To be honest, I’m not entirely sure if the Singapore Tourism Board had me mixed up with someone else, such is the hospitality I received. My flight lands at six in the morning, and someone is waiting to pick me up — and, unbeknownst to me at this point in time, give me a deluxe tour of one of the most vibrant cities on the planet. That ‘someone’ is Wee Tee, a freelance guide with the Tourism Board, who sets aside whatever internal animosity must surely exist (I’ve got her out of bed at five in the morning, after all), and seems genuinely pleased to have me in Singapore, despite looking every minute of my 13 hours of unshaven travel, all spent discovering the joys of Kris World and the Wiseman 3000.

For the unitiated, Kris World and The Wiseman 3000 is the reason that, if possible, I will now attempt to fly even Cape Town-Johannesburg on Singapore Airlines. Never mind a crew cheerfully finding you something to eat at three in the morning, or food that tastes sufficiently above standard economy class fare to suggest they’re pumping Novocain through the air-conditioning system. The Wiseman 3000 is the airline’s on-board entertainment system, a wondrous creation that offers 27 on-demand movies, countless television shows, and enough music to sate even the most eclectic of musical appetites, all of which fall under the Kris World banner. Not to mention dozens of Nintendo games; when I get my Wiseman 3000 for my bedroom — as I am determined to do — tips on how to get past the flaming fireballs on Super Mario Brothers would be most welcome…

And so to Singapore. Preconceptions are minimal; I remember my grandmother returning from a visit years ago and raving about the price of cigarettes (always a key attraction in my grandmother’s appreciation of exotic foreign locales), and I’d watched Annika Sorenstam steal the show at the Tiger Skins exhibition tournament a few months earlier. But I have exactly 15 hours in a city that I’ve never visited, and am determined to explore it as fully as possible before continuing on to New Zealand.

It doesn’t take long to get started. After the air-conditioned sanctuary of the airport, Singapore’s humidity hits you as you encounter it for the first time — not unlike arriving in Durban in the height of summer. But it doesn’t take long to get used to, and anyway, there’s an air-conditioned minivan and driver waiting for me right outside. Post-flight daze is rapidly replaced by the realisation that I’m suddenly halfway around the world, as the city of Singapore springs up around me.

When in Rome
At a mere 636 square kilometres, Singapore is an understandably compact place, skyscraper ranges rising up out of a sea of people. At half six in the morning, most of those people are still getting ready for the day; later, both they and the traffic will become substantially more evident. For now, the centre of Singapore is pleasantly quiet, allowing a subdued setting in which to have a first look at the hub of one of the world’s most thriving economies. It’s like many cities, I suppose, in the central cluster of gleaming aluminium towers; and then again, it isn’t, in that nestled at the base of one of the many corporate headquarters is the sprawling food market that represents the first stop on my maiden Asian tour.

And when in Rome… Wee Tee, as I am to discover as the day unfolds, is determined to send me on to New Zealand needing a second seat on the plane. Breakfast is called for, and so I begin the day in local fashion with a visit to the wonderfully named ‘Fantastic Handmade Noodle Company’, one of numerous stalls at which the day begins for many working in the city. Chicken, noodles and broth combine in a dish I promised myself at the time I’d remember, but will now have to suffice in the memory as excellent — bar the chillies Wee Tee recommended as being extremely mild, but instead sparked in me cardiac arrest, and in my host a fit of hysterical laughter.

A quick look at Singapore suggests the entire population spends its time doing one of two things: eating, and purchasing electronic goods. In Ireland, it’s pubs and churches; the religious fervour attached to both seems similarly manifest in Singapore’s two most visible features. Restaurants and food stalls operate as buffers between purveyors of digital cameras and DVD players, and vice versa; Singapore’s reputation as shopping Mecca is, it would appear, well founded. And so, nostrils still flaring from the local spices, it’s off to Little India, and the paradise that is the Mustafa Centre.

Click through to page 2 for more of Dan's adventures in Singapore