sanukmakh

There is a common theme here: tiny rooms. More like glorified broomclosets, actually. I think you'd have to pay quite a bit to get a more normally-sized room in this city - too bad as otherwise I think Singapore has a lot to offer. My only complaints with it really are these tiny expensive rooms and the exorbitant booze prices.

I was last in Singapore about a year ago, and I stayed in the Robertson Quay Hotel, down on the river by Clarke and Robertson Quays. The room wasn't a bad deal for $88 a night, but small, the bathroom ridiculously so. Lots of pubs nearby on the river. I have no idea if the place is guest friendly or not as I didn't have any, but I'm pretty sure I saw a couple of bargirls in there with others.

I bought a pirated Office 2007 while in Vietnam last April - I think it cost me four or five dollars - and finally got around to installing it the other day. It loaded okay, but now keeps pestering me with requests for a "25 digit product code" every time I open a word document. It said I get 20 free uses, and this number decreases every time I use it. The only reason I wanted Office 2007 was because I was unable to view Powerpoint documents with the 2003. Hopefully I can sort this out without having to spend any money....gotta be a trick here somehow....

I've been flying with EVA for about three years now, ever since I learned of their deluxe economy class. I think this is good value for the money. I like their timing, my flight leaves YVR at 0100 or so by which time I have been up all day and am ready for sleep, then the final leg lands in BKK around noon, so you have the whole afternoon and evening for fun. When I flew over in November, I used my points to upgrade to their super business class and it was wonderful, I wish I could afford to fly up there all the time.

They did cancel my outgoing flight on Dec. 5, but when I went to their office the next day they were very helpful in re-booking me for the 10th - whoopee, four more nights of fun in BKK, and staying for free in the Imperial Queens Park too, courtesy of the Thai gov't. Also they gave me a free upgrade to Premium Laurel for the BKK-TPE flight, bless them.

I could get cheaper flights from Canada, but I'll stick with EVA, I like their service.

I visited Vietnam for the first time a few months ago and didn't really have any bad experiences, but a couple of curious ones do spring to mind:

I stopped into a hostess bar in Saigon, and sat at the bar as I normally would do. The barmaid shoved a plate of peanuts in front of me, and I quickly made "friends" with a couple of the girls. I had a couple of beer, played around with the girls a little, and then decided to move on. When the bill came, the bartender had charged me 3000 dong for the bloody peanuts!! What the f***?? Nowhere in the thousands of bars I have been into has this ever happened - the peanuts are a freebie, nice and dry and salty so they make you thirsty for more drinks, which is where they are supposed to make their money; and of course I did not ask for them, they just pushed them in front of me.

Also at the departure area of the airport, the locals are not allowed to come inside and see you off, you have to say your goodbyes outside. This is just plain weird.

And yes, the touts and beggars can be aggressive - I had one girl chase me for a full city block one night, pleading for money.

I won't attempt to make any moral judgements on whether or not the women should have been doing what they were doing; but the guy obviously treated them badly and is therefore an asshol_e and deserves the sentence he got from the Aussie court.