Day six – Percy Pigs and team embroidery

We woke to thunder and rain. I suspect not unusual in the tropics. It didn’t matter as we planned an easy day today… staying close to our accommodation, with laundry and a proto-pack squeezed in (we leave on Wednesday).

The day was spent exploring the shops and malls from the highest of highbrow (super luxury boutiques with more security guards than customers) to the most ordinary of ordinary, fluorescent-lit supermarkets and malls promising bargains and miracle cures.

Honestly, this feels like Singapore at its most honest. A city so proud of its commerce, it builds mammoth temples to it. A place where you can measure social aspiration, taste, and ambition just by what’s for sale. It’s an interesting lens to view any country, but here it feels closer to the core of what makes Singapore what it is.

And in the middle of all this raging capitalism, us… ambling, browsing, and just drinking it in. We’re not shoppers, not really. But there’s something oddly fascinating about it here… the over the top drama of the luxury labels, the choices and weirdness of the supermarkets, the sheer joy of buying laundry bags at a giant Daiso. It felt less like shopping, more like sightseeing. And yes, we went to M&S and bought Percy Pigs even though we’ll be in the UK in two days time. We’re only human.

Like capitalist mole people, we eventually emerged blinking from underground malls (Mark, you were so right, it’s the only way to escape the heat and humidity), and regrouped at base camp to make evening plans and launder.

After a rest (and our laundry), we made for China Town again. We wanted to explore it after dark. It didn’t disappoint… noisy and busy and full of colour, warmth and team embroidery. It really was the antithesis of many of the malls and stores we explored earlier (and all the better for it).