I HAVE been blessed with the opportunity to travel fairly often in the last two years, and the place I have travelled to most is a lovely island 8deg south of the Equator called Bali in Indonesia.

It is a small island, yet plays host to a large melting pot of travellers from across the globe.

Pause. Why are you reading what so far appears to be an article relating to travel when this is a column on nightlife, you must be wondering.

Patience.

In my Bali travels, I have met many interesting people who, during initial conversations, are pleasantly surprised to learn that I am Singaporean.

What usually transpires is a spontaneous gush that they have been to our lovely concrete jungle and what a splendid time they had.

Ensuing this gushing are pairs of eyes poised on me, I think waiting for an equally matched gush of how much I adore my country and so forth.

My standard response, more often than not out of courtesy, is a simple question which consists of six simple words: 'What did you like about Singapore?'

Clean Singapore

Thus far, their comeback in countless such conversations has always consisted of no more than six words as well: 'I love that Singapore is clean!'

Here is where I merely grin in expected appreciation of their high praise of this mothership I call home; I do not correct them otherwise.

I do not ask them if they or fellow female travellers have been to the ladies' room in any nightclub in Singapore.

I do not ask if they have spent an hour queuing for a cubicle to open up and thereafter another 10 minutes waiting to wash their hands. Seriously, what are these girls doing in there? Taking a shower? Dispensing top-secret directives on the safety of our nation?

I do not ask them if they have had the good fortune, in their haste to relieve themselves, of being greeted by someone else's liquid excrements sprinkled delightfully on the toilet seat, or shoe marks belonging to some random woman who last used the toilet and who, although hard to imagine in our modern island, was not equipped with the basic knowledge of differentiating between sitting on a sitting toilet bowl and squatting on a squatting one.

Half-squat

I also do not ask if they have mastered the half-squat technique of positioning oneself above the bowl while simultaneously balancing at an approximate 120-degree angle, in order to obtain relief; especially nearing the end of the night when squalor is at its worst, liquid excrements are sprinkled on almost every functioning toilet, toilet paper is a much sought-after commodity and your one-too-many jugs of beer have proven too much for your bladder to keep in any longer.

All this while cursing your fate and the person who left the mess behind, and pondering how it is possible that modern club-going women lack basic toilet etiquette, much less female decorum.

I do not tell all this as one does not wash one's proverbial dirty laundry in public. Or in this case, I do not tell them that should they dare venture into this part of, in their opinion, clean Singapore, to be warned that there will not be a dry seat in the house.

This article was first published in The New Paper.