I have a small confession to make. I have grown a ridiculous little beard, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
It just sort of happened (as if that is any excuse) but it does look, if I may so so, utterly ludicrous.
Anyway I also gave myself a day out at Singapore Zoo today as well, and that was so fantastic I can't even begin to explain - best zoo ever, and I've not only not just been to a few, I've hardly been to any so my opinion is worth about as much as your last bout of phlegmy coughs, but still I doubt any zoo anywhere comes as close to realistic natural environments for the animals and human beings as the one here.
The animals (notably the white tigers, lions and other lethal mauling beasties) are only about 20 feet away with nothing but raw ozone between you and them - no barriers, no glass.
There is an ingenious arrangement of moats that keep all the main mammals in safe places but also keep them well within reaching distance - so it seems - of the visitors. It is absolutely wonderful, it seems like you are actually in with many of the creatures, and the range and diversity of animals kept there is stunning in itself.
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Singapore has seen rather a lot more of me in the last few days, and I of it. Two days ago I spent the entire afternoon touring on open-top buses, then went to the zoo for the Night Safari afterwards, making a stop en route at the only Hooters in Asia (more on that in a bit) beforehand feeling quite unwell at the price being charged for beer in another place, a microbrewery on the riverside at the allegedly `cheap` part of town known as Clarke's Quay, which was my main excuse to go to a place such as Hooters. I may be lying a little bit there.
Cheap drinks my cheap arse - the place recommended to me weighed its half litres (so already 86ml shy of a proper pint) in at anywhere between $12.99 and $18.99, and wanted something like $45 for a single shot of various slightly poncy whiskeys that you would pay maybe £4 for or £6 if you were in London - but not £18 at the first place you come to, and so what if the whole city is the product of the seemingly legendary Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (great surname, acceptable first, shame about the middle) who never won any Naval battles and didn't ever give Napolean a drubbing, so I really don't see what all the fuss is about.
Chap looked good a in a cravat and unexpectedly didn't kill all the natives, woo-bleedin'-hoo...
Of course it all wouldn't be here - I wouldn't be here - without the fellow, so fair play Raffles and thanks for the brand of cigerettes as well, but I will not get a Singapore Sling in your namesake hotel, despite the fact I apparently ought to, firstly because I both cannot really afford it and secondly because I can't find the place without a cab, and that just makes it silly: arriving at a bar by taxi to have one drink then taxi it back to the tube station - please. Wait until I can afford to stay there for a week without thinking about it, I'll have all the Singapore Slings it's possible to make in the place 
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Hooters. Do you know of it? It's the tackiest most wonderfully engineered marketing idea mankind hath yet produced: it's simply a regular bar but all the staff are waitresses and they all wear sporty hotpants and sort-of low-cut vest top things. Guess what the name refers to 
It is so obvious and unsubtle (and the menus, signs and everything else all remind you it is perfectly self-aware) and even the official motto pasted over the doorways is "Delightfully tacky yet Unrefined" and there is nothing more you can want from your restaurant than that kind of honesty (and serving girls in hotpants and skimpy tops, obviously).
So I went and had a damn fast steak served by a fast girl (ha. ha! ha.) and the beer was only ten-bucks-fifty per `pint` so I had a couple, then weaved my way to the zoo by MRT (it's the Underground but mainly overground, minus most of the filth) and saw... not a lot. I mean it's at NIGHT - call me naive but I thought the management might have seen this slight problem in the proceedings, what with it being half the actual name of the event and all that, so I was getting all excited thinking I was gonna see something special (although the demented cave-man-dancers-with-fireshow thing was pretty cool; if only all my friends didn't do all that already and I hadn't seen it all a hundred times before) but really I saw every animal at night again today, only properly.
But hey, at least I can say I went to Singapore Zoo twice.
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Now I am ready to leave, tomorrow at some painfully early (i.e. before midday) hour to get a boat and hopefully a subsequent visa, hotel, and painless brief stay in the first point on the Indonesian archipelago; excuse me, I've just forgotten what it's called for a minute...
