Vacation ideas

The plane motors whined their ungainly descent, the speaker crackled with the pilot’s voice and we tightened our seat belts. Seven hours in the land of roasted peanuts and elegant ladies pushing carts of beverages, and I was finally there – in Singapore!

There is a huge difference between Singapore and Delhi, and it won’t take you long after landing to realize that. It starts with the airport. Changi airport makes you feel like you’ve entered in the lap of luxury. The Singaporean government has spared no cost to pamper their guests; from the plush, carpeted, scented ambience to the free internet portals and the wide-screen televisions and comfortable sofas interspersed with the alluring duty-free stores scattered across the gigantic lounges. But it isn’t just the magnificence of the place, it’s the people too. The immigration officer smiles at you and offers you a sweet. The baggage handlers chat up with you and wish you a pleasant stay. The girl at the 7/11 store helps you with the currency and wants to know where you’ll be staying. It’s an accommodating country, and the pleasantness extends to everyday life where the friendliness of random people on the street is bound to blow away any seasoned Delhiite.

Since Singapore is a dedicated tourism destination, hotels and inns abound – from the luxury five-star ones located along the city’s main shopping district, Orchard Street, to the more modest ones present in the less opulent Serangoon area, and the price varies accordingly from less than a hundred Singapore dollars to a couple of grand per day. Even adventurers backpacking their way across Asia can find special inns for themselves, where they could share a room for twenty dollars a night or even less. These places, mainly located in Serangoon, are a stark contrast to the elegant affluence of Orchard Street, but they have a great atmosphere of camaraderie, and people meeting here have gone on to form lasting friendships spanning decades. If you want to experience the unusual, Singapore is probably the safest possible place to try a night at one of these backpacking inns.

One of the best things about visiting Singapore is that an Indian face doesn’t stand out or get stared at. This is because the country already contains a sizeable population of ethnic Indians who had travelled there generations ago for trade and settled down to make it their home. In fact, Tamil is one of the official languages of Singapore – the others are Mandarin, Malay and English. The culture there is a mix of 4 different ethnicities – that of South India, Malaysia, China, and the West, and they mingle seamlessly to form a diverse but cohesive culture. You can see that in the clothes they wear – smart young women in fashionable Gucci deep in conversation with women in sarees and rubber chappals at the MRT stations. You can see it in the festivals they celebrate – the national holidays they observe with greatest fervour are Deepavali, Christmas, the Chinese New Year and Hari Raya Puasa. And you can see it in the food they eat – they pride themselves on their multi-ethnic cuisine, which includes such specimens as laksa (Malay, noodle soup with lots of little fish bits floating around in it), chilli crab (Western, crab cooked in thick, spicy gravy), Hainanese chicken-rice (Chinese, a kind of chicken-rice that smells so appetizing, you’ll be addicted before you even start it) and roti prata(which as far as I could make out is a cross between a roti and a Mughlai parantha with a bit of a kulcha thrown in for good measure).

Every place in the world has certain standard tourist spots. In Delhi, it’s the historical monuments built by our ancient rulers – the Qutab Minar, the Red Fort, the Lotus Temple etc. – that show off our cultural heritage. Singapore, not having much of a history before World War I has instead diligently developed its own tourist spots. The main four standard places to visit are the island resort of Sentosa, the Singapore Zoo, the Night Safari and Jurong Bird Park.

Not expecting much after the Delhi Zoo where on last visit I had caught sight of a few crows and maybe the backside of a lion or two on its way back to its enclosure, the Singapore Zoo turned out to be a big surprise to me. The place was packed with animals (and tourists), and every available space was either lush green and colourful or housing a group of interesting or fearsome mammals.

The Night Safari adjoins the Zoo and shows off its animals at night. As the hundreds of banners and advertisements will endlessly remind you, it happens to be the ‘first and only one’ of its kind. But I learnt the hard way that the best time to visit it is on a full moon night when the animals are at their most responsive and visibility is greatest, and you won’t have to tramp through miles of artificially forested area only to be rewarded with a glimpse of a couple of deer.

My favourite visit was to Jurong Bird Park, named thus because it is located at Jurong, a place at the remote end of Singapore City. But the tourist park, housing thousands of different varieties of birds, is worth the travel, if only for the sheer vibrancy of its bird life. The park is big enough to include a Mono Rail and several amphitheatres within it, both of which I appreciated, but it’s the little things that stay with you – as I was riding on the Mono Rail, I caught sight of literally hundreds and hundreds of startlingly beautiful flamingos forming a brilliant pink backdrop to the scenery of the park. Sights like these are what make a trip worth it.

And finally there’s Sentosa, an island just off Singapore City that was acquired and developed by Singapore into a theme park cum resort. It’s a large, sprawling hub of activity that contains four beaches, several monuments, 3-D rides, food courts, motor racing tracks, night spots and almost everything else you can imagine.

The two things you must never forget when visiting any of these places is your sunscreen lotion and your umbrella. Keep them by your side and make them your best friends during your stay because together, they sum up the weather of the little island country quite succinctly – hot and wet. Singapore, being a tropical country, has no discernable climates. The weather is always the same – increasingly hot mornings, scorching afternoons and pleasant evenings, except when a sudden downpour lightens the skies. Once in a while, a thunderstorm comes and shakes up the city – and the magnificence and sheer power of these can be awe-inspiring.

There are many other places that tourists are encouraged to visit on their first stay in Singapore – there’s Clarke Quay and Boat Quay, packed with entertaining nightspots and a view of the river, there’s the National Museum – filled with interesting curios and surrounded by the lively City area, and then there are, of course, the shopping areas – Orchard Street, lined with swanky malls and Bugis Street, a flea-market-type shoppers’ paradise. But if you’ve seen all this before and want to avoid a generic visit, there are plenty of experiences to be had in Singapore that most tourists are not aware of. You can visit Pulau Ubin, another island off Singapore that still exists in its natural, undeveloped state and in which you can cycle around to explore the rustic beauty of the villages and even camp out for a night. The island is only accessible by water, which means that you get to paddle your way there either alone or with one of the many group canoeing trips organized from the main island. If you’re interested in the supernatural, you could join the Singapore Paranormal Investigators on a trip to the haunted places around Singapore. Or you could enjoy a nocturnal supper at the midnight market at Lau Pa Sat, where every night, the street closes to traffic, lamps are strung across the street and hawkers set up their wares in a crowded, colourful display.
It isn’t just the decor that makes Singapore enjoyable to visit – it’s everything, from the courteous people, to the availability of restrooms and dustbins everywhere, to the cleanliness and the beautiful tree-lined roads and fresh air.  Thanks to the extremely well-organized transport system of the country – the punctual, comfortable buses, the efficient MRT system, and the friendly taxis that never ever fleece you – travelling in Singapore is a pleasure rather than an encumbrance. It’s almost like every feature of the country is especially designed to prepare an unprepared tourist. Perhaps we, in India, have a lot to learn from Singapore about how to make visitors feel welcome and interested. Until then, I suppose, we must make do with the Taj Mahal.