Singapore notes - Part 2

Continuing (and concluding) my tour report from a family holiday to Singapore in early October.

Continued from Part One. Writing it all in one sitting, and scheduling this for “tomorrow”.

The Hotel

Being a family of four, it hadn’t been easy to find a hotel room in Singapore. Of course, it hadn’t helped that we had booked our tour barely three weeks before we travelled.

The thing with Singapore hotels is that the rooms are all tiny, and so there are limits on how many can stay. Finally, after some search, we found that V Hotel Bencoolen had a triple room available, and a mythical “baby cot” add on that allowed us to keep the younger one also in our room (Baada, who had visited Singapore a few months before us, had booked two rooms for his family of four in another hotel).

It was barely a triple room. There was one queen size bed stuck to the wall where the window was. There was one single bed stuck to the wall with the bathroom. There was about two feet of space in between those, where we kept our larger suitcase. There was a tiny table with a strange kettle. And a tiny cupboard with a safe and a tiny fridge.

My daughter’s “everything in Singapore is big” bubble had been burst.

That said, with full benefit of hindsight, the location of the hotel more than made up for the size of the room. There were tonnes of places to eat within a walking distance (though no large hawker centres). There was a metro station right next door. “Town” was walkable from there if we could afford to sweat. There was a whole bunch of art colleges around, which gave the entire district an “arty farty feel”.

We found a “Shifu food court” close to the hotel where there was a fair variety of food. My food was underwhelming (I’d taken a Ramen to help my blocked nose, but it wasn’t too tasty), but my wife had got a congee that our son loved. We kept buying congee for him through the rest of the trip (and found a better congee stall, closer to our hotel, that evening).

Coffee at Kurasu, recommended by my old friend Karthik Ashwin. It was great but I momentarily forgot about my blocked nose and sore throat and got an “iced” coffee.

Flaneuring with two babies

It was after a gap of four and a half years that we were doing an “urban holiday”. Our last few holidays were either road trips (within South India), or where we were chauffeured around the country for the length of the trip (Tanzania / Jordan). And so, after Lisbon in March 2019, this was the first time we were visiting a city. Given that this used to be our dominant form of holiday until 2019, I had surely missed it.

One of my favourite holidays so far has been our trip to Munich in 2018, when my wife had gone there on work, and my daughter and I roamed the city by ourselves. I’ve documented that fairly well on the predecessor of this blog - here, here, here and here again.

This time, albeit for a very brief while, I was, for the very first time, flaneuring with two babies, and that was an experience in itself.

On the afternoon of the day we landed, my wife was off to meet her business associate, and not wanting to entertain the kids in our tiny hotel room, I decided to do what I like best - which is to walk around. This time, I had my daughter walking with me and my son with me on the stroller.

A few pertinent observations to start off with about strollers:

1. Singapore is excellent in terms of walkability and accessibility. Again, I’m talking about the central part of town, around our hotel, here. Footpaths are all flat. There are clearly marked areas to cross roads. All crossings have signals. Etc.

2. We walked towards the Fort Canning Park, which wasn’t far from our hotel, and that wasn’t as accessible. There were a few points where I had to carry the buggy up and down. There were parts of the park we decided to not go to because there was no clear accessible pathway there.

3. There were times when I felt a bit disconnected from Billy when he was in the buggy because he was facing away from me (and the sun meant I had kept the hood of the buggy down). Maybe that’s why they make buggies for really small babies in a way that they face the “pusher”?

4. On another walk on our last evening in Singapore, Billy felt so happy being pushed around that he kept squealing in joy every five minutes. On that occasion, I didn’t feel any disconnection (it was just the two of us on that walk).

I quite enjoyed the longish walk with the babies. Senior kept me entertained, and kept talking to me about all sorts of random things while we were walking. Junior was just there in his buggy, smiling whenever one of us got there in front of him.

We walked up and down Orchard Road. We went up some “blind alleys” (seemingly accessible paths that suddenly ended). We pivoted into Fort Canning park and walked a bit there.

When we neared the Spice Garden at Fort Canning Park, we found that they had put on some sprinklers which were sprinkling water down the walking path. I thought it was minor and walked on. Billy got drenched and thoroughly enjoyed it (and I would’ve enjoyed his enjoyment more if he hadn’t had a blocked nose as well).

We got lost a couple of times, despite Google Maps, and then walked back to the hotel. Berry’s reward for accompanying me on such a long walk was a cup of Boba (at a stall right next to the hotel). The line there was so long that we got there at 4:30 and she had her tea only by 5:10.

Related - is bubble tea a “chick thing”? I know our hotel was in a district full of art schools, and a lot of the crowd at the Boba stall were students from there (I saw a few “NAFA” Tshirts etc.). But the crowd was really overwhelmingly female (including my daughter; I was just chaperoning her there).

Food

The food in Singapore possibly deserves its own blogpost. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of places there - hawker centers / food courts, and fancy sit down restaurants. We ate at both kinds during our trip - the former when we were either by ourselves or with Priyanka’s relatives, and the fancier places when we were meeting friends.

Overall, the food is absolutely spectacular. And the great part is that unless you care about ambience or service you don’t need to pay a lot for it. The fancy places we went to were all in fancy settings - one was a sort of a “tea room” as part of a museum. Another was in an old colonial bungalow in an area full of large buildings, gardens and trees (Dempsey Hill).

With full benefit of hindsight, the premium we paid (we being a collective we - on two of the three occasions, I let the “hosts” pay) for those meals was for the ambience and service. If all you need is a quick, tasty and clean meal, the hawker centres are spectacular (ok not always quick - on our last night there, I had claypot rice at Chinatown Complex, and that had a 25 minute lead time).

In one meal, we split the bill with the hosts (handed over two credit cards to the waiter and asked them to split the bill). The waiters returned a bill with “0.5 gado gado; 0.5 beef rendang; 0.5 … etc.”. They had literally split the bill! Maybe people expense these sit down meals a lot in Singapore?

Back to hawker centres - apart from the ramen at Shifu food court on day one, and some squid I had at “satay by the bay” (clearly a “tourist place” and not authentic at all), the food was all absolutely brilliant. The thing is you don’t need to optimise - you don’t need to go to the most spectacular hawker centres. You don’t need to go to the most spectacular shops within the hawker centres. That there are so many of them close together, and that there are so many hawker centres, means that you are guaranteed a good meal. You don’t need to have FOMO.

One of my best meals on the trip was a breakfast at a random food court close to the hotel, where I had some noodles with pork belly and dumplings. First thing in the morning. It was spectacular.

Oh, and that was the onlyday we didn’t have breakfast in a Toast Box. The kaya toast and half-boiled eggs was so addictive that even after coming back to Bangalore, I’ve started half-boiling eggs and eating it with soy and pepper (and a dash of olive oil).

Attractions

Really, Singapore is a place where there isn’t much to “do”, but which needs to be experienced. Just get there, walk a lot, see the city, see different parts of the city and eat lots. The “attractions” aren’t much to write home about.

The ostensible reason for the trip was to show our daughter “animals” for her eighth birthday (which happened last month). We have a tradition that each year around her birthday (loosely defined) we show her animals. 1 and 2 were London Zoo. 3 was Mysore Zoo. 5 was Bannerghatta (4 was covid lockdown). 6 was Tanzania and 7 was BR Hills.

Given her little brother, this time we decided to not “risk” a safari, and played it safe by going to the Singapore Zoo. Locals had all told us that it was spectacular (and that they had bought memberships that allowed them to go multiple times a month with their kids). I found it underwhelming.

Maybe it was that this was the first time I was visiting a zoo after our trip to Tanzania two years ago. It was also the low “density of animals” - you have to walk a lot to see very few animals. London and Mysore are both much better on that count, with a higher density of animals.

Given the baby, we didn’t bother with things like Universal Studios.

Weather and clothes and infrastructure

It is hot and muggy there. And it is highly walkable, which means you walk a lot and sweat a lot. Midway through the trip I was feeling that having carried 7 shirts for a 5 day trip, I’d not packed enough. There was one day where I wore three shirts - it was that sweaty.

It can also rain like mad there. On three of the five days we were there, it rained like mad. On two of the days it was short bursts (on the day we went to the zoo, we got lucky to ride out the rain on the way to the zoo, and back). On our last day there it rained like mad from early in the morning until we had reached Changi (around noon).

The city has planned for this - large parts of the city have covered walkways. For example, our hotel is built partly on top of the sidewalk, which means the sidewalk itself is covered. So on the last day, even when it was pouring cats and dogs, we could walk over to the nearby Toast Box (in the same “block”) for breakfast, and not even get our umbrellas out in the process.

Similarly there are lots of covered walkways and a tram in the zoo, and so when it rained, we spent time in these things to ride it out.

Overall, I have a much more positive view of Singapore after this trip than i did from my first visit there in 2013. I think it’s all the food and the walking. Now I’m trying to figure out how I can build my business so that I can keep going to Singapore on “business trips” - it’s that kind of a city!