@zkarj
I was there 1976 - bought a lens in a stora and a “Tissot” watch at the “Thieves market”. I didn´t like it at all. These days both Malysia and Singapore had some peculiar rules concerning travellers.
In Malaysia there were signs saying something like this:
“If you are found sleeping in from time-to-time shelters or on the beaches you will be deemed to be a “hippie”. We will then stamp your passport with “Hippie” and you will have 24 hours to leave the country”. I have taken color slide pictures of these signs but they are still not digitized, but maybe it is time to do that!
In Singapore they had signs all over showing NOT acceptable haircuts. Hair on collar, over eye brows or whiskers were not allowed. So, when I came to the Malaysian - Singapore border I could not get in before I had a hair cut in the no man’s land between the check points. Conveniently enough there was an Indian barber shop that the border police pointed to. So, it was just to get in for a cut and while I was sitting there one of the policemen supervised the barber. 
Even Indonesia had similar policies (many travellers went to Bali or the “Lake Toba”-area on the island of Sumatra). An American I travelled with in Malaysia had to sacrifice his pony tail to get a visa to Indonesia. He tried first to hide it but the guy at the embassy just lifted it with his index finger, smiled and gave him the conditions for getting the visa. Even he had to visit a local barber shop to get his visa.
Singapore at that time had a very outspoken wish to be modern, clean and well organized but not even in India in the seventies I have seen so many really big fat rats around all these food stalls in exactly that area you have covered in this picture. … and close by at the “Thieves market” and by the river it was even worse. Still, it was heavy fines if you very found spitting chewing gums on the sidewalks or littering on general and that was a problem since they saw us in person as garbage.
I even had a little mouse living in my hotel room in the very hole of the Asean style hole in the floor toilet. First time I saw it was behind a sleeping bag in my bed and when he saw my he rushed into the toilet hole. You see there were no thresholds under the doors so the mice could come and go more or less as they pleased.
So, I went down to the reception and said that “my room is already occupied by a non paying rat guest”. The manager answered: “Of course the rat has to pay!”, and then he another "empty room instead.
Once I travelled all the way from Haydarpasa in Eastern Istanbul all the way to Nepal two ways. In eastern Turkey in Erzurum, we came to a hotel room full of bugs in the beds. We complained and asked him to change the bed sheets. He then turned the light off and on again and said “even the bugs go to sleep when you turn off the light”. End of that discussion.
… but sometimes it doesn´t even help changing the bed clothes. Some years earlier in 1972 I passed Afghanistan for the first time in my life and came to Park Hotel in Kabul who already then had seen it´s best days. The handrail in the stairwell had fallen down to the first storey - so I had to keep close to the outer wall to feel safe. When I saw the bed clothes that was really dirty, I asked for a new set which I got with a smile. The problem was just that they were as dirty as the first set. In fact, everything was dirty, so even plates in the cheap restaurants but that was really no problem because everybody at that time bought a piece of nan-bread and asked them to put the food on that instead and most people used to sleep on top of their sleeping bags instead on the sheets.
