Corona virus- not in my back yard.

In Singapore, Coronavirus was the main topic of concern and just about everyone local acknowledged this by wearing a mask. Whether this was mainly due to the large number of Chinese in the area (somewhat misplaced, but nevertheless that is perception) or not the fact was it was a real and present danger to the people of Singapore at the time of our visit. On our tour some people felt they had to cancel this stopover as the risk, in their opinion, was just too high. It also emerged during our visit that tourism had been hit significantly by the threat of the virus. Those whom we had contact with in Singapore, playing the party line, were at considerable lengths to explain the Government were doing everything in their power to halt the spread into their country. That, at the end of the day, might be futile.

On our arrival into Singapore we were health screened at the Airport. Several university students, presumably having agreed to undertake this onerous role, were masked and seated behind several wires and multiple cameras to initiate mass screening. This involved taking temperature readings. They observed the travellers arriving into the country en masse with microscopic thermometers to identify those individuals with high temperatures while they filtered their way through the airport. Our main purpose as travellers was to move swiftly past this crew without as much as an atichoo or a cough and so continue with our trip.

If you had a cold when you left Scotland (and lets face it who doesn’t) you needed to disguise it. Instead of wiping your mouth after dinner, you had to use the napkin in such a way as to disguise the real reason for its use; to conceal the tissue wiping the stream of snot from your nose. This had to be done surreptitiously in order to disguise the fact you had this common Scottish ailment that might be misconstrued by foreigners. Scotland is after all a world heritage site when it comes to colds, it was one ailment we were well accustomed to but at the moment might be seen by the rest of the world as potentially fatal.

I was also glad I wasn’t in the throes of my usual flush as I sauntered through the airport rather nonchalantly. Trying to disguise my runny nose was bad enough without trying to conceal a sudden rise in my temperature caused by a flush. Otherwise I’d have been swept up, turned around and booted right back to where I came from. The menopause cannot fool thermometers because when it begins it feels like a furnace has started burning in your skull and the only way to release this heat it is through your hair and skin pores. Thus any remote thermometer is likely to identify you sooner rather than later. While this less than welcome intruder is making its mark on your temperature you find yourself praying it will subside soon and no-one will notice it. You could try to conceal it by waiving your passport frantically like a fan to avert the emerging heat and hope that you look as if you are just slightly harassed from finding your luggage. The reality of course is always different; most people notice your flush and then try to avoid looking at you as you disintegrate into a sea of scarlet, all the while trying to maintain a level of cool, that everyone knows is fooling no-one.

Every shop in Singapore had a hand sanitiser, every toilet had a public safety message about the Coronavirus, and making sure you washed your hands was plastered everywhere. Singapore was worried about the spread of this virus even though the corporate messages were clearly meant to reassure you. The mask wearing public took no chances while we tourists, well we worried about it from a distance with ambivalence. No-one else felt the risk was low and were keen to prevent any opportunity to contract the virus or allow it to spread. The world, in Singapore at least, went about its business at this stage not too inhibited by Coronavirus. It was clear that keeping its threat at bay was going to take a lot more work than hand sanitisers and masks. Singapore was sending a message; almost impertinently that the virus was not welcome here, while all the while knowing it was only a matter of time before it arrived.

As we continue on our trip the Coronavirus dominates the headlines. We keep our masks close at hand but have as yet had little cause to use them. Let’s hope that good fortune continues as we venture into the unknown.

Slinging back to Singapore

Singapore was to be the first stop on this epic tour. By epic I mean we are away for five weeks and by any stretch of the imagination, with the Lion loving travelling (NOT), this is no mean feat. I have family here so in advance of our arrival I had made contact in the hope we might meet up. Despite our 18 hour journey he proposed to meet us on the day of our arrival in an Irish pub to watch the Scottish Football. It was such a Singapore thing to do. Least said about that, in travellers terms, the better. The Irish pub was a haven of football fans, suitably attired, singing anthems creating an atmosphere as if we were actually in Paradise. The game being shown that evening required considerable tolerance by my family member since he supported our arch rivals, but nevertheless he demonstrated real restraint. You could say he went well above and beyond what was expected, as we trounced this team and claimed the three points putting us closer to winning the league.

This partisan activity gave our first night in Singapore an air of celebration and left us completely available for the next two days to see and experience the rest of the City. First impressions were that it was a magnificent, austere and bustling city. Singaporeans proudly claim they are the most westernised city in Asia and our guide appeared considerably smug about this fact. It was a spotlessly clean City in every aspect. One of our fellow travellers commented that it was too clean, the Lion was dumfoonert (incredulous) by this statement. How, in his opinion, can anywhere be too clean? This traveller had yet to experience the Lion and all his idiosyncrasies and so had limited insight as to what makes a good holiday, in the Lion’s view. The Lion’s idea of a good holiday would solely be based on his assessment of the cleanliness or otherwise of the City.

It is really difficult with globalisation to articulate what makes one place so really different from another. Globalisation means that there are MacDonald’s in every city, town and village wherever you travel. The giant retail kings and queens can be found in most modern cities across the world. And everywhere has an Irish bar, at least one anyway. Singapore was no different. Its unique selling point, in my view, has to be something about the culture, which on the surface appears western but has subtle but tangible overtones of Chinese, Tamil and Malay, remnants of the early settlers here. This Asian fusion provided us with tourist attractions in Chinatown and Little India which we visited to experience first hand the 4th and 5th generation Chinese and Tamil people’s culture. Religious places of worship to Chinese gods and Tamil deity were colourful and aromatic as the incense and jos sticks permeated the air inviting you inside to experience calm and peaceful prayer. Colourful wreaths with yellow and red flowers heralded a pungent mix of cumin and turmeric in Little India soliciting your taste buds as you wandered through the market stalls.

Chinese dragons and tigers adorn the doorways on the way out of the Temple. The tiger symbolising the elderly and it’s cub, the young person, and how the two must work together to achieve balance through youth and experience. Much to be learned about this symbolism. Entering on the right and leaving the Temple by the left was important for Karma, with the key difference in this Temple that we could keep our shoes on for the visit. In Little India we learned, in days gone by, moneylenders would be found by the riverside offering new business funding to the early settlers. Clad in little more than a loin cloth, the money lenders would purview their investments and hurriedly pull out if they considered the business unviable. Nothing new there then, if you have experience with the banking system we have nowadays.

The Singapore River is beautifully lined on either side with walkways offering a warm evening stroll with a variety of eating places and watering holes along the way. You will find mostly tourists in this area and the prices reflected it at $12 Singapore dollars for a pint and $10 for wine. There are a variety of fusion restaurants as you might expect from a city built around Asian influences, so we had Italian. Now that is a frustration to me since the Lion, another of these idiosyncrasies, rejects spicy food as it might upset his tummy, so Osso Bocco it was for the first night.

A must do visit in Singapore is to Marina Bay Gardens at night. The light show dances and delights the eyes, you feel like you are in the movie Avatar. The beauty of the show enveloped us before we travelled 36 floors up in the lift to the Viewing Platform. This area created in the form of a huge surfboard sits atop this magnificent hotel which hosts a bar, food and swimming pool. Only residents might experience the latter, but the $23 dollar entrance price is deducted from your food and drink bill so it makes for a reasonable trip if you don’t mind the height. At night you get a real sense of the dazzling splendour of Singapore; glistening with lights, the tall buildings peppering the horizon like giant columns, the view allows you to experience this beautiful city from a completely different perspective. On our way up in the lift we met a couple of people from Dundee, of course we did this is a cosmopolitan city. They were experienced travellers now living in Gibraltar and they had been to the city before, filling us with recommendations we were unlikely to ever manage given the short nature of our trip.

After an expensive but much appreciated and must do Singapore Sling, we descended into reality and headed off in the general direction of Raffles. We wanted to experience first hand the most traditional element of any visit to Singapore . We had stopped there on our travels around the city earlier in the day with the guide but wanted an uninhibited experience. Our visit was more out of duty than want if we are honest. So we set off confused by the darkness, down one street, along a tree lined avenue, in the underpass, back onto the river and soon realised we were lost. By 11pm we gave up our quest to be hip tourists at the famous bar which was most likely to be closed anyway (things close about 1030pm there). Instead we found our way back to the river, strolling hand in hand, back to our hotel. Ah well let’s leave that for another night, yeah…………….

An Epic journey

As those of you know and have read earlier blogs, we are not the luckiest travellers in the world. We’ve had dramas, disasters and even missed holidays altogether. You will recall that in September 2018, when I booked the Very Best of Australia Tour with stopovers in Singapore and Bali, I mistakenly booked it for February 2019! It was a cock up before we even got started. Having realised this mistake, I ate humble pie and contacted the tour operator who rebooked the right date for our trip to coincide with my 60th birthday in 2020. I was assured that nothing else could possibly go wrong, right?

The bushfires in Australia had ravaged the country in the summer of 2019/20. Nowhere was safe apparently and the country had suffered horrendous loss of life; people lost homes, wildlife and woodlands were decimated. People were picking through the the ashes trying to salvage what little the fires had left them and we were going there on holiday. It was hard to be ambivalent to their suffering. As the fires continued air quality became an issue and media coverage did little to quell the rising levels of anxiety here in our household. Tennis players participating in the Melbourne Open were complaining bitterly about the air quality there and Melbourne was one of our stopovers. We might not be able to visit any of the places at this rate. We watched with more than a passing interest as the impact of the devastating fires became all too real in every day life in Australia.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office became our new best friends. We favourited them on our browser to assist us getting to the information quickly and efficiently. Our insurance company also suggested that unless the F&C Office stated that it was unsafe to travel, they would not refund the costs if we cancelled. Having paid a telephone number in cash for this trip; the dream holiday was suddenly becoming a nightmare. My antenna was raw monitoring the situation. The news continued to sound concerning, I know we have coped before with such threats and risks, however this was a major set back.

And it was not over. Kangaroo Island, where we were to spend two nights, was removed from the tour itinerary. Anyone who watched the fires on TV could see the horrific impact on wildlife there. Other trips on our tour were also under threat, but daily updates continued to pour oil on troubled waters and as time went on glimmers of hope began to emerge. I turned to prayer, only to hear that Trump had started an offensive in Iraq. The thought of a war in the Middle East filled me with dread as we were passing through Dubai on our travels and might be affected. Those chances increased tenfold when, in apparent retaliation, some angry men shot down a passenger jet (admittedly mistakenly) nevertheless taking out everyone on board. I was weak at the knees, finding solace in my sofa as I watched incredulous, and contemplated the impact of these latest developments. And it was about to get so much worse.

Two weeks before we were about to travel, news of a deadly virus in China was beginning to filter onto our news channels. Wait, we were heading in this direction, with a stopover in Singapore which had close links to China where the virus originated. This was the third calamity to hit the holiday. We watched with horror as the World Health Organisation declared the virus a “global problem” and instigated widespread measures to attempt to constrain the spread of a deadly Coronavirus. Our favourite website was red hot as we searched for guidance and information (again) about whether we should travel. Our cases lay empty, no real packing had even begun with this latest development hanging over us. During all of this, quite innocuously my sister mentioned that there had been a plague of locusts in Africa that had devastated crops, described as giant locusts, the like of which had never been seen before. This piece of information began ringing alarm bells, religious teaching suggested fires, floods, plague, locusts and shooting planes down could mean only one thing; the end of the world, imminent annihilation, the apocalypse was coming. Our holiday was doomed.

Never say we are not positive though for despite these threats, the risks mounting on a daily basis, we started to pack the cases, buy the currency, book the driver and buy the guide books. It is called faith. Looking on the bright side we purchased masks to wear when we arrived in Singapore and ensure we were protected from the virus. A little bit of excitement was beginning to take hold the morning the driver arrived to collect us. We threw the bags (well maybe we dragged them-they were quite heavy) into the boot, sat in the sumptuous leather and breathed a sigh of relief we were on our way. Two miles into the journey an accident on the M8 forced us off the motorway and re-routing our journey added a half hour delay. We breathed a sigh of relief as we rejoined the M8 only to hit a second accident at Charing Cross. A further delay here meant we arrived a little late into Glasgow Airport but we managed to drop our bags without fuss and head to the Emirates lounge for the first champagne of the day. That is when the Lion said “ These accidents they usually come in three’s don’t they?…………….”