On the road again … oops, that’s in the air again, first.

We are on our way to Asia; first stop Singapore, and lucky for us, or our bank balance anyway; we will be there just over a week before the vroom, vroom of very expensive, very loud and very fast machinery hits the city streets of Singapore for the first ever night Grand Prix. Who would have thought that Singapore would close down its streets for a loud crowd of expensive, fast, Formula 1 racing cars. This is the city that had “encouraged” travel by (admittedly a very good) public transport system, by making ownership of cars out of the financial limits of most of the population, by its pricing of the cars themselves and the “on road costs”, plus city road congestion charges. I guess money talks as loudly there as it does anywhere else. If pricing of hotel rooms during the event is anything to go by, the hoteliers are definitely not missing out on the starting gun. $160 per night to $900 per night in just one day; and that’s not even at a front row seat establishment – you will need a lot more shekels for that type of genteel place to rest your head before and after the roar of the Ferrari’s and McLarens flexing their muscles. With three day passes ranging in price from $168 to $1388 there will be plenty of cash changing hands as there are expected to be 90 000 spectators attending. At least some would appear to be going Aussie way as Melbourne architect/engineer firm Kellogg, Brown & Root have been involved with construction.

So we plan to have a look at the Vietnam! From Myth to Modernity exhibition at the Ancient Civilizations Museum, do some street wandering with camera’s again and enjoy the beautiful street food of the place. And, I guess we will wander through Sim Lim Square and the Funan Centre, just to see what the latest and greatest electronic must haves are for the whiz kids.

Then we might go for a boat ride, not a slow one; but rather, a fairly fast one to Bintan.

But more about that later.

One of things that rather annoys me about travelling is the excessive cost which hotels charge for internet connection. One day charge can be as much as a two to three month charge for the average provider. Is it that they don’t want too many people using it – must be I think. Oh one of the joys – take up thy laptop and walk … to the nearest reasonable priced internet cafe or wifi powered venue, have a couple of coffees and upload and download. Wouldn’t it be nice to just sit at the desk in your room, which one has paid a reasonable amount for, and do it from there. But I refuse to “waste” that amount of money, so it won’t happen. I will just have to look a bit harder and move a bit further out of my comfort zone … again … and find a place which has the lot.