This is ideal city break territory. There are plenty of things for kids to do in Singapore, everyone speaks English and the food is fantastic – plus, between the MRT and Singapore’s reliable and relatively affordable taxis, it takes very little time to get from A to B. So, in honour of Singapore’s 50th birthday and the many glorious lion dances it will bring, here are the ten best things to do with kids in Singapore.

Head to a Theme Park

Out on the resort island of Sentosa, Universal Studios will be most teens’ and tweens’ number one choice for best thing to do in Singapore. It’s a compact park by international standards, but boasts some surprisingly kickass rollercoasters – and, if you’ve got money to burn, you can catch the cable car to the island too. With very young kids, save a penny or ten by heading instead to Amazonia, an adventure playground in the Great World City mall, where attractions run from glow-in-the-dark minigolf to toddler softplay.
Universal Studios, Sentosa Island, various options from Harbourfront MRT
Amazonia, Great World City, free shuttle from Lucky Plaza, Orchard MRT

Catch a Museum

For culture vultures, the Asian Civilisation Museum is a fantastic choice to introduce older children to the marvels of the myriad Asian civilisations, and help them (and you!) get a handle on the history of the region. The Art Science Museum on Marina Bay has some genuinely creative exhibitions for tweens and above – on Fridays, two kids go free with each adult ticket. Most pre-teen kids will find plenty of things to do at Singapore’s Science Centre, which has great live displays including Tesla coils and fire tornados, as well as fab interactive exhibits, hatching chicks and an outdoor science playground with water guns.
Asian Civilisation Museum, Empress Place, Raffles Place MRT
ArtScience, Marina Bay Sands, Bayfront MRT
Science Centre, Science Centre Road, Jurong East MRT

Get Some Animal Magic

If your kids are cool with animals in captivity (mine isn’t), some of the best things for kids to do in Singapore are animal-oriented. Singapore’s most famous animal attraction is, of course, the Night Safari, the world’s first exclusively nocturnal zoo, which enables kids to see nocturnal animals from leopards to wallabies by way of walking trails and a tram ride. Opening hours are 7.30pm to midnight – if your kids turn into gremlins at sunset, go to the zoo instead. Singapore Zoo is a genuinely world class zoo, with orangutans, elephants and more. The focus is on the rainforest, but its Arctic zone boasts a polar bear and a pool full of ice blocks.
Singapore Night Safari and Singapore Zoo: 138 bus from Ang Mo Kio MRT, 927 bus from Choa Chu Kang MRT or shuttle buses

Hit the Shops

Singapore is, as I’ve remarked, mall central. And Kinokuniya, in the landmark Takashimaya mall, remains the best bookshop in South-East Asia – even if it’s shrunk a little since moving slots within the mall. This is a stunning place to pick up Asian literature and history books for kids, with fantastic Chinese learning resources too. If you’re doing longterm travel, Singapore is also an outstanding spot to stock up on kids clothes, including hard-to-find items like sandals, although it isn’t cheap: The Shoe Co in Tanglin Mall has good kids shoes, while you’ll find chains from H&M to M&S via The Gap, Uniqlo, Petit Bateau and Clarks scattered around town. GST (Goods and Sales Tax) Refunds can sometimes make Singapore a good-value spot for buying electronics: but do exercise caution when shopping in Sim Lim Square.
Kinokuniya, Takashimaya Mall, Orchard MRT
The Shoe Co, Tanglin Mall, Orchard MRT

Explore the River

A trip down the Singapore River is one of the classic things for anyone to do in Singapore. With younger kids, it’s probably worth splurging on a duck (amphibious vehicle) tour, largely for the squeals of excitement as the vehicle drives into the river and turns it into a boat. With older children, go for the more conventional bumboat tour – sadly, the “bum” in bumboat comes from the old sense of garbage, rather than anything more scatological. On a budget? Just walk along the Singapore River.
Duck Tours and River Cruise boats leave from Clarke Quay, Clarke Quay MRT

Head to a Garden

The Gardens by the Bay – a set of gardens centred around 50-metre-tall illuminated, artificial trees – include an ever-changing selection of manicured displays as well as themed gardens: the nightly sound-and-light extravaganzas (at 7.45 and 8.45pm) are free. With littlies who just want to scamper, the Singapore Botanic Gardens are free and spacious – bring a picnic to spend the day. If you’re in Singapore for a while, older kids might enjoy hiking in MacRitchie Park, where a canopy walk leads through the tops of the trees.
Gardens by the Bay, Marina Bay, Bayside MRT
Singapore Botanic Gardens, Botanic Gardens MRT
Tree Top Walk, MacRitchie Park: various buses, including 132 from Ang Mo Kio MRT.

Feed Your Faces

One of the best things to do in Singapore, with kids or without, is eat: you can scoff Asia’s finest street foods in hawker courts and Indian joints for much less than you’d pay in the west, while there’s the full range of international cuisine (up to and including big brand chefs) on offer at the top end of the scale. Even the pickiest toddler would find it hard to object to chicken rice (Tian Tian in the Maxwell Food Centre hawker court is a classic), while toast with butter and kaya (coconut spread) is a breakfast favourite. If little ones object to curry and prata (Singapore’s term for the flaky flatbreads Malaysia and Indonesia call roti canai) for breakfast, feed them tissue prata (roti tissu), which is sweet, light, crispy and conical: ask your hotel for the nearest prata place to you, or check this epic list. (Here’s more on what to eat in Singapore.)
Maxwell Food Centre, Maxwell Road, Chinatown MRT

Take in the View

Singapore has a genuinely stunning skyline. But don’t waste money heading up to the skydeck at Marina Bay Sands (that’s the giant banana perched on the three towers in the bay): you can’t swim in the stunning infinity pool unless you’re staying there. To get a view of the glorious weirdness that is Marina Bay, a late lunch or cool drinks at Level 33 microbrewery is a good choice with older kids (come around 3, once the weekday lunch buffet is finished). Or splurge on the Singapore Flyer, Singapore’s answer to the London Eye – they even have an inflight high tea option.
Singapore Flyer, Promenade MRT
Level 33, Marina Bay Financial Centre Tower 1, Marina Boulevard, Downtown MRT

Do the Seaside, Urban Style

Frankly, if you’re going almost anywhere else in South-East Asia (or Australia) after Singapore, there will be better beaches there – yet the Singaporean seaside is extremely memorable. Prawning – fishing for prawns in giant concrete ponds – is one of the classic things to do with kids in Singapore, and Orto has other entertainment options if that one fails. Or head to Castle Beach in East Coast Park for a master-class in elaborate, wonderful sandcastles, from 3.30-7 on Saturdays and Sundays: classes are free but you’ll need to splash out on the toolkit.
Orto, 81 Lorong Chencharu, Khatib MRT
Castle Beach, 401 bus (weekends only) from Bedok MRT

Get Religion

Singapore is proudly multicultural, with no fewer than four official languages — English, Tamil, Malay and Mandarin – although you’ll hear other Indian languages and Chinese dialects spoken too. So the island is also home to an impressive range of places of worship: a stroll down South Bridge Road will reveal the Sri Mariamman Temple, Singapore’s oldest Hindu temple, and the modern Chinese Buddha Tooth temple (once you’re done, be sure to loop back into Chinatown to gawp at the lanterns). Or, to give your kids that essential fix of gaudy Chinese art, explore the delights of Haw Par Villa, a 1930s theme park with an entire section devoted to China’s many hells – it’s utterly unique.
Temples, South Beach Road, Chinatown MRT
Haw Par Villa, Haw Par Villa MRT

Where to Stay in Singapore

Pressure on space in Singapore, combined with a very high cost of living, means Singapore hotel rooms tend to the small and expensive – even by European standards, let alone American – and family rooms are hard to find. On the luxe side, there’s the full range of international hotel brands that you’d expect, from Mandarin Oriental and Shangri-La through to the Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton; on the backpacker end of the scale, just as in Hong Kong, windows are optional.

Splurge

Sentosa island, Singapore’s answer to Vegas, is home to some seriously stunning accommodation, centred on the Beach Villas. The 11 Ocean Suites, which sleep up to 2 adults and 2 children, have bedroom windows that give onto the world’s largest aquarium, for an entirely underwater feel – though the upstairs living areas have balconies for fresh air. These are probably the most unique places to stay with kids in Singapore. The Treetop Lofts are set 12 metres above ground, actually within the canopy of the trees – there are only two, each of which sleeps three people tops. Or choose between 1-, 2- and 3-bedroom Beach Villas, the larger of which have private pools, although even the smallest sleeps a family of four.
Beach Villas official site
Check for discount rates on Agoda

Spend

The Marina Bay Sands’ rooftop infinity pool is iconic and can more than justify the spend on the large, stylish rooms here. Note, though, that the pool gets extremely busy at weekends and in peak season, while only two keycards are issued per room, and those to guests over twelve, though it’s possible to buy more. Still, if your family comprises two or three people aged over twelve, and you’re visiting midweek and outside peak periods, this is undoubtedly the ultimate Singapore landmark choice.
Marina Bay Sands official site
Check for discount rates on Agoda

Mid-Range

The family rooms at the Festive Hotel on Sentosa have a sense of fun that’s rare in a big hotel like this one, with sofa beds, loft beds and funky keyhole style partitions between rooms – some even feel like miniature apartments. There’s not only a pool but a kids pool on the property, while you can use the facilities at the Hard Rock next door, as well as tour all of Sentosa’s attractions. Families of three should consider the amazing, individually designed roms at Wanderlust in Little India: if your spawn are big enough to be sensible around steep stairs but small enough to be excited by rockets, look at the stunning Spaceship and Treehouse rooms on the fourth floor.
Festive Hotel official site
Check for discount rates on Agoda
Wanderlust official site
Check for discount rates on Agoda

Budget

Good budget family rooms in Singapore are like hen’s teeth – especially at weekends. If you’re looking for rooms for large families, start looking months ahead and take an entire hostel dorm. If you have a pony-mad girl, consider staying in the Rider’s Lodge stables, way out of town in Bukit Timah: rack rates are high, but midweek rates on Agoda are probably the cheapest in Singapore, and of course there’s riding. Out on Sentosa, the Costa Sands resort has simple kampung huts – Singapore’s answer to beach bungalows! – with two sets of bunks and a shared bathroom at amazing prices, considering you get a pool.
Rider’s Lodge official site
Check for discount rates on Agoda
Costa Sands official site

Scrooge

A surprising number of hostels in Singapore won’t accept people under 17, even in their private rooms, although a handful will allow families to book dorms: whichever option you go for, do not plan on swinging any cats. Betel Box has good value family rooms, although it’s some way from the MRT; 5 Footway Inn has attractive quads in the heart of Chinatown that can be good value on Agoda.
Betel Box official site
Check for discount rates on Agoda
5 Footway Inn official site
Check for discount rates on Agoda

Image credits: Singapore by Mike Behnken, Singapore Science Centre – Visitor Experience by Walter Lim, Hello, Human… (SINGAPORE ZOO/ORANGUTAN/ANIMALS/GREETING) XIII by Chi King, Wild Things by geraldbrazell, Singapore Ducktours by ngader, Garden by the Bay by LW Yang, Chatterbox by Kentaro IEMOTO, Manta Rays by Pug50, Skypark by Craig Stanfill, Saddle club in Bukit Timah by Nicolas Lannuzel and The Busy Chinatown by Riza Nugraha. Thanks to everyone for sharing their work on Flickr’s Creative Commons, especially Schristia for Far Far Away At Universal Studios Singapore and Lake of Dreams, RWS Singapore, and William Cho for Welcome to My Kingdom, Haw Par Villa, a fading attraction and Chinatown Panorama.

The post The 10 Best Things to Do with Kids in Singapore appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

Or maybe everybody HAS read it, apart from me.

Anywise, Brave New World is the sort of book that should be on the school curriculum, along with 1984, and Fahrenheit 451, but isn’t, perhaps because of the sex and the drugs, perhaps because of the rather patchy prose. It’s a utopian dystopia, conceived by Aldous Huxley in the 1920s, thirty years or so before he got into hallucinogens, that holds up remarkably well in the era of the information revolution, despite not predicting it in the slightest.

And it’s stunningly well suited to Singapore, which is where I bought it. Because if there’s one thing that Singapore is undeniably great for, it’s book-shopping.

Now, it seems odd to write this at a time when many Singaporeans are grieving Lee Kuan Yew, founder of South-East Asia’s longest-running one-party state, a man who dragged Singapore out of poverty into its position as one of the world’s wealthiest nations, scattering human rights with gay abandon as he did so.

But there’s more than a touch of the Brave New Worlds about Singapore. In Brave New World, it’s shopping – consumption – that keeps society running. Mantras about the value of consumption are instilled into children from the foetal stage.

I have never, ever seen a society as focused on shopping as Singapore. In Vegas, you navigate the tourist zone by way of travelators through casinos: the carefully timeless, flatlining interiors substitute for streets and pavements, so much so that it’s entirely possible to spend entire days and nights without encountering natural light.

In Singapore, it’s malls that provide that perpetual, disorientating daytime. To leave them you typically burrow further downwards towards the MRT, rather than upwards towards street level: street level is, largely, a decorative irrelevance if you know downtown well enough. People eat in malls: breakfast, lunch, snacks, even fine dining. They shop in malls. They even, I’d imagine, date in malls.

And consumption remains the lifeblood of the city-state. Or, as Brave New World has it, “The more stitches, the less riches.” AKA, don’t mend. Throw out, and buy anew.

But what strikes me as most Huxleyesque about Singapore is the perky, lightly passive aggressive reminders to do one’s best for the great consumerist society.

In Huxley’s Brave New World foetuses are predestined from conception to one very specific class of society, right down to retarding their development with alcohol, if required. And, although Singapore is famously multi-racial, with no fewer than four official languages, sadly not including Singlish, it’s noticeable that street sweepers, builders and manual labourers tend to be more, well, tanned than the folk who work in finance and run the government.

But what strikes me as most Huxleyesque about Singapore is the perky, lightly passive aggressive reminders to do one’s best for the great consumerist society.

Singaporeans venturing on the city’s manicured parklands are repeatedly reminded to pick up their dogs’ poo (not “faeces”, not “waste”, not “mess” but that coy, infantilising “poo”). The Singapore Kindness Movement – a government initiative that Orwell might have appreciated – delivers tooth-hurtingly sweet reminders “Together, we can make someone’s day! Be gracious!” to encourage folk to give way when getting on the metro and similar.

Amid all this, Singaporeans live surrounded by ads that hero the Chinese work ethic in a distinctively Singlish vein. Pictures of young, fair-skinned, bright-eyed Singaporean women pushing for that dream career advertise job services bringing the latest career opportunities to your phone: most of them, it seems, in marketing.

Society’s expectations are written very, very large in Singapore. And they’re, fundamentally, pretty simple. Get a good job. Earn money. Then spend it, ideally in a mall.

“I know! Let’s balance a giant banana 70 storeys up on three wonky pillars then put some giant light-up trees behind it! Pass the bong!”

Architecturally, Singapore is stunning. Yet what’s odd about that stellar skyline, those trippy waterfront confections – “I know! Let’s balance a giant banana 70 storeys up on three wonky pillars then put some giant light-up trees behind it! Pass the bong!” – is that it faces inwards. This is a port city. A marine nation. And yet the city looks not out to sea, but inwards.

Further, in the vein of Brave New World, much of Singapore’s heritage has either been replaced with tower blocks, or disneyfied into abstraction. Neither Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy nor Escalator Squash Courts would sit amiss in this city where nobody walks.

On some levels, I love the cleanliness of Singapore, the absence of rough edges: I’m from London, a grimy city, and live in litter-strewn Bali. On others, when I wander through the candy-coloured tourist miasma of Clarke Quay, the reinvented, manufactured riverfront, a waterfront nightlife area both emasculated and defanged, I’d like to see a can or two floating in the river, a few fag butts on the street, a drunk or two grappling with a doorman.

Ports are not supposed to be well-behaved places. They’re just…. NOT.

It is a brave new world, Singapore. I love to visit our friends in their green and leafy suburb; I love those little first world comforts, like pavements, and public transport, and zebra crossings, and manicured flowerbeds, and fresh air; I love the way that everything works, that there are concierges in the malls, taxi drivers who don’t over-charge, and minimal crime.

And, at the same time, I find it stifling. I’m always glad to visit Singapore. And I’m always glad to leave.

The post On Reading Brave New World in Singapore appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

Well, with the exception of hunting for a visa for our China trip, obviously…

So, what exactly happens when a ten-year-old boy has his own choice of what to do in Penang, a place he knows quite well, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur? Plus a selection of other kids to play with?

WE GO TO THEME PARKS
Neither of us likes to miss a good theme park. I wrote about the joys of Battlestar Galactica at Universal Studios Singapore. But we also enjoyed the longest indoor rollercoaster in Asia-Pacific at the largest indoor theme park in Asia in Kuala Lumpur, the Berjaya Times Square.

The park takes up seven storeys of KL’s Times Square mall, and the coaster runs an impressive 800m, including one full loop. The dodgems are to die for. And the fairground style rides are blinding, too. But there is something so brilliantly and utterly mental about being upside down on a fast coaster in a mall that that one takes the biscuit.

Universal Studios Singapore
Berjaya Times Square

HE PLAYS LEGO
Of all the boxes of plastic crap we left behind in the UK, currently gathering dust in my parents’ attic, the only one Z has had the remotest longing for is Lego. Lego, therefore, has featured highly in our itinerary over the last two weeks, whether in science museums, malls, or other kids’ houses.

How are we going to cope with this on the road? Well Nano Blocks, a form of miniaturised Lego from (where else?) Japan, will now be travelling with us for the foreseeable. It’s like Lego, but smaller, see? So fits in even a kid-sized backpack.

Nano Blocks

WE SPEND DAYS UPON DAYS IN SCIENCE MUSEUMS
Z’s itinerary for KL? After the theme park, the Petrosains science museum (unlike other science museums in Malaysia, which are sponsored by Shell, with sometimes hilarious results, this one’s sponsored by the STATE oil company, Petronas), then the Planetarium.

They say museum fatigue is a syndrome more often found in adults than in children. However, after an afternoon at the (highly entertaining) Singapore Science Centre, a full day at the (admittedly brilliant) Planetarium in KL, much of it spent watching movies and simulations in their dome, and TWO (count’em) full days at the (admittedly outstanding) Petrosains museum, I had it pretty bad.

Petrosains
Singapore Science Centre
Kuala Lumpur Planetarium

HE ENJOYS TIME WITH OTHER KIDS
Whether blowing things up, setting things on fire or, umm, playing nicely with his new friends, Z gravitates to the society of other kids. We’ve stayed with two travelling families over the last three weeks.

Highlights? Combining trampolining with spraying hoses in Penang; playgrounds, pool time and floatie battles in Singapore; reading stories to the little kids in Penang; very solemn conversations about college education and future plans; the odd game of Risk and Uno; firecrackers; and scoring free fish to feed the stray kitten at the market.

Also more gaming than is good for him.

WE GO TO AIRSHOWS
We were lucky enough to be in Singapore for Singapore National Day, when half the island heads down to Marina Bay for an epic display of military firepower and processions.

Parachutists trailing flares, a succession of F-16s and F-18s, fast patrol boat manoeuvres, plus a couple of Apaches and Chinooks made for small boy heaven. The crowds weren’t half as bad as we’d expected, either. If you’re in town on August 9th, I’d recommend you make the effort.

HE GOES FISHING
From the unfortunate creatures in the lake at Gunung Mulu, Borneo, to a particularly half-assed attempt at self-sustenance on Lelei in Halmahera, Indonesia, Z’s attempts at fishing are not going to have Hemingway spinning jealous in his grave.

The experience of prawn-fishing in Singapore, a uniquely Singaporean idea, with brightly coloured parasols surrounding concrete tanks full of crustaceans, continued the trend. He did catch one, though.

East Coast Prawning

AND WE SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN MALLS
In Singapore, KL and Penang, malling (a bona fide word in Manila, where malling is central to human life) is the pastime du jour – not least because the air-con enables you to escape the pretty claustrophobic heat. For many Malaysians, though, it’s not so much about the buying as a sort of promenade.

In KL we found ourselves at Times Square, for the archery, the bowling and the indoor theme park. Also at KLCC for the Petrosains museum, the chocolate éclairs and Kinokuniya, probably the best English language bookshop in Malaysia.

In Singapore? Forget the Singapore Night Safari. He was all about Takashimaya: ice creams, Kinokuniya and a little bit of architecture. And in Penang? Gurney. Because it’s there.

Takashimaya
Gurney Plaza
Suria KLCC
Times Square KL

Apparently, we will be visiting Petrosains for a third time, if not a fourth, come December… I will be bringing a book.

The post What Happens When Your Kid Takes The Lead? appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

After ten days in Singapore and a couple of weeks in Malaysia, I’m mysteriously bloated.

My stomach’s the same size it was when I was four months pregnant. It bulges over the top of my pants in the manner of late-era Bukowski.

It’s all most peculiar.

And, of course, emotionally highly distressing.

What can I blame for this sorry state of affairs?

Bar reviewing is work, right?

What’s a few champagne cocktails, Negronis, cask strength whiskeys, passion fruit Margaritas, whiskey cocktails, sake sets and eighteen varieties of Bloody Mary going to do to one’s weight?

I DEFINITELY don’t blame the beers.

And the Singapore Slings? Those were *research*, goddamit.

And, sure, Singapore has one of the most thriving fast food cultures outside of the US — it’s debatably even worse than the Philippines.

But I didn’t try the dispenser mashed potato. Strangely enough…

But what human being possessed of even basic curiosity could fail to sample the Waffle Hot Dog? If not, perhaps, finish it.

Or the Takoyaki? Deep-fried Japanese savoury dumplings. Five for $3. With a topping of — and I am not making this up — crispy slivers of lard.

I held firm against the Shiok Burger’s siren call.

Though perhaps I overdid the dim sum. Crystal dumplings, prawn, spinach, crab, scallop, century egg, salted egg and pork — ooh, the pork! — some of them literally bursting with rich pork juices.

Too late for dim sum? How about some pork belly, more century egg, crispy tofu, crispy peanuts, and steamboat soup with EVERYTHING.

Sure, I had a little Toblerone. And the occasional Gelatissimo gelato.

But it can’t be that.

Nor the curries.

Sizzling, oily fish head curry, rich with tomatoes and okra. Lamb vindaloo, butter chicken, spicy mutton, mushroom masala, pumpkin and coconut curry, lentil dahl, mustard-spiced green beans, potatoes and peas…

Pile upon pile of Indian breads — butter roti dipped in curry sauce and dhal. Paratha. Naan. Poppadoms. Breads studded with sesame, garlic, grains…

Ooh, and rice. Biryani rice. Rice saturated to gloopy richness in pure ghee. Heaped piles of it on banana leaves, lubricated with thali from tin cups.

Or the Indian sweets. Marzipan candy apples, with cloves for a stem. Great cones of roti tissu decked in syrup.

Could it be the nasi kandar, the spicy Penang cooking that sits halfway between Indian and Javanese?

Surely not. I had VEGETABLES with that.

Or the food courts of KL? That carrot cake, perhaps? The noodle soups. The curry laksa.

I mean, who in their right mind *wouldn’t* try a dish called Chee Cheong Fun?

Nah.

It must be my metabolism.

Or perhaps an intolerance of some kind.

Because, unlike these very funny folk, I haven’t been to the US.

Have *you* ever mysteriously gained weight while overseas? What countries trigger *your* food intolerances? Drop me a comment and let me know…

The post Will Madam Be Having Lard With That? appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

But the skyline comes into its own. Down on the waterfront, at Marina Bay, the Fullerton Hotel is lit up like Christmas.

The One Price Store on Emerald Hill shut up shop long ago.

But there are Singapore Slings.

And Japanese craft beers.

Best experienced, perhaps, in an infinity pool on top of the city. Like this one, at Marina Bay Sands.

The post The Friday Photo: Singapore By Night appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

So a trip to Universal Studios Singapore, on Singapore’s resort island, Sentosa, in company with both Vagabond Kids and one rather hungover Vagabond Dad, was pretty much a must-do.

For a small park — space is at a premium in Singapore — Universal Studios has some mighty fine rollercoasters. The Revenge of the Mummy, which whirls, swirls, jump-stops and reverses you in pitch blackness through an Ancient Egyptian cod-horror maelstrom, rocks, as indoor coasters go.

But Battlestar Galactica, the world’s tallest dueling rollercoasters, makes a serious candidate for best rollercoaster ever. You pick your side: human or Cylon.

Humans travel seated. And FAST, reaching speeds of up to 90kph on the kind of descents where you drop fourteen storeys in a second, and your stomach tumbles after you to meet you at the bottom. The sort of acceleration that, quite frankly, isn’t good for the heart.

Cylons ride suspended. Through vertical loops, a zero-G roll, and some low, fast, adrenaline-fuelled corkscrew turns that had everyone screaming fit to burst.

Having tested each side of the ride three times, and narrowly passed the barf test, we convened an informal rollercoaster panel.

Between us, we’d visited parks in the US, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, the UK and France. And we think the Cylon side of Battlestar Galactica is officially the best rollercoaster ever.

If you’re in Singapore, I highly recommend you stop by: during the week, outside school holidays, there are hardly any queues at all. (And if you like wild rides in general, check out this fairgound ride we found in Borneo.)

The post The Best Rollercoaster Ever? appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

My phone begins to ring.

I rummage. I don’t get a lot of calls on my Singapore SIM.

“Miss S?” says the lady on the other end. “Your son…”

“Yeah?” I say. I can’t see his flight listed. He should be coming in from Brisbane in a minute or two.

A crackle. An unearthly silence.

Then my spawn’s unmistakable (and, whisper it, still rather piping) tones. “Mum?”

“Oh, hi darling!” I say. “I just got here. Where are you?”

“Where are you?” he says. “You’re late. I’m waiting at the baggage carousel.”

“I’m not late,” I say, defensively. “Your flight must have been early.”

“No,” he says. “You’re definitely late. Planes aren’t early. I’ve been here an hour… Never mind. I’m by carousel 14. I’m waving…”

I collect him from one of the bevy of hot, young Asian women who, he tells me, have been tending to his every whim since Brisbane.

For, yes, one of the things my ten-year-old likes about flying unaccompanied minor is the quality time with the hosties…

As we make our way to the taxi, he’s talking nineteen to the dozen on topics from laser tag to gokarting to games.

I’m still nervous, though.

Not because of the flight being early.

Z’s not the sort of person who comes over all anxious just because he’s on his own in a new country after a seven hour flight and his ma’s not at the airport to meet him.

Luckily for both of us.

I’m nervous because we’re headed off to stay with some folk we “know” online…

That’s right! We’re invading their home and family life for four solid days on the basis of an online acquaintance.

Now, one of MANY, MANY things that I couldn’t have predicted when I started this blog was that we’d actually end up, well, meeting people through it.

I had never read a blog until a few weeks after I started mine (you can read my first post here, if you’re interested). I had no idea (a good thing, frankly), quite how many tens of thousands of blogs there were out there.

Let alone that lots of bloggers actually like to meet up with other bloggers, and that there’s this whole community out there that bounces around the world hooking up.

So the notion of actually meeting people through a blog is just one of many things about the way we live now that would have seemed *completely* bizarro 19 months ago. As, I would guess, it does to you.

Yet, here we are. En route to Singapore’s leafy fringes. To stay with the Vagabond Kids.

It’s like a blind date! Except, obviously, without the prospect of sex.

Sure, I find the adults behind Vagabond Kids quite hilariously, sardonically, savagely funny on Facebook.

They value wine o’clock (“beer thirty” in their house) at least as much as I do. They know Singapore backwards.

And — the kicker! — their son D (nine) has a Lego collection to die for, a shared obsession which promises to be the start of a beautiful, if perhaps monosyllabic, friendship.

Still. We’re invading their home. They’ve just got back from the States and are contending with a killer 12-hour time change.

Ma Vagabond has a serious, responsible job to go to, as well.

Oh god. What am I letting myself in for? What have I forced them into?

And, worst of all, WHAT HAPPENS IF THE KIDS DON’T GET ALONG?

On the plus side, I figure, as we wind through the green and leafy Western fringes of Singapore — an environment that’s verging on bucolic but for the absence of livestock — at least I’ve got our travel plans halfway sorted.

H, Z’s “acting dad”, and my best friend, who lived with me before Z was born and with us both until we left the UK last year, has finally pulled his finger out and booked a flight to Laos.

Before that, we’ll be barging in on *more* travel blogging mates, the folk from Our Travel Lifestyle, who we met in Brisbane last year.

Then to Kuala Lumpur, for science museums, malls and, I hope, a Chinese visa.

And after tooling around Laos on bikes with H, and enjoying the rivers in the rainy season, we head, visa permitting, to China.

But first…

We need to invade the Vagabonds’ lives.

And — y’know what? — it goes great.

Within 30 seconds of Z stepping out of the cab, Z and D are in the Lego zone, constructing an elaborate air force in companionable near silence.

That evening, all three kids bunk down together happily, as if they’ve known each other all their lives.

And the adults?

Despite jetlag on the Vagabonds’ side, and bar-reviewing-lag on mine, we talk as if we’ve known each other a long time.

That’s one of the curious things about blogging, and the associated life online. You can get to know someone really quite well through what they write, and from their Facebook banter.

There are surprises, always. But here?

Not many.

We’re by the pool next day — well, the adults are. The kids, at least until the Great Floatie Popping Disaster, are in it.

On the other side of the world, the London riots are in full swing, my old high street is looted and in flames, so I’m chatting to one of the Vagabonds’ “real” friends, another Londoner, with the general flip cynicism with which Brits tend to handle the sort of activities that have other nationalities crying or praying.

“Yeah,” I say. “Strikes, riots, a Tory government and a tanking economy. All we need now is an IRA mainland bombing campaign and it’s the 80s all over again.”

She laughs.

“So, how do you know the Vagabonds?” she asks.

Deep breaths all round. “Facebook,” says Vagabond Ma.

A look of utter befuddlement crosses my interlocutor’s face, a sentiment with which I can entirely empathise. What kind of freak turns up as a house guest off Facebook?

“We both have blogs,” I say, perhaps counter-productively.

“And what do you do again?” she says.

“I’m a freelance writer and I’ve got a blog,” I say. “I’m travelling longterm with my son. I can work anywhere with wifi, so, well, why not travel?”

This is, in Singapore as elsewhere, not a normal career option, or even a particularly comprehensible one.

Conversation flags a little.

For some reason, I feel compelled to use really long words after this, as if to prove I’m not a hippie, or summat. I’m not, with hindsight, entirely sure this helps…

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It’s less a question than a statement, less a statement than a command, and almost — not quite — enough to tip me into buying the shoes straight away.

I will gain, in fact, approximately ten pounds in Singapore just through a Pavlovian response to similar instructions from food cart owners whenever I stop to inspect their greasy, enticing wares.

In this instance, however, British diffidence triumphs. “Umm…” I begin. “I’m still, err, deciding. Maybe later?”

She finds this, not surprisingly, hard to follow.

It’s a well-known factoid that everyone in Singapore speaks English. It is not, however, true.

English is one of four official languages of Singapore — the messages on its fast, efficient metro service ring out in English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, and signs extend to encompass four languages and three scripts.

You’ll hear a welter of other Indian and Chinese languages in addition to these.

Almost all Singaporeans speak Singlish. It’s the island’s lingua franca.

But it’s only the most educated who speak what Americans, British and Antipodeans would recognise as English.

And, yes. There is a difference.

You’d think (well, I did, anyway) that a nation like Singapore, less than half the size of the Greater London area, with no fewer than four national languages for under five million people, would be linguistically blessed.

But this cultural polyglotism is a very mixed blessing.

Great when you’re educated. A real loss when you’re not.

In Coffee Bar K, a slick Japanese bar where you can buy anything from Pétrus to cask whisky, I get chatting to a Singaporean trader, who switches seamlessly between English with me, Mandarin with his friend and Singlish with the Japanese bartender, and also has a couple of Chinese languages and good Bahasa under his belt.

It’s not unusual for educated Singaporeans to speak Mandarin, Cantonese and English with educated fluency, often another Chinese dialect or two as well as that, and even Bahasa or another European language on top — as well, of course, as Singlish.

Which is, IMHO, a rather fabulous language in its own right.

What’s Singlish?

Well, it’s a creole version of English. Much of its grammatical structure comes from Chinese — with tense indicators such as “now” used in place of verbal changes such as “can” to “could”.

A lot of its emphasis words — “lah”, “leh”, “wah” — come from Bahasa and Chinese languages.

And its vocabulary is drawn from pretty much all the myriad Asian languages ever spoken in Singapore.

It’s a rat-a-tat staccato spiel with its own poetry, motion and emphasis, spoken super-fast, and super-compressed.

“Me go now, wait for you, lah?”

“Can anot?” (Will you or won’t you?)

There’s nothing linguistically impoverished about Singlish.

The problem is the government’s focus on Standard English.

Two generations back, many Singaporeans who spoke Chinese languages such as Hakka or Hokkien, and some who spoke Indian languages too, made the call — in the absence of a Chinese language education system — to raise their children as English speakers.

That’s speakers of Standard English.

A language which the parents did not speak themselves.

So some of these kids — my generation — grew up speaking basic Hakka or Hokkien with their grandparents, and a phenomenally flawed, impoverished English with their parents.

Rather than growing up bilingual, or polylingual, they grew up with partial fluency in two languages — but fluency in neither.

And many are now raising their own children in the English that they do not really speak.

At playgrounds I hear the sort of stilted, awkward dog-English conversations that I’ve only ever heard from pushy mothers endeavouring to raise their toddlers “bilingual” by talking to them in appalling, schoolgirl French.

But these mothers don’t have another language to revert to. That’s just, well, how they speak.

It’s a funny old place, Singapore.

And, no, I don’t buy those shoes.

But I do buy a different pair, at almost the speed of Singlish.

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It’s pink, it’s frothy, it comes in its own special glass — and, best of all, it’s garnished with a slice of pineapple, a sticky cherry, and a bright pink umbrella on the top.

Now, it’s pretty much sacrilege for any bar person — let alone a fully fledged cocktail geek like me — to go to Singapore without trying the Singapore Sling.

It’s the national drink of Singapore. The only cocktail created by Asians to make it into the classic cocktail books.

It is also a source of intense angst among many serious bartenders today, most of whom simply *cannot* believe that the drink is supposed to be, as a Singaporean friend put it,

“Pink, sweet and fruity, but drink three of them and you’re on the floor.”

One’s first stop for a Singapore Sling in Singapore?

The Long Bar at Raffles Hotel, a slice of colonial grandeur — Singapore’s last tiger was killed underneath its billiard room in the 1920s — that played host to Ernest Hemingway, Somerset Maugham, Rudyard Kipling, Noel Coward and more.

I’m accompanied by Barbara of The Dropout Diaries, whose pragmatic — and very Australian — take on Singapore’s signature drink is:

“It’s alright. It’s pink, it’s sticky, it slips down easily and a couple could really f*ck you up.”

We crunch over discarded peanut shells and under rows of punkah fans driven not by peons but by a ceiling piston into a room filled with depressed-looking tourists.

Mind you, if I’d just spent a slice of my Singapore holidays paying $26 PLUS tax PLUS service for a premixed cocktail in a five-star hotel bar, I’d be pretty down in the mouth too…

Oh wait!… I just did!

To be honest, it slips down easily enough. A little on the tooth-hurty side. No taste of any of its fruit ingredients but a generic grenadine pinkness. But, still, a much less unpleasant drink than I’d been anticipating.
“Do you make them here?” I ask the bartender, who’s busily disgorging pink gloop from a slurpee type machine behind the bar, while another hand makes one of their multifarious other-flavoured Slings.

“No,” he says. “We buy it in.”

“What’s the recipe?” I ask.

He hands me a little card.

You see, as every cocktail geek knows, the Singapore Sling was invented by a bartender named Ngiam Tong Boon some time around 1910, in the Raffles Hotel bar.

Most stories include a mysterious lady, perhaps a colonel’s wife, who didn’t like the taste of alcohol — a narrative, which, frankly, explains a lot.

The card, allegedly, contains his original recipe. Which is, allegedly, still held in the hotel records.

It, allegedly, goes like this:

30ml Gin
15ml Heering Cherry Liqueur
120ml Pineapple juice
15ml Lime juice
7.5ml Cointreau
7.5ml Benedictine
10ml Grenadine
Dash Angostura Bitters

And, no, for the anoraks among you, turn of the century bartenders in colonial Singapore, or the Straits Settlement more generally, did NOT measure out their ingredients let alone record their recipes in millilitres and decimal points.

I stop off at Orgo, a rooftop bar with views over the spiky pair of durian-shaped buildings that look, in conjunction with a phallic tower, distinctly… well, you get the picture…

They make their Singapore Sling using only fresh fruits, with ginger substituting for the liqueurs.

I’m enough of a purist to eschew this recipe, in favour of a passion fruit Margarita rimmed with coffee salt, served frozen, delicious and piled high.

But it’s in the rather plastinated surrounds of Clarke Quay that I stumble on the ne plus ultra of pink drinks, the Singapore Sling Boutique, a shrine to a previously unsung pioneer of the Singapore Sling.

Not Ngiam Tong Boon. No sirree.

But Mr. Chow Hoo Siong.

The red sticky stuff is Mr Chow Hoo Siong’s contribution to the art of the Singapore Sling — The Singapore Sling Original Mix.

The Singapore Sling Original Mix comes in bottles.

It comes in chocolates.

It comes alcopop style, complete with pineapple juice.

And, of course, it slides over the bar with a hot pink umbrella.

It’s a rather fabulous little place, in fact, the Singapore Sling Boutique, and if your taste runs to the kitsch, I highly recommend you stop by. There’s a chandelier of little red bottles. A glitter mosaic behind the bar. More gewgaws that one can shake a stick at.

And the cocktail they produce is rather less tooth-hurty, if hardly an array of fresh fruits, than the Singapore Slings served at Raffles Hotel. It also goes quite beautifully with the decor.

“Do you make the premix for Raffles?” I ask.

“We did,” says the chap. “We stop two years ago.” (Today Raffles imports its sling mix from — wait for it! — Australia!)

I spend $4 on a Singapore Sling chocolate wrapped in — of course — pink foil, an experience more likely to produce hyperglycaemia than inebriation.

The Post Bar in the Fullerton Hotel, a space that was once Singapore’s main post office and still has a scarlet pillar box in the centre, offers a quite dizzying range of Sling flavours.

“So how does your Singapore Sling recipe differ from the Raffles one?” I ask.

“Well,” the guy begins. “It’s just a better balanced drink.”

“We leave out the soda. Cut back on the sugars. Just get the balance right. And, of course, we use Cherry Heering not just any cherry brandy.”

The drink emerges a notably paler pink — indicating a general lessening of highly sugared grenadine and cherry brandy.

The taste? Well, it’s surprisingly palatable.

It’s the first Singapore Sling in which I can identify the gin, the first in which I can taste pineapple over the red fruit — and it’s sweet, but not tooth-hurtingly sweet.

High up above Singapore, at City Space at the Swissôtel Stamford, I sit sipping a tea-infused cocktail that bubbles with dry ice.

I’m the guest of a London friend named Richard, who runs this joint and several others, and is an award-winning bartender in his own right.

A far more authoritative cocktail geek than I, Richard is one of few people to have gone into the Raffles Hotel’s archives in search of that elusive original recipe.

The earliest record he can find is a version scribbled on the back of a bar receipt during the 1930s, and returned some time thereafter.

The drinks found in 1930s cocktails books, known as either Straits Slings or Singapore Slings, have very little in common with today’s drink, and are probably closer to the “gin sling” Noel Coward drank on the balcony of Raffles.

According to Richard, the whole drink may be a mistranslation of an original drink based on kirsch, or a similar dry cherry spirit, into a drink based on sticky cherry brandy, with ingredients frantically added to restore the balance of the drink.

Add to this the fact that Raffles closed during the Japanese Occupation — in the manner of the Paris Ritz, Japanese officers based themselves there — and that the Singapore Sling was first promoted heavily by an ambitious manager who came in in 1950, and sent recipes to hotels around the world, and you have to wonder whether there’s any authenticity at all.

Does it matter?

IMHO? No.

Whatever its heritage, it’s pink, it’s sticky and it’s a Singaporean icon. Richard’s versions taste better, though.

I’m participating in Photo Friday. Pop on over for more great travel shots.

Also, if you’re into photography yourself, have got a DSLR and want to learn how to use it, I’m working on my photography with an ebook called Getting Out of Auto.

I used some of Bethany’s explanations in the cocktail pictures here: turning down the f-stop as low as it would go so that the cocktails are in sharp focus and the background’s really blurred.

It’s a great little book, makes stuff that has seemed complicated elsewhere incredibly simple, and if you buy it here you’ve just bought me a beer. NOT, you’ll notice, a Singapore Sling.

The post The Friday Photo: On the Trail of the Singapore Sling appeared first on EscapeArtistes.

When you’re in this zone, a stamp on your passport is the opening of a new chapter. A news stand is a mine of cultural curios, intriguing gossip and local insight, a food stall is a buffet of delights, even the pictures on the notes in your wallet are a window into a new and alien culture…

And then there is the frame of mind in which I arrive in Singapore.

A mood somewhere between jaded and baleful, its woody core of arrant cynicism adorned with floral top notes of 5am-wakeup and too-much-to-do-before-my-son-gets-here.

You could bottle it and sell it.

Perhaps as Eau d’Ennuie.

Though I’m not sure there’d be many takers.

As I contemplate the prospect of the backpackers in which I will be staying to preserve funds for the important things in life (Universal Studios, brunch at KuDeTa, dim sum, cocktails, prawn fishing, shoes, books…) my mood descends further, from “Meh!” to “Gah!”.

I feed my last few rupiah coins and a solitary 1000-note into the charity box with a sense of loss. This isn’t a border crossing like our arrival in Timor Leste. This is a farewell to Indonesia.

I haven’t travelled overland to get here. I won’t be slinging our possessions onto our trusty bike and heading off into the great wide open.

All that remains of our bike, in fact, is a rather slender sheaf of Singapore dollars. A sum that looked much better in rupiah…

I won’t be taking a cab like a responsible adult. Nor will I be negotiating the MRT like a local.

Nope. I’ll be lugging my pack to something called a Beezy Bus.

A mode of transportation for which, the snotty side of me says, channelling Margaret Thatcher’s observation about buses in general, I am now over a decade too old. And which threatens, further, to be decked out in yellow and black stripes.

There’s a queue at immigration. A long queue.

“Gah!” I think, unmollified by the sight of the free sweeties, but cramming a couple into my mouth all the same. “Get it together, Singapore! What do you think you are? Indonesia?!”

The Beezy Bus carries me in solitary splendour from Changi airport into town, through a pathetic grey drizzle so reminiscent of England that I feel, paradoxically, cold, though the air outside is sauna steamy.
And, yes, I’m getting culture shock. From Indonesia, even cosmopolitan Bali, to Singapore is a short flight but a VERY long way.

Malls are to Singapore as casinos are to Vegas. The lifeblood of the city. The tourist draw. The locals’ weekend escape.

Malls form a web of subterranean arteries that transport folk from enormous block to enormous block in a state of artificial, aircon daylight, a space where time itself is slowed to increase consumption, and ATMs are signposted more times and more clearly than exits.
The Beezy Bus drives down wide, empty, grey, slow, wet freeways, with nary a scooter nor a speck of dirt to be seen, through canyons of grey, soulless malls, condos, office blocks, with barely a human being in sight.

“Where is everyone?” I think.

Singapore is the world’s third most densely populated country, after Macau and Monaco, but the streets are like Vegas at 10am on a quiet Tuesday, just with added rain and missing colour.

The drizzle picks up a little, but not enough to be anything more than irritating. I shiver.

My pack and I lumber from the Beezy Bus through a tantalising waft of curry — the real, slightly acrid, burnt-green scent of frying curry leaves — past an array of brightly coloured Chinese shophouses and into the backpackers.

In the right frame of mind, I think, as backpacker ghettoes go, Singapore’s Little India could be OK…

My eyes adjust to the living area. It looks like a student common room. It’s full of, well, young people. Sprawled on beanbags, hunched over laptops, chatting, conversing, hanging out, and generally *having fun*.

My inner Scrooge takes an instant and visceral objection.

Why aren’t they out and about doing things, the slackers? Why aren’t kids this age somewhere more adventurous than bl**dy Singapore?

WTF is WRONG with the youth of today?

No worries, however! My room is in a separate block.

“Great!” I say, chirpily, surveying my boudoir, which contains a triple bunk bed, a sofa, a mild smell of paint, and, umm, absolutely no surface on which to write. “What’s the password for the wifi?”

“Oh!” says the girl. “No wifi here! You need to go to the other block.”

This is, in my fragile state, not only a complete catastrophe but also an utter indictment of Singapore in all its “take-your-shoes-off-now” “don’t-smoke-here” “litterers-will-be-hanged” “don’t-mention-the-dictatorship” pettiness.

“What?!” I expostulate. “But on your website…. When I booked, I… Oh, never mind. Thanks.”

I have a job to “finish off” (AKA: “start”), and an evening’s bar reviewing to research. I also have a date to meet a friend from London in the swish and upscale bar he runs at 10ish, and have promised to text him my Singapore mobile number as soon as I have acquired said item.

But it’s raining.

It’s still bl**dy raining.

F*ck this for a game of soldiers, I think. I’ll watch a movie till my mood improves, and brave their bathrooms later.

Sprawled on my bunk in front of The Last Emperor, stinking of plane sweat and nicotine, I give myself a little motivational speech.

“So, you don’t like Singapore? Remember Cambodia? You thought you were going to HATE that, and you really liked it. Grow up, woman! Get a grip! There are worse ways to earn travel pennies than reviewing bars. Get up off your arse, to the 7-11 and buy a SIM card like a bona fide, location independent adult.”

I drag my sorry arse into the 7-11, where I find that buying a SIM card in Singapore requires documentation not dissimilar to that required to open a bank account in the UK.

But fifteen bucks and half an hour later, I have communications enabled.

I pick up a copy of The Straits Times, for the local and international news, and a copy of Hot, a Singapore magazine so obviously “inspired by” Heat that I’m surprised Bauer isn’t suing, for an update on some celebrities I’ve heard of and plenty that I look forward to discovering.

And so to food…

As I amble past the South Indian eateries with their wafts of turmeric and curry leaves, their cheap plastic tables, their Tamil language menus, with my newspapers under my arm, I feel — well, I begin to think that I might actually quite like Singapore.

There are endless stalls of shiny things, cheap jewellery and hair products, open air fruiteries, stands selling flowers for offerings, and PEOPLE.

Ooh, LOADS of people.

I pick a restaurant by smell, and wander in. I’m the only non-Indian in there. The menu is Tamil on one side, a Malay transcription on the other.

I go over to the trays of bubbling, curry-scented gloop and ask, “What’s that?”

The lady looks at me blankly. A couple of the diners look up from shovelling rice and curry into their mouths with their fingers as if to wonder what on earth this crazy lady is doing here.

B*gger! I thought everyone spoke English in Singapore. I try Bahasa Indonesia, which is very similar to Malay, another of Singapore’s four official languages. No dice.

Gah!

So I point. “I want some of that, some of that, some of that, some of everything, please,” I say.

“Ah!” She pulls out a plastic tray, a piece of banana leaf and five metal cups. “Thali!”

“Yeah!” I say, grinning with relief. “Thali, please!”

She bustles me over to a table, sits me down, smiling all the while. She slaps the banana leaf on the brown plastic tray, piles a mountain of rice and five metal cups of different sauces onto the leaf, and slops on a heap of dhal and a mound of spicy pumpkin curry.

It’s delicious.

I shovel down rice and curry and power through Hot magazine’s coffin-watching tribute of the week. I finish the rice, and the vegetable curries.

Her husband, grinning broadly, piles more curry and rice onto my plate. I wave at him to stop, sign that I’m full.

The cost of all this bounty in expensive, sterile Singapore? Four Singapore dollars, or just over two quid.

Singapore and me?…

Maybe we ARE going to be friends after all…

The post Welcome to Singapore! appeared first on EscapeArtistes.