Walking through the lion's mouth - Singapura

Choices. I believe in choices. Every situation brings us a lot of choices, and we have the freedom (or a presumable conceivable pre-destined freedom) to choose our action, the way we look at it and the path that we will follow.

We contemplated going to Istanbul, Cairo, Bangkok, Kerala, Lakshadweep before finally choosing Singapore for monetary reasons and the feel of being in a big modern city. As soon as we reached the airport, I collected my bag immediately from the baggage claim and, that, kind of set the tone of our trip in this ultra-modern, ultra-organised, ultra-efficient city. This would be a breeze!! We hopped on a bus and reached our area - Joo Chiat Road, famous for its many small cafés serving all kinds of asian delicacies and also the red light area of Singapore!

I checked into the Betel Box hostel - a nice funky but cozy hostel with a super cool host and then we headed out into the streets to eat vaga poppiahs - a kind of veg nem/spring roll - very tasty. we then went on the look out to find a decent room for Chand - she required the comfort of a private room and her own private bathroom. i shifted into that hotel the next day:)

the town of Singapore is a mix of tall buildings, the ocean, a river cutting across various quays with various restaurants giving face to the river, chinese architecture, a thousand small cafés and eateries, trees, plants and of course huge malls.

the people - once you understand them (they tend to cut off the last syllable of every word - e.g. 'how are you?' would sound like 'ho wa u?'...but after a couple of days, it's quite easy to follow what they are saying), they are very kind and helpful. we even got a jogger to stop running, telling us her whole life story while directing us towards the place we wanted to go.

memorable places we visited:
- the esplanade (a kind of sydney opera-house) overlooking the sky-crapers and the sea where we saw a malaysian concert and a dance

- far east square: a kind of indoor-outdoor place with lots of small cafés, a kind of flea market, where chinese music is constantly playing in the background, and if you fancy a dance, you can even join the group of line dancers as they wiggle to country tunes - since all of them seemed like professional dancers, chand and me shied away from joining them!

- china town - big chinese bazaar with lots of chinese architecture... this is the place where we bought most of our memorabilia

- orchard road, you could say the manhattan/fifth avenue of singapore where one feels really small walking through the tall buildings...chand really enjoyed drinking a starbucks coffee there:)

- holland village - a street filled with pubs, bars, etc. we, of course, hit the most famous one of them - 'Wala Wala' - nice ambience, nice feeling...

- the night safari - seemingly a safari where the animals appear to be free in this lush forests. but after 5 minutes, you realize that natural barriers (tree trunks, the ground has been dig real deep, etc.) have been created to prevent the animals from going anywhere...but walking through the green was fun and so was the tram ride!

- sentosa island - very beautiful, but one has to wonder how much of it is natural and how much is artificial! anyway, i had a dip in the water and my desire to swim was fulfilled. funny story - chand and me had the exact same day but separately and with a few hours or maybe minutes of difference... that's cos i woke up early and chose to go there early. we told ourselves we would meet there, but of course we missed each other...when we retold our day to each other back at the hotel, we did almost the exact same thing (well, me walking and she on the tram) but a few minutes away, it seems!

on the whole, Singapore is a great get away place from Pune if you are looking for modernism and a big city feel with a whole lot of things to do, specially since they have started direct flights from Pune to Singapore. But, i think that it doesn't have its own unique character, since it's a mix and copy of many other places... how could i put it? it lacks in 'essence'?? does that make sense?