As I mentioned the other day, my lungs are in a state of near-collapse thanks to this crazy trip. What with pollution, the cold weather of a Northern Indian winter, and us scampering from place to place, the net result has been a bad one for our health.

Coming to the end of the five day antibiotic regime that was handed to me on a platter in Bangkok, my cough is improved but remains able to keep me up at night and can still bring me to the point of retching with its severity.

So when Andrew's relative, Yuleng, offered to take me along to her Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner this morning, I was more than willing to give it a whirl.

Cue the culture-shock ...

For anyone who says, 'Oh Singapore ... boring. So bland, so Westernised, so homogenised. There's nothing of interest there!', I say this:

Get thyself to a TCM practitioner immediately and experience the head-spin.

I should first declare my interest in this topic: I was already aching to visit a TCM clinic. I find the whole idea of an alternate system of diagnosis and treatment really quite fascinating, and it's something about which I wish I knew more. That said, I completely understand the caveats that are directed towards complementary therapies in the West (that they are largely underregulated compared with standard medical services, and that 'just because they're herbs doesn't mean you can take them lightly.')

But Singapore seemed the perfect place to pay a visit to a clinic. English wouldn't be a problem, it seems like a pretty regulated place (!), and clearly scads of Singaporeans were relying on this stuff as their primary source of health-care.

We arrived at the clinic sans booking, which didn't seem to be a problem. Signing up for a consultation required me to have my temperature checked in order to exclude any possibility that I had SARS. On the walls, huge government-sponsored posters in Chinese and English clearly spelled out the dangers of the disease and suggested ways of minimising its transmission.

The other patients were vary varied. All Chinese, they ranged in age from a very elderly, somewhat wizened woman in a wheelchair to tiny, adorable kids wearing 'Dreamworld: Australia' t-shirts who were busily driving matchbox cars around the waiting room.

Behind a heavy wooden door with a bright red sign, the inner sanctum - the consultation room itself - had me agog. As opposed to your standard Western consulting room (think horrible plastic chairs, dingy carpet and maybe a cursory pot-plant), this was a tiny slice of feng shui heaven.

While it was pared down and basic, it was also hung with all manner of auspicious scrolls bearing images of koi carp, bamboo and graceful calligraphic sentiments. Solemn stauettes with beards and robes and wise, lined faces peered down from a high shelf, and on the walls behind the practitioner's desk hung huge posters with linedrawings of po-faced, slighly pudgy men with no genitals whose stylised bodies were used to indicate all the important channels of qi in the body.

The overall effect was peaceful and calming, but with a faint aftertaste of the medicinal. After all, there was also a tiny sink in the corner with hospital-grade hand sanitiser atop it, and the air itself was laced with the sharp scent of disinfectanct and potent medicines.

Ms Koh set to work, listening to my background story and scribbling feverishly on her pad as I talked. She would interject to ask me questions about the duration of my problems, and also to find out about specific things like, 'did you ever have a sore throat?'

We spent a huge amount of time discussiing the exact colour and consistency of the phlegm I'd been coughing up since my chest turned all mucousy. 'Is it bubbling one?! One with the bubbles?!' she would trill at me, while I tried my best to be descriptive.

Then my pulse was taken, with my wrist lying face-up on a tiny green silken pillow. I took off my glasses so she could peer into my eyes, pulling the first the upper eyelids up and then the lower lids down. The eye exam was bookended by two separate examinations of my tongue.

Finally, we got to the gist of the matter. 'Coughs can be hot one or cold one,' explained Ms Koh. 'Can change when you take your Western antibiotic - but if not fixed completely, illness will start to grow again.'

'This cough is hot and cold all mixed together in the lungs. The lungs are weakened from such a long-time illness. Because heaty and coolly are mixed, I cannot just prescribe, "this to fix heat!" or "this to fix cool!"'

She went on to prescribe four sets of different medicines to be taken together twice a day, every day, for the next four days. These had such a plethora of functions - killing things, strengthening things, regulating things, putting balance back into things - that I can't even begin to describe them all to you.

She also carefully explained that qi should be centered low in my belly, but that illness had made it run wild. The medicines were to return the qi to its rightful, centered place - 'just like when you do yoga or qi gong,' she explained.

'At night, when you lie down, qi is coming up here,' she said, indicating my windpipe. 'Qi tickles the throat, makes it itchy - and then you cannot stop coughing! Qi must go down!'

In addition, all cooling foods had to be avoided. 'It's hard for me to tell you, "No cooling fruits,"' said Ms Koh, 'because you don't know what is cooling, what is heaty!' In the end, we settled on this: no citrus, nothing 'juicy', and no watermelon or cucumber. Not too much tomato or tofu. Red apples would be okay, but most other fruits would be too cool. Chicken was absolutely prohibited, especially its skin, because it leads to mucous.

Taking all of this in, I was struck by the fact that my doctor at home would say, 'No milk products because they'll make you phlegmy - but lots of chicken soup because it's good medicine!'

I thought the TCM practitioner was lovely - very warm, thorough, attentive and bright. What amazed me, though, was how freaked and out-of-my-depth I felt at times.

I mean, I had wanted to come here. I certainly wouldn't class myself as overly sceptical or suspicious of TCM to begin with. Yet in the consult and then waiting for my medicines afterward, I really had to remind myself that this was going to be okay; that it wasn't any kind of malicious hocus-pocus that was out to harm me or dupe me.

That reaction shocked me. I thought I would be breeze in, take the consult in my stride, and breeze out. I had no idea that it might confront my core beliefs about self, health and the body, or that just listening to someone talk about 'wind' and 'heaty organs' or errant qi could unsettle me so.

I reminded myself that these were all just ways of describing phenomena in the body. Whether the Western pharmacist says that I cough at night because lying down places pressure on my respiratory tract, or the Chinese dispenser says it's because of creeping qi, the fact remains that I can't sleep at night and I need some treatment for that.

I was amazed at how much little things - like the fact that the medicines are unlabelled - disturbed me. I accept so much at face value in the Western medical context, and yet here the simple act of having to rely in an unquestioned fashion on the dispensing practitioner's knowledge had me panicking.

That was all very interesting, as was this: if these medicines work or do not work, will I take that as a validation or, conversely, an indictment, of the entire TCM system?

I certainly hope not, because it is painfuly clear to me that even though the Western antibiotics I have been taking so far have only partially resolved my problem, I don't even think for a moment that that somehow means that all of Western medicine is cock and bull.

We shall see. In the meantime, all I can say is, 'who says Singapore can't be good for a confronting travel moment or two?'