It has been years since we could jump on a plane and enjoy a top-quality Christmas market. The unknown about flights and Covid lead to most people parking the idea altogether.
Now for the good news: I won’t be thrown in jail for inadvertently smuggling a forbidden substance, lying at the bottom of my handbag, into the only place in the world where its importation and sale is prohibited. Still, guilty palpitations in the arrivals hall queue are unavoidable, awaiting scrutiny of our documentation by stern-faced immigration officers at Singapore’s Changi airport. Described by The New York Times as “so clean that bubble gum is a controlled substance” the import and sale of chewing gum was banned to combat the cost of cleaning all that masticated gunge off footpaths, walls and sneaky hiding spots, thus defiling this spotless south east Asian dynamic city state.