Singapore...

It's ironic that a country whose name means "Lion City" should be responsible for the production of Tiger Beer. Yet, in many ways, Singapore is a land of contradictions, where West meets East, where old meets new, where Harry meets Sally. But perhaps the most striking contradiction is that in a city which is the opposite of Glasgow in just about every way you could imagine (clean, safe, modern, warm, with vomit-free pavements), there exist the two prerequisites of a Subcrawl - namely an underground railway and lots of bars.

Left: a Lion-type thingy guards the city. This is the Merlion, a fabled beast that is supposedly half-lion and half...er...-"mer".

The city/country's underground system, the MRT (standing for Mass Rapid Transit), consists of 48 stops, the names of which tell more about the multicultural history of the place than any history book could (with the obvious exceptions of history books about Singapore). Names of stops range from the typically Chinese (Ang Mo Kio) to the archetypically colonial (Commonwealth, Somerset), also encompassing Indian (Dhoby Ghaut), Malaysian (Kembangan) and God-knows-where (Eunos or Kranji, anyone?). As you might expect for a country that isn't Britain, the MRT is clean, fast, modern and efficient.

The stops aren't quite arranged in a circle: instead there are two lines, one running north-south and one east-west, both starting in the city centre. However, the north-south line eventually joins the east-west line at the Jurong East interchange, which is of course near the western end of the line. It is therefore possible to travel in a circle for most of the time, reducing the need to double back on oneself. (GET ON WITH IT! - Ed)

And so it was, armed with this knowledge, that I set out one Friday in April with my reluctant companion (a.k.a. Mrs Mistt) to see how much of the "Singapore Sub" we could manage in one day...

Right: Boat Quay. Harry's Bar is the second on the left. If you look through the bottom left window, you can see me waving.

If you think the crystal pyramid at St Enoch is a spectacular locale in which to begin a subcrawl (and incidentally, if you do we suggest you seek counselling), then you should check this place out. A riverfront setting fronted by giant skyscrapers which are even larger than the Red Road flats in Barmulloch (if they're still there). However, as your line of vision eventually descends, you notice that right on the riverbank there is a long row of dinky wee buildings that look like dolls' houses. Welcome to Boat Quay, the most celebrated eating & drinking street in the land. There are over thirty bars to choose from, but we almost stick to the "pub nearest the stop" rule and go for the second one. This is Harry's Bar, the most famous of all the expat hostelries, where Rogue Trader Nick Leeson was arrested for baring ("baring" - Barings - geddit?) his backside while being a bit pissed up. What more appropriate starting point could there be for our Far-East Sub?

As with every other bar on the Quay, Harry's favours the "dingy lighting/loud music/outside tables" look. However it does so with a bit more panache than most of the others - mainly because it has more of the pissed-up Brits necessary to complete the ambience of the scene. Also because it is one of the few bars to have live music - on this occasion a genuine New Orleans jazz-blues combo (who, sadly, don't seem to include "Lost Weekend" in their repertoire). Eschewing the usual option of Tiger, we decide to try out the house speciality - a cocktail called a Dirty Harry that looks like sewage but surprisingly tastes rather unpleasant. We consider staying for a beer but notice that the price of a Tiger has gone up by $3 a glass since we entered an hour ago. Talk about inflation... I resist the temptation to "do a Leeson" (that's bare my arse, not lose £800 000 000) as we leave, before bombing it back to the MRT for our next journey.

Subcrawlers of the Glasgow variety will have often been struck by the irony of the fact that the Partick Tavern is not in fact located near the Partick underground stop, but at Kelvinhall. It's a similar situation here, when, having just left Raffles Place behind us, we find that the nearest pub to City Hall is a gaff called Raffles. And quite fancy-dan it is too, to be honest. In fact it's probably the biggest boozer I've ever been in. That's when we eventually get in - for some reason the staff aren't too keen on the casual drinker swanning in through the front door, and tell us to take the side entrance and go to "The Long Room". We eventually find ourselves in what seems to be a real throwback to colonial times (we later learn that a tiger was once shot under a billiard table here - even The Laurieston hasn't seen that kind of action). Punka-wallah type fans waft across the ceiling, while the floor is strewn with discarded peanut shells, thrown onto the floor after the contents (deposited in bowls on each table) have been eaten.

Right: the Outside the Bugis MRT station at night. What our photographer was doing there God only knows.

Fans of the band Manhattan Transfer (both of them) will be familiar with the song "On a little street in Singapore". Well the little street is Bugis Street, which was once famous for its numerous "nocturnal pleasures", namely lady-boys, knocking shops and, especially, lady-boy knocking shops. Of course, this being modern puritanical Singapore (national news headline on the day of the subcrawl: eighteen year old girl gets drunk at party and wakes up in strange bed - Shock, horror!), such places are very much a thing of the past...

Nowadays Bugis Street is a thoroughly modern thoroughfare lined with brand-spanking new arcades and shopping precincts. Not many bars, tho' - the only one we come across smells like a heady mix of rotting fish and vomit, so we pass on, and decide to check out a little side-street and, sure enough, we soon find what appears to be a very smart, if exclusive bar. By "exclusive" I mean that the windows are blacked out and the door can't be opened from the outside. However, there is a buzzer, and after a couple of minutes a friendly member of staff lets us into a long, narrow modern hostelry occupied by a number of men and some very attractive women. We sit down and order a beer, noting as we do that whereas the bar staff all stare at us inquisitively, the other customers pay us no notice whatsoever. When our drinks arrive we find that, once again we haven't chosen cheap - in fact it's nearly as much for a beer here as it was for a cocktail in Raffles. "We sure know how to pick 'em!" I joke. Little did we know...

Twenty minutes later, sitting in the back of a police car, I reflected on the following facts:

1. All the men in the bar appeared to have come there on their own
2. All the men in the bar were middle-aged
3. None of the men were Asian
4. All the men showed signs of disposable income
5. None of the men were good-looking
6. All the women were Asian
7. All the women were young
8. All the women were good-looking
9. Despite 5 and 8, all the women kept on going up to the men and flirting
10. Despite 5, all the men in the bar had at least two, if not three, women interested in them at any one time
11. The women did not stick to the one man, but kept wandering up to new men (you can see where this is going now, can't you...)
12. There was a "private room" up some stairs that couples kept periodically going up to for a few minutes at a time.

It was right after I had made the logical connection between point 12 and the rest that the Singapore Police came barging through the door.

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It's ironic that what started off as a "Tough Guide" to the Singapore Subcrawl should wind up being my defence papers against a charge of soliciting in a notorious knocking-shop. I can't say I'm looking forward to the experience of the trial, but if I've learned one thing about Sub-bing in Singapore it's that it becomes very difficult after a few drinks to tell the difference between petite young women and Lady-boys...