It was good to see them all, in their different ways. The prostitute seemed to come from nowhere, out of the night, with purpose in her stride, up to the brightly lit entrance to the Hotel Inter-Continental. The attractive hotel is near Bugis Street, which used to be known in old Singapore for all manner of sexual trade but, in the new Singapore, offers a range of goods considered suitable for family tourists, including T-shirts with red circles and red lines through the circles. The shirts depict warnings against a multitude of activities - spitting, swearing, smoking, sitting, standing, singing, dancing, kissing, breathing, littering, chewing gum and so on. Only some of the bans suggested on the T-shirts are jokes.
Most bans are real in Singapore.
That's the Singapore joke. So much is banned. Prostitution can never be banned but it has been pushed somewhere in the city-state where only the desperate go. That's why the woman appearing out of the night was such a surprise. Her pleasantly put question, however, made her intentions clear.