Just Another Day in Asia, Notice I Didn’t Say Paradise!

This is the account of a typical day in Singapore. I was riding in the front seat of a taxi with 2 friends in the back. You may not know this but I have a very sensitive nose. We are riding along and I’m smelling “electrical fire”. After a few minutes I can’t hold back and I say loudly, “It smells like an electrical fire in this taxi”. My friends think I’m crazy and the driver ignores me, typical. A few more minutes pass and I say again, “you guys I really smell an electrical fire“. At this point Julie & Jocelyn start looking around and low and behold the carpet in the back window is smoking! Jocelyn goes nuts and shouts, “your taxi is on fire!” She then proceeds to say she’s getting out of the taxi while it’s moving. We quickly assess the situation and realize the brake light bulb has burned a hole in the carpet and yes it is smoking and smelling up the car. The driver is still not convinced!! Stupid man, typical of taxi drivers here. Once we realize it’s the brake light causing the fire and we are no longer stuck in traffic we proceed to the driving range.

The driving range is an interesting place. Instead of having those little buggies with cages all around them picking up golf balls. They have 2 men that walk around in the blazing sun knocking the balls into a gully, that funnels them back towards the platform where we hit off of. The guys have beach umbrellas as protection from getting hit by the balls! It’s hysterical, you have to see it to believe it! Only in Asia…..

That night I had dinner with my friend Helen. It was her anniversary and both our husbands were traveling in Japan. We went to a famous seafood restaurant her in Singapore, Longbeach. I had been there once and had their famous Chili Crab & Pepper Crab. Helen wanted to try both. The table had chopsticks and a wet-wipe. They brought us a small bowl of peanuts. We ordered our drinks, a Singapore Sling for Helen & a Margarita for me. The Singapore Sling was served in a normal size glass but my Margarita was served in a shot-glass size Margarita glass. No lie it was the smallest Margarita glass I have ever seen. Two swallows worth. I’m still kicking myself for not taking a picture. Sticking with typical Singapore restaurant service it took 30 minutes for us to flag someone down to take our dinner order. We ordered vegetables, Chili Crabs & Pepper Crabs. First, they served the vegetable dish, then the chili crabs. Again this is typical for Singapore. Food comes as it’s ready not all at once. After we had been there for 1.5 hours I decided to “ask” where our Pepper Crabs were. I was told she would check. She came back and told us it would be 20 minutes more. I said why? Was our order forgotten? Apparently it had and all they said was sorry. The most used word in the Singapore and frankly a pathetic little word. We decided to forget it and asked that they take our drinks off our bill. The guy waiter told us that he couldn’t do that because it would have to come out of his pay and then told us he could give us the Pepper Crabs in 5 minutes. I said how can that be your supervisor said it would take 20 minutes. He left…..she came back. We asked for out bill and when I looked it over they had charged us .60 for the wet-wipes!!!!!! I was out of my tree at this point. Helen told the women that she didn’t want to pay the service charge because the service was horrible! The lady said she’d have to check with her manager. She came back and said that we got service so we should pay the “service charge” but she‘d take the .60 wet-wipe charge off our bill, we were like WTF? She said she could give us a 10% discount. Helen was like okay fine. WE just wanted to get out of there before the veins in my neck burst. She reran our bill and brought it back. They had taken off the .60 wet-wipe fee but added a 2.00 charge for the small bowl of peanuts!!! I was like Helen they just totally screwed us over. I was nuts at this point and had to remind myself in 2.5 weeks I’d be back in the U.S. The land of free refills and good customer service, most of the time!!!!

 I couldn’t believe it. It was the worst restaurant experience I’d ever had……… It took us over 20 minutes to get a taxi home and that was after having to call and “order” one. Let’s just say I won’t be going back to Longbeach and can’t wait to have a “break” from Singapore!