SINGAPORE: Tiger balm

I'M AT: Sky Orchids Hostel, about 30 seconds away from the tube, and any number of bowls of hot noodles. Spotless and cosy, for about a fiver a night.

Singapore's a rich, steaming soup of cultures, proudly co-existing. I was to find out just how proudly some people take their culture and traditions one boozy Saturday night.

Coming from Perth, it was just great to find a genuinely exciting place again - street markets, shops, gleaming tube stations, huge food courts, torrential rain, humidity, everything plastered with advertising. There's no real centre to the city; instead, it's a number of distinct ethnic districts linked together by huge shopping malls and wide, car-filled streets.

Little India was my favourite bit. I walked around on my first night, neon signs above, dirt below, spices in the air, loads of very dark-skinned blokes from Southern India sauntering around lazily, light shirts and leather sandals. I visited the CBD - massive skyscrapers arranged round the Singapore river - Chinatown, which I didn't enjoy too much (just souvenir stalls and too-cheap reflexology), Bugis Street Market (fantastic clothes to a gabba soundtrack), Kampung Glam, the muslim bit (a gold-roofed mosque, open-walled hawker centres where blokes sat on the floor and ate together, and countless rolls of sari material) and Orchard Road, which has twenty or so BIG air-conditioned shopping malls, teeming with people on a buzzy Sunday. Looked at a few cameras, the prices 50% and 70% cheaper than back home.

Anyway, the Saturday night. Claudia, from Austria, had suggested we go out, so we gathered round the table at 7pm and had a few beers. Freddie, the hostel owner, dragged us out to a nearby bar, where we each paid 20 dollars to get four bottles of Tiger. Freddie was a Chinese guy, he'd been drinking during the afternoon. As we talked, he laughed, but gradually became a bit more incoherent. This is how it looks, I thought. He was upset earlier when a Swedish girl had asked to use his office phone, and had taken the piss a bit. Her mate was turning up later and didn't know the directions, and she took far too long. It is his business, after all, and this was a Saturday night, so he could reasonably expect some bookings. Anyway, he complained about them to us, as we sat round the red formica. He said he would fuck them down, throw them out. He said he used to be an army commander, and despite being out of shape, was big for a Chinese bloke, with a large blue centipede tattooed up his right arm. Freddie moaned and whinged and the three of us didn't know really what he was on about. Anyway, not one to back down, I just questioned him about what he was saying, as he'd lost us.

And then he turned on me.

He said he'd fuck ME down. Throw me out the next day. As he became angrier, his English mixed with his 'local language'. Fuck you down. I asked him what I'd done. Fuck me down, he said. The German girl we were with, Annete was very diplomatic, a peacemaker. We're all friends, no-one's insulting you. But just on and on - you, tomorrow, go. I went for piss, my own diplomatic move, which involved walking through the hot kitchen and into a small cubicle with a hole in the floor. Came back and he was still vexed. So we decided to leave him be, to go out on the town (where we hit a Latino bar, I left 35 dollars in change behind, which I only found out after we were practically back at the hostel, in a taxi, so we went back to the Latino bar, complained bitterly, and I finally got my dough, then another taxi home) and on the way out I nipped back to the hostel, packed my stuff, in case he went crazy and threw it all into the street. When we got back, he was long asleep, and my stuff was all still there.

I woke pretty early the next morning. And went for a piss. Saw Freddie mopping the floor, he was pasty and sweating heavily. I touched him on the shoulder - "OK?" - he smiled at me with his crooked, toothy gob - "OK". And nothing more was said about it. He asked us out again that night.