Singapore #1: Indoor Skydiving Etc

This summer, we’d planned to visit Dubai. But repeated attacks on Iran early this year made us reconsider. What if another round of attacks happened during our visit? What if our flight got cancelled at the last minute? What if we got stranded after reaching there?  (This was before all out war began).

 

So we switched to Singapore as the destination, even though we’d been there before. Even then, we were nervous – what if jet fuel ran out due to the closure of the Straits of Hormuz? Anyways, we went ahead. A benefit in all this? My wife found if we re-did the hotel bookings with the uncertainty of the war and the ceasefire, prices were a lot less!

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Singapore immigration was impressive. You place your passport on a scanner, look at the camera and the system compares details and face with the visa application already submitted. That’s it – the turnstile opens and you’re done. No human interaction, no questions from an immigration official about purpose of visit or where you are staying.  Singapore gets better at everything.

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Since we’d been here a few years back, we were very comfortable taking the metro to the hotel. The metro is awesome after all – clean, safe, very frequent and excellent coverage of the city. This time we picked a hotel in Little India. It was amusing to see a metro station along our route named Dhobi Ghaut. A rare instance of Hindi; it is Tamil that dominates Little India. With familiar stores like A2B, Saravana Bhawan, and Joyallukas. Women in saris and salwars everywhere (except the Indian tourists, who are in Western attire!). So good to get filter coffee and dosai (masala, plain, rava, sambar, chutney) in a foreign country. Something greatly appreciated by my wife and me.

 

We first went to the Ice Cream Museum. It was a fun place with unlimited samples of a huge variety of ice creams. Calling it a museum is misleading, but hey, when there’s unlimited ice cream, who’s complaining?

 

Sentosa, the “State of Fun” resort island, was next. It has an amusement park, a giant S.E.A. aquarium, beaches, rides and so many other things. Though we’d done it the last time, we went again to the indoor skydiving venue, iFly (rebranded as Altitude X). Wind tunnels are immensely powerful, and when directed vertically, they can even overcome gravity. It feels so much longer than the 45 seconds that it really lasts. Pay some more, and the instructor does another round where he takes you up and down a few times. Though we’d experienced it before, it was exhilarating this time too.

 

Next, we did a luge ride, a first for me. Unlike go kart’s which have a motor, these run on gravity (downhill). Very enjoyable.

 

The luge ride gave us an idea of the heat at this time of the year (Within the city, with the indoors, metros and even the metro stations being AC’ed, you don’t realize how hot or humid the place is). We realized it would be unbearable to try the amusement park rides (equivalent of Disneyland) the next day. In any case, we’d been there during the last trip and also been to Disney in Hong Kong.

 

Not everything was impressive though. The Harry Potter themed “immersive experience” was interesting in parts, but nothing to rave about. At the end of the day, we saw the Wings of Time firework and laser show. Sadly, it was very disappointing.

 

Oh well, everything cannot be great. Not even in Singapore.

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