How to spend time while visiting Singapore

By Johannes Simbolon

SINGAPORE (JP): A journalist who visited Singapore recently said that what amazed her most was the fact that the country has not only managed to discipline its people, but also its animals.

She was stunned at hearing a yellow-headed amazon bird named Charlie singing "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean ...." upon the order of its master. Charlie is among the 7,000 birds of over 600 species collected at the Jurong BirdPark, one of the main tourist attractions in Singapore.

Discipline is not the whole story of Singapore tourism, however. Aware of its lack of natural and cultural attractions, Singapore does its utmost to lure visitors from around the world through a combination of discipline, creativity, intelligence, determination and self confidence, as well as full utilization of its strategic location and multi-lingual society.

Through this combination, it has already achieved its goal of becoming a business center for the Asia-Pacific and is now stepping closer to becoming the center of tourism in the region.

Singapore has no mountains. Thus, it built a volcano look- alike on Sentosa Island, a major tourist resort. It has no waterfalls. Thus it made one at Jurong BirdPark. Singapore has little attractive native fauna. Thus, it brings creatures in from the outside and puts them in magnificent displays at Jurong BirdPark, Night Safari Park, and Underwater World on Sentosa Island.

It has no unique, native culture to speak of because its people consist of immigrants from China, India, Malaysia and Indonesia. Thus, it brings in modern, world-class cultural shows from abroad, like those of musicians Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson, as well as Broadway dramas, such as Cats in 1993, Les Miserables in 1994, and The Phantom of the Opera.

Singapore uses every inch of its land and every possibility available to make itself "small but beautiful".

The results are amazing. What was only a land of salt, or "nothing", three decades ago has now become a colorful place with a variety of classy entertainments and manmade tourist spots, visited by millions of inbound tourists each year.

"People worldwide find Singapore safe and attractive. And they don't find difficulties in communication, because all Singaporeans know at least four languages: English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil," said Hassan Kassim, of the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board.

The arrival rate is increasing steadily and tourism is slowly becoming the most important source of national income. In 1965, when the country gained independence, only 91,000 inbound visitors came in. In 1993, less than three decades later, Singapore received seven million inbound visitors, who brought in about US$7 billion in revenues, which is around 10 percent of the Gross National Product. More than 30 percent of the visitors reportedly came from ASEAN countries, with Indonesia topping the list.

Day and night

As far as tourism is concerned, Singapore knows no difference between day and night. Visitors can spend their time at night as conveniently as during the day. All tourist spots are accessible to public transportation even at night, while taxi fares are affordable, equal or perhaps slightly cheaper than in Jakarta.

In the daytime, one place worth visiting is Jurong BirdPark. Opened in 1971, the park, covering 20.2 hectares of land, is said to be the largest of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region and one of the finest bird parks in the world. The park specializes in birds from Southeast Asia. Yet, birds from other parts of the world, such as penguins, are also on display.

There are two must-see bird shows held every day in the park. One show, named JBP All Star BirdShow, features a variety of birds acting like "human beings", singing, talking, posing for pictures, doing acrobatics, etc. It is in this show that Charlie sings. Another presentation, named Birds of Prey Show, features falcons performing acrobatics at feeding time.

Yet, the center of tourism in Singapore is Sentosa Island, less than 400 hectares of land half a kilometer south of Singapore. They are connected with a bridge and cable cars. It was formerly called Pulau Belakang Mati ("the island behind which lies death"), used by British colonialists as a fortress. Now, nobody lives there as each inch of the land is used for tourism purposes.

There are dozens of tourist attractions on the island. Among them is Volcanoland Theme Park featuring a man-made volcano in an exotic park resembling the place of the legendary Maya people of South America. All the statues and reliefs in the park were reportedly made in Bali. The volcano, although manmade, can erupt. And visitors can go inside it to watch a remarkable, three-dimensional film about the birth and destruction of the earth.

Another attraction is called Fantasy Island. The place looks like the Gelanggang Samudra in Ancol, North Jakarta, but is somehow more attractive and sports a larger number of activities to indulge in.

Underwater World is also worth visiting. It displays over 6,000 animals from 350 marine species. Many of the species are exotic, rare to see even in university textbooks. So a visit to the place is really like adventuring into an alien world.

Visitors can go by cable cars from and to the island, which provides a beautiful, aerial view of Singapore.

For those interested in history, there are several museums on the island, including the Fort Siloso, the former fortress of British colonialists.

Soon a 37-meter-high statue of a lion's head, the Merlion, will be built there.

Nightlife in Singapore is no less interesting. One of the best choices is the Night Safari Park, located adjacent to Singapore Zoological Gardens. There, visitors may ride aboard an open van for a little less than an hour through a park teeming with nocturnal wildlife. There are reportedly 1,000 animals in the park.

Another choice is to enjoy an outdoor dinner and drinks at the Boat Quay and Clarke Quay restaurant complexes along Singapore River.

Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister BG Lee Hsien Loong once said visitors can see all of Singapore within two or three days. But, the fact that many people visit it over and over proves it has some kind of magnetism, which cannot be measured only by the number of tourist sites it has.