding my status as ilegal immigrant although I did get directed to Immigration 20 mins outside of the airport where I had to wait for 40mins, (the counter staff were at lunch...honestly this place has gone to pot since we left), before being told that I could buy a visa extension in the airport. What did I expect, I should have learnt the lesson of miss-information by now.
The previous night the lads and I had taxied north to Seminyak to check out the bars and restaurants in what turned out to be a very drunk night of Arak, herbal highs and overly keen groping transexuals. Dont ask.
I'll miss those guys, we had some good laughs.
...
Spooky. Just wandered into St Andrew's cathedral to have a nosey. There was a service in progress
where the minister was talking about the interpretation of a passage in Revelations where Jerusalem is referred to as Sodom and as I walked in he peered at me over his glasses from the transept; eyeballing me for a split second before taking a moment to make a small aside to the congregation where he added with a tone of satifaction that for the second year running Jerusalem's Gay Pride, (planned for next month), had been cancelled due to complaints made by all religious leaders to the local government about the 'defoulment' of such sacred land.
I wasn't really shocked, since technically homosexuality is stilll ilegal here and punishable by a caning and a prison sentence and it's not as if the church has ever really sung from our hymn sheet - pardon the pun, but it did strike me as odd that within 5 seconds of me entering the church, barely time for the minister to catch my eye, he sidetracks on some homophobic triumph - his Gaydar is better than mine!
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