How to spend time while visiting Singapore

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.