Singapore notes - Part 1

Part 1 of our tour report from our visit to Singapore last week

This post is at least a week late. I’ll blame Substack for it - that they’ve taken the writing rights off the mobile app, and force you to use a computer for it. It wasn’t always this way - back in early 2023, I remember happily writing on Substack from the mobile app, while on my daughter’s school trip to Kochi.

In any case, better late than never, and better with less detail than not writing at all. And I’ll do this in several parts (like Kill Bill), so I don’t inflict too much upon you at one time.

Bangalore T2

This was the first time I was flying out out Bangalore’s terminal 2. Effectively not being in a job for a year, and having had a baby in that time, has meant that I haven’t really had the need to travel (for my new work I’ve largely subsisted on Zoom). I’d flown in to T2 on what was my last flight before last week (a work trip to Gurgaon in June 2023) but this was the first time I was flying out of it.

Quick verdict: it’s big and beautiful but not very functional. Of course I appreciate that there are enough passport check counters that I didn’t have to stand in line either on my way out or in (again, flew out at 9pm and in at 5pm, neither of which are popular times for international flights from Bangalore). The security check was efficient. Baggage (including the oversized baggage - the stroller) arrived quickly. Etc. Etc.

But the lack of food options on the way out (international) was a huge problem. There is a small bunch of fancy looking restaurants serving overpriced “international” food but that’s about it. What the airport lacks is a “food court” - with a burger joint (McD / KFC), an Indian joint (something like a Shiv Sagar), a noodle place, etc. etc. Maybe it’ll come in time.

Red Eye

Given that it was Billy’s first flight, and it was going to be 4 hours long, my wife wanted us to take the overnight “red eye” flight to Singapore. The indigo flight departed from Bangalore at 9:15 pm IST and landed in Singapore at around 4:30 am SGT. Billy slept well - helped by a suggestion that we just hold him in his baby carrier (I didn’t know that extension seat belts for babies are not mandatory any more). The rest of the three of us struggled.

A word about noise cancelling headphones - I have a pair of AirPods Pro2, and a Sony WH-100-XM4. The assumptions that Apple and Sony make about children are interesting. Apple assumes that if it’s a baby crying, it’s your own, and so the AirPods Pro let in the noise of the baby crying. Sony assumes that any baby crying is not your own - and blocks out the noise!

This flight was tricky since I had my own baby, and there were tonnes of other babies on the flight. In any case I put on my Sony XM4, which is my default for flights. And soon I saw my son make a contorted face but not produce any noise. And then presently realised he was crying!

After a while I put on a podcast, and that put me to sleep. And my recent switch to YouTube music didn’t seem that clever since I’m struggling to download songs on to my phone!

Passport Control

Singapore has this “online arrival card” business. You either use one of the ipads in the immigration hall, or scan a QR code with your phone, to fill up an arrival card online. I forgot for a bit that there was free WiFi in the airport and used one of the iPads to fill it up.

Filling up 4 cards took some time, and after I had hit submit and gone to the gate, it refused to accept my passport saying that I hadn’t filled the arrival card (immigration into Singapore is now entirely automated, without any officials).

This time I had realised I had WiFi at the airport, and scanned the QR and filled on my own phone. I suppose I had made some fat finger error while registering through the airport iPad. The second attempt was successful and then we had to all scan our passports, give face ID and thumb prints and we were on our way.

The good thing with Singapore arrivals is that if you’ve gate checked a stroller, it is handed to you on the bridge itself. That way you can carry the baby in that through the airport (which is a fairly long walk). This is different to my experiences in Bangalore, London and Barcelona where the buggy gets handed to you through the oversized baggage counter after passport control.

Singapore

This was my second visit to Singapore, after a 2 day visit in 2013 (when my wife had her MBA admissions interviews). For whatever reason, I remember being a bit unimpressed in 2013 (maybe I’d compared it a bit too much to London and Hong Kong, and found it too “sanitised”).

Since we had landed really early in the morning, we headed to my wife’s cousin’s place for the morning until our hotel room would be ready in the afternoon. My daughter’s first remark after landing was that “everything is so big in Singapore! The airport is so big. The taxi is so big. The roads are so big. <relative>’s house is so big” (she would get a rude shock later in the day when we reached our hotel room).

Given that we went to a relative’s house, it took me a while to internalise that we were in Singapore. At his condo, we didn’t see anyone else on the way to his house (well, we had got there at 5:30 am). Then, just before she left for school, his daughter went to a neighbour’s house for some Dasara celebrations. She came back with some gifts and Indian food, dropped them at home and went to school. Soon, her sister repeated the ritual, wearing Indian clothes to the neighbour’s house to get the gifts before she left for her school.

Apparently this condo is full of Indians (it’s on the East Coast side), and Indian cultural observances are “taken to 11”. So you end up celebrating all sorts of festivals, and especially if you have kids, there is no way out of these celebrations. “Even in Gurgaon they didn’t celebrate Diwali so loudly”, my relatives said.

So not seeing too many locals, in the house of our Indian relatives, and looking at them observing Indian festivals (even if unwittingly) made me doubt where we were. Of course, the lack of sleep and the cold and cough (daughter had picked it up some 3-4 days earlier and then passed it on to the rest of us) meant that I wasn’t thinking clearly either.

I napped for a bit after my relatives left for work, and then it was time to hail another Grab and go into town into our hotel.

Soon, the traffic made it evident that we were indeed in Singapore.

(to be continued)