We had not taken a family vacation for 4 years. With Abhishek in the US, summers were at home and winters were too short to go anywhere. This time around, we finally decided to take one – so Singapore. I had to go to Bali for GAMS and we then converged on Singapore. I had plenty of Marriott Bonvoy points accumulated to cover part of the stay at the Orchard Road Marriott (Tang Plaza) – we couldn’t have asked for a better location.
After New York, Singapore is our favourite vacation destination. We like the big cities – they have something for all of us. And in both New York and Singapore, Jain food is not a problem. Of the numerous options, we zeroed in on Balaji Bhawan, right across from Mustafa. They had plenty of options and just the right taste to suit all of us.
This time, we skipped the Sentosa attractions. We walked around Orchard Road, did Bugis Street, Holland Village, Mustafa, IMM Outlets (got a great price on new ASICS shoes), and Chinatown.
Kinokuniya was once again a favourite, as it has been. Its collection is unparalleled, and in each of my three visits, I found interesting books which I had not come across. While Kitab Khana is the Mumbai equivalent, the scale of Kinokuniya is absolutely amazing.
Abhishek and I also did what we used to do when he was a kid: take a long bus ride to a random destination. One of the mornings, we did just that for a couple of hours, and went across Singapore in perhaps the best possible way: the upper deck of a bus! What struck me was how little the ritual needed to change. The boy who once needed lifting to see over the rail is now studying in New York, and yet there we were, two hours of no particular destination, watching a city go by. Some of the best things one does with children do not have to be outgrown – they just have to be repeated.
Singapore’s taxi drivers always provide interesting stories. One of them told us about the construction that’s underway to connect the North and South. (Mumbai too is seeing its fair share of construction in the past decade with the Coastal Road, Metro, and more. We had stagnated for far too long.) Cities need to reinvent themselves and Singapore has done it very well through the years, since the first time I stepped there in May 1992 on my return to India after my four years in the US.
Overall, it was a good short break, and left me longing for more. When I am with Bhavana and Abhishek, I am a bit keyed up to ensure everything goes right for them – which is perhaps its own kind of holiday.
