Intimate moments

Sunday is massage day for us here in Singapore; we are now "regulars" at a spa down the road, with back massage our current favourite. I ventured into the realms of a body scrub last time, which provided the "intimate moments" referred to in the title of this post. Massage here is not for the prudish or faint hearted!

We're still finding lots of Singapore to uncover. Last weekend we went to Changi Museum. They tore the original prison down in 2005 and replaced it with a new one, so the museum is a small new building, just beside the new prison. I was expecting something like Alcatraz, but there is nothing of the original prison at all. The story is told largely in pictures - but still makes for fairly harrowing reading. Lots of stories of the indomitable power of the human spirit.

Singapore majors on museums. For such a small place, it certainly pushes above its weight in the museum stakes. My personal favourite is the Tan Tock Seng Hospital Heritage Museum - "where Peranakan heritage meets medical breakthrough", but there are many more! A bit of a history lesson here on the Peranakans: Towards the end of the 19th century, Chinese traders settled in Malacca, Penang and Singapore. Lots of the traders married Malay women, and their community came to be known as the Peranakans. They have a rich culture, including Peranakan or "Nonya" cuisine. Nonya is the Peranakan word for woman. One of the most well known Nonya dishes is Laksa, which now features on most Asian menus around the world, but there are more challenging dishes to be had. Being a complete wuss, of course, I have not tried any of them!

We did, however, try out one of Singapore's culinary institutions on Thursday - a public holiday for Divali. The Banana Leaf restaurant is so named because it serves its food on banana leaves, rather than plates, at great long tables. They don't take reservations, you just turn up. The speciality of the house is fish head curry - literally the head (and a bit of the neck, to be fair, if fish can be said to have a neck), in curry sauce. The diners on both sides of us were tucking in, but we took the view that eating off a banana leaf was enough adventure for one meal, and ordered more traditional fare.

This week's movie was "Rendition", like massage in Singapore, not for the faint hearted. My sister had to leave halfway through, and I spent 10 minutes with my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears, but if you are up for some hard hitting commentary on American foreign policy, then this is the movie for you. "Rendition" refers to the practice of transporting people who are suspected of (terrorist related) crimes to another country - in this case Egypt - where they are held without charge and tortured for information. Truly scary stuff.

Almost as scary are some of the thunderstorms we are experiencing now that the rainy season has begun. The thunder sounds like a very large explosion, like a huge building being demolished, and goes on for a long time. When the rain comes, and it comes down like a waterfall, it cools the air for all of a couple of minutes, before we're back to hot and humid. No pix this time, but I'll close with missed photo opportunity of the week - an orange robed monk shopping for carpets in IKEA.

Keep in touch.