Solo in Singapore
Posted Tuesday, July 01, 2008, 11:00 PM by Lonely Planet
The solo traveller is free to do what he likes. If you want to drink beer in the morning or eat pizza every day, no one's going to tell you off. If you want to walk 20km in the heat, because you can't be stuffed sorting out the bus route, there's no grumbling companion, dragging their heels in protest to bother you. And of course your memories are your own.
This is what I recall of my first day as a lone wolf, a stopover in Singapore en route to Bombay (Mumbai).
The humidity clinging to me like a warm, wet blanket as I left Changi airport's well-controlled climes and headed out into the green, clean streets of Singapore. Checking into my hotel room to find business cards offering 'special massages' and more exotically a note on the back of the door detailing the hotel-wide ban on durian, that stinky-sweet Asian treat. Humbly asking the bellhop where the train station was, only to be returned a blank, puzzled stare. A few more minutes of scrambling for every descriptive I could think of for, 'where the train is', and he realised I was referring to the MRT, Singapore's Mass Rapid Transit, AKA, the train station. My first experience of how annoying an acronym can be for a newcomer. Newton's Circus outdoor food court, where stall after stall offered glorious variations on the Asian staples of noodles and rice. I think I ate three lunches and drank an enormous fresh coconut. I didn't chew gum. Somebody put ice in my beer. I should have had a suit made for me by one of the countless Indian tailors, whose little shops studded the subterranean malls. The only person I saw who seemed to be stepping outside the established order was an old grandmother. With grandchild in tow, she was standing by a lychee tree in a park, knocking the fruit out of the tree with a stick.
I was young, single and could have told lies for days. I still hate acronyms and I look forward to knocking fruit out trees when I'm old.
Larry O'Leary
Labels: Singapore, solo travel
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5 Comments:
I totally agree with you. Nothing beats traveling alone.
If it would fit in my suitcase, I would bring you a mango picker from Cambodia, an ingenious device that enables you to snap off a mango and catch it in a small basket made from splayed bamboo at the end of a 3-4 metre bamboo pole. They enable the old folks here to steal fruit from high in the trees and over fences.
True that traveling alone is the best thing ever. You can be just yourself.
You can't chew gum in Singapore!
you CAN chew gum in singapore, you just can't sell it..
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