Iberian Spring: Day 15 Helsinki to Singapore

Soundtrack: Lady Gaga medley

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has taken a flight in the last 30 years that standard economy seats are not designed for comfortable sleeping for any normal sized person. So when I say that the Finnair flight from Helsinki to Singapore was pretty good, it should be read with the above caveat, along with airline food generally not being the best food ever, and stuff like that. Finnair fed me an ok pasta, and an acceptable sweet and sour chicken and rice, enough to break the chicken rice curse before I got to Singapore. The aircrew were among the best I’ve encountered on this trip, happy, attentive, and dealt with a fairly full aircraft well. They also liked the bag of chocolates I gave them and later I scored a travel pack with slippers, so definitely five stars (long and boring private joke there, but basically when we were researching various hotels for the trip I spotted one review where a place got given a 1 or 2 star rating because, despite everything else being fine, there were no slippers provided; I know that there’s all the Asian customs around indoor shoes etc but it seemed a funny reason to mark a hotel down). I’d definitely fly Finnair again, though hopefully with a shorter changeover in Helsinki.

I watched one in-flight movie, the Chinese film We Girls, which was amazing and powerful and mostly depressing af. Not recommended for an easy, feel-good flick. I tried watching another Hong Kong movie, Sons of the Neon Night, thinking it’d be a police drama, but it was just too dark and I found it hard to follow on the tiny screen. Overall Finnair could do with some more Korean movies I think. The overall movie choice was certainly on the darker side of things.

I made it out of Changi smoothly, aside from getting suck behind some folks blocking the travelators that clearly say “stand on the left, walk on the right”. Sigh. After the Bolt fun in Barcelona, one of the last things I did before getting on the plane was firing up the Grab app so it would be ready for Singapore. So, of course when I opened it up in Singapore the first thing it wanted to do was update. According to my driver, Singapore is going through a bit of a heatwave at the moment, I was a little surprised to see forecasts of 34 degrees recently (from my experience Singapore is usually 29-30 maximum and humid, and maybe 25-27 minimum, also humid. So 34 does seem a little high. Unsurprising was the Rochor Rd construction was still going on — I don’t think I’ve seen much progress on this in the last 2 or 3 visits, and it still might take some time.

Unpacked, put devices on to charge, showered and had a few horizontal minutes and it felt good. But with less than 2 days in Singapore and so much to see and do, I couldn’t lie flat for long. First stop was an old favourite, right nest door to my hotel, NG Kuan Chilli Pan Mee. Something about the place seemed different, in my yet-to-totally-orientate-myself-to-a-new-place state of mind I wasn’t sure it was the same place, so I checked back to my entries on the Noodles tour. It was definitely the same place, same menu, same price even, but they’d gone back to a manual ordering system. And the chilli pan mee is still so good; probably as spicy as everything I ate in Spain, lots of chewy noodles, yummy salty ikan bilis, and did I mention still $6.80 for a delicious bowl of goodness.

From here I hopped a bus to the new Auld Alliance whisky bar. After many years in the Rendezvous building, last year around the time of the Buns tour they moved to a new location on Stamford Rd, not too far away, but far enough that I figured I could hop a bus for the 2 or 3 stops and get some air conditioning. The new premises are a little smaller, but the whisky selection is still wonderful, the staff still friendly, and the chairs still comfortable. I started with a 16 year old Tomintoul (distilled 2005, Whisky Abbey, 51.2%), as it’s one of Perth pal G’s favourite distilleries; Tomintoul generally brands itself as a gentle spirit, but as this was an independent single sherry cask bottling it was quite off-brand: big punchy sherry flavours, lingering coffee and chocolate finish, this went down an absolute treat. Next was a nod to another pal, a Glenkinchie 16 year old (distilled 2008, The Whisky Age, 51.9%) again a delicious bold independent bottling, with a spicy finish of clove and cinnamon. This was followed by a favourite distillery of mine, Ben Nevis 19 year old (distilled 1997, Whisky World, 51.6%) which didn’t disappoint, full of creamy toffee notes. Last one for the road was a Clynelish 18 year old (distilled 1995, Auld Alliance, 51.2%), with a distillery-typical hints of maritime nose, fullness of flavour, and lingering finish. I didn’t intentionally pick 4 whiskies because they were all about 51% abv, it just turned out like that. It was great to be back at the Auld Alliance.

From hear I headed to the new location of the Tuckshop drag bar, on the 19th floor of a tower building in Chinatown. There seems to be a few clubs scattered on different floors of that building. On Fridays Tuckshop have been hosting a baby drag competition, with performers being eliminated each week based on votes from the judges and also the crowd, split 60-40. Buying drinks/merch gives you a number of votes. This week there was a bit of a stir when Singaporean trans-drag legend Kak Nina Boo respectfully raised that only alcoholic drinks were qualifying for votes, exclusing non-drinkers such as her self. Tuckshop, in the most classy response possible, then changed their voting so all drinks qualified, and created a mocktail they named the Nina (a wonderful spiced salt rim, lemonade, and various other ingredients, tasted pretty good). So total respect. As for how the voting worked, well there’s some crazy maths involved but isn’t that what the Singaporean education system is all about (the MC made this joke as well).

The legendary Queen Nina Boo herself was in attendance, and gave the cocktail her seal of approval. I ended up at the back of the room (figuring I was tall enough to see over most of the crowd, at least the ones who weren’t wearing huge wigs and heels) and Queen Nina and a couple of friends joined me — we had a bit of a chat between performances. It was amazing to see other queens and attendees greeting her as they went past, paying their respects. Props to all really, while I’m sure that like any scene this community is bound to have its bumps and rivalries, but they seem to turn out for each other.

The performances were group challenges, three queens each group, two performances each (Singaporeans and maths again). Huge apologies to all the performers, I haven’t been able to get names for all of them (I should have taken pictures of the ballot boxes). There were 5 drag queens and 1 drag king, and they all turned it out. While it seemed one trio were slightly ahead in crowd popularity, I thought the other trio had the slightly better performances. But it’s splitting hairs: these are all novice performers, getting up in front of a crowd — in a country where male homosexuality only became legal 4 years ago, and marriage and some other equalities are yet to happen — and they are giving their all. It was great to see, and the crowd were loving it too. The judges, all well respected Singaporean queens, to put it mildly, were pretty tough on them. Now I don’t claim to be an expert cultural differences in providing feedback in Singapore vs Australia, but the fact that none of the performers burst into tears, well props to them. Let’s call it tough love. I really felt for them.

There was also a lip sync-off between four queens (or 3 queens and one king I think) who’d been previously eliminated, with the winner (by crowd acclaim) being brought back into the competition. This was a whole lot of messy fun, four performers, on a small stage, doing all they could to get the crowd going. It was loud, raw, and totally punk. I loved it.

I didn’t stay to find out who won, but I think everyone won: the performers, the crowd, Singapore, world drag, everyone. As I may have gushed at Queen Nina, it’s so amazing and important that creative outlets like this exist and thrive everywhere, whether it’s in places like Australia (where, while recognised and legal, there are loonies and assholes trying to ban drag storytime and physically harass and threaten performers), the US (where legal freedoms are being eroded), or Singapore (where there is less legal recognition, but at least a little tolerance). One day the haters are hopefully going to realise that they don’t have to hate.

Sermon over, I placed my votes, scored a few selfies with some performers, and then got a car back to the hotel, where, despite exhaustion, it still took me far too long to get to sleep. Tomorrow is the day to do Singapore things, eat, maybe shop, and sweat.

Addition: according to what I can work out, the performers were Izzy, Acyd, Funkitah, Dr Fag, Nyla, and Angel.