Home » Egypt Malaysia Singapore Thailand » Odyssey Update 4 - Thailand/Malaysia/Singapore/Egypt

Four countries in 2 weeks make a lot of material for this update. On April 14th, after 51 days of rice, I finally left Asia for Egypt, but not before relaxing for 4 days in the South of Thailand and making my way via Malaysia to Singapore.

Odyssey Update 4 - Thailand/Malaysia/Singapore/Egypt

Mark Morin
2006-04-29 14:32:58

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city with wide streets, plenty of parks and a mix of modern and perfectly restored colonial British architecture. It's almost perfect!

Singaporeans' affliction of affluence goes well beyond a Starbucks remedy - they have moved on to designer clothes, expensive jewelry and European luxury cars. Their average income far exceeds ours in Canada, is 10 times higher than in Thailand and almost 100 times that of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Of course perfection and prosperity have their price: $10 beers, $15 cocktails, state censorship and repressive laws, to name a few. You may recall the American teen flogged in Singapore a few years ago for painting graffiti and throwing eggs. For the more hard-core criminals, possession of 500g of pot with get a mandatory sentence of death by hanging. Not surprisingly,
the vast majority of their many annual executions are for drug offences. But I'll bet the recidivism rate is low!

THE CONTINENTAL SHUFFLE
I dreaded my marathon trip from Singapore to Cairo with its nonsensical routing through Paris so I was not at all surprised to learn that my Air France flight to Paris was overbooked. But when they offered me a Singapore Airlines flight to Cairo via Dubai, arriving a full 12 hours earlier, I thought my luck could not get any better. I was soon proved wrong as they handed me $300 for the "inconvenience", the least they could do for someone traveling on a free ticket!

My luck did run out though and it happened as I got to Egyptian Customs in Cairo. All the passengers on the flight cleared without delay, except for an Asian businessman accused of offering a bribe to the agent, and me. I was just asked to wait without explanation, which I did for almost 3 hours. When I was finally summoned to the office of the supervisor, the smiling man shook my hand and congratulated me on the authenticity of my passport. It seems that it is getting a bit (a lot)worn ...