P- Is that man traveling by himself with that toddler?
G- That appears to be the case. Poor little thing. She looks so damn miserable. (We smiled at the man and he gave a weary smile back.)
P- (to the little girl in a very soothing tone) Shhhhhh. It's gonna be ok.
The little girl stopped crying, but continued to do that gasping head jerk that kids do when they try to stop crying. She stared at us.
G- It's gonna be ok sweetheart (soothing tone). You'll be put to bed soon.
She calmed down, put her finger in her mouth and her head on her dad's shoulder. We helped him put his luggage on a cart and watched as he walked away.
G- He may be a great dad, but he wasn't whispering the soothing words to her. Once we did, she shut up.
P- Poor guy! She's cute, but I'm glad she's going home with him.
We found our bag, withdrew money from the ATM which was no small task since we had not bothered to determine the exchange rate and had no idea how much money we were getting, and hauled our packs to the cab stand. Fortunately there is no traffic at 3:00 AM and it only took 20-30 minutes to get to our hotel, Hotel 81 Palace in the Geylang area of Singapore.
P- (as we turned the corner) I read on line that the hotel is in the red light district.
G- Well that would explain the hookers lined up down the sidewalk.
P- It is Friday night. I'm sure that's a big work night for hookers.
G- Yep. I couldn't care less. I just want to go to sleep.
As we checked into the hotel, a John and his 'lady of the evening' were also checking in. I raised an eyebrow at Phyllis.
P- (she whispered) It's Asian David Vitter and his hooker. They're probably just going upstairs to talk. Maybe his wife doesn’t understand him either.
G- Bwahahahahahahah!!!!
We were told that they didn't have a room on a higher floor, but that we could move up tomorrow. We were given a room on the 2nd floor at the end of the hallway. The room was tiny, but pretty clean. I checked the mattress and baseboards for bed bugs, or any other bugs, and Phyl went to take a shower. The bathroom had a pedestal sink and toilet on the same wall and a shower head came out of the perpendicular wall in front of the sink. There was no shower curtain, just a drain in the middle of the floor. That explained why the toilet paper was mounted very high up on the wall above the toilet. At least the water was hot!
By 4 AM we were in bed and falling asleep. We could still hear the cleaning cart rolling down the hallway. This seemed curious, but my delirious brain could not make sense of it.
