Our sweet,short trip to Singapore

Our plan to visit Singapore came true this year...
We boarded Indian Airlines 957 at 00:30 hours on 20th may’07 and landed in Changi Airport – Singapore at sharp 7.15AM. We were greeted by our agent with a good smile and he dropped us in Summer View Hotel. After refreshing we decided to explore Chinese food for breakfast. We were happy to see a Chinese restaurant with caption “Purely Vegetarian”, but after entering inside we were confused they had chicken, mutton, prawn etc….i am still not sure as per Chinese what goes as “vegetarian”. After a long explanation to them about "vegetarian food" we successfully got a cup of vegetable noodles. They serve noodles in a big bowl with lots of soup. Now I came to know that these restaurants are for people who wish to become vegetarians. So just to make them feel they are still having non-veg the names of dishes will sound like chicken fry noodles, mutton soup etc, but everything will be made out of TOFU.
We started off for city tour at 11am. We saw the Singapore cricket club, parliament, Supreme Court, Indian national army monument, suntec city, Merlion park, china town and little India. It almost looked like a sister city of Chicago with so many sky scrapers. Roaming around for 3 hours under scorching sun we were so tired by the time we were dropped back in Little India. We again walked for 10min to reach “Komala Vilas” to have good south Indian lunch. Yes the food was good, but I didn’t like the customer service there. I sincerely feel Indians should improve their customer service in hotels set up abroad not just to keep up our country’s name but also to help people who are really interested to try our food. I think they are not bothered as in every place these hotels are crowded by Indians and they earn much more than their targeted income. Still it would be good if they can at least have a menu card, with brief explanation about each food item and hand over the same with a pleasant smile……
We returned back to hotel by 4pm took rest for some time and got ready with great expectation for our Night Safari…We boarded the tram with a strict rule of no flash photography. They took us through animals of Asia, Africa, America and Indo Malayan region. The Fishing cat trail was a scary but interesting trekking. On exiting we felt as if we are walking out of a jungle bidding adieu to wild animal friends. Safari was wonderful.

The next day we started off fresh to Sentosa by 7.30am. With the previous days experience we carried 3 bottles of water with us. We couldn’t find a drinking water tap in any of the place. They had only bottled water (1.25$) or other carbonated drinks. We took MRT from Buggies station to Harbor front. We always grab a cup of fresh juice from one Chinese fruit juice shop. I was not familiar with half of the fruits they had in their shop as those are not available in normal juice shops of India. My favorite was peach with honey. They also had asparagus, aloe Vera and there was a separate shop for herbal juices.
Enjoying the fresh juice we got down at Harbour Front. From there we took cable car to Sentosa. The aerial view of Singapore was awesome especially the port and sentosa entrance. We were the early birds in Sentosa that day as we reached by 9am. There was no long queue anywhere so we could quickly cover major attractions one by one. The butterfly park, 4D magic show, herbal garden, merlion, dolphin show, animals show, underwater world were wonderful. By the time we were out of our excitement and started feeling hungry it was 3pm. We finished our lunch and went to the southern most point of Asia and spent some time in Palawan beach. The highlight was the “Songs of the sea” – an excellent laser show.

The next day we started off to Jurong Bird Park. The park was so green and we enjoyed watching all varieties of birds. We took small breaks here and there due to light showers. The highlight was the Eagle show, I got so scared when a big eagle flew very close to me…the eyes of it really looks like a villain.  it was 4pm by the time we came out of bird park so couldn’t go to zoo. Came back to hotel took some rest and started with full josh to do shopping in Mustafa – the largest shopping mall of Singapore. For every small article they have a huge collection of all brands and varieties. As we get all stuff in India now for a cheaper price we didn’t do much shopping there, being so lazy to carry more stuff on our way back…we spent three hours in the mall and came back to Little India and had food in “Ananda Bhavan”.
The next day we started off early to “Singapore Zoo”.
There are so many interesting things to be learnt from animals and birds.
Yes I am not joking, the team work of elephants, parental care shown by Penguins (check out “March of the Emperor’ movie), kangaroos, the struggle of fawns to stand up in its own legs within 20 minutes of its birth, all these made me wonder if we humans can compete with them in these aspects. There are certain bad aspects too – laziness of lion (don’t know why it was called “King of the jungle”), eating their own species in extreme hunger situation, polygamy etc. we walked a lot seeing all trails and it was good fun especially with orangutans. They are more like us  or we are more like them. When the trainer says smile, it gives a big smile with its horrible big teeth. They snatch food from each other, hit them, the very next moment hug and start playing with each other. The highlights were the elephant show and animal show. We started off from zoo by 6 pm and went to china town and purchased few varieties of herbal tea. The shop keeper was so good and tried explaining us the features of each variety with great difficulty in English. We walked around the town for couple of hours and came back to hotel.
We missed the cruise ride, singapore science centre,DHL Balloon ride. hope to make it up in our next trip:)
The next day with so much of difficulty we forced ourselves to leave the beautiful city.
If they can maintain that small city in such an excellent way, we can do much better if only our politicians can learn the best policies followed by them and implement it in their motherland.
Refer this site to plan your singapore trip.