Singapore 2019 (Part 1) – The First Landing
It was a fresh sunny morning here in Kolkata when I suddenly decided to look up my spam box and found an email from StartupIndia. Okay before I move forward, the question is – why StartupIndia ended up in the spam box of my email? Well, I was always the ‘bootstrap man’ and hated the idea of raising funds and giving away equity. StartupIndia emails were mostly funding opportunities and I decided to just ignore them. So coming back – I saw the subject line read “Indo-Singapore NextPhase Conference 2019”. I have never been to abroad before that and I didn’t have much idea about Singapore as a place but I decided to check the venue. The conference was supposed to be held at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre in September 2019. I looked up on Google and fell in love with the photos of the place. Next – I just decided to register and be there. (Skipping the part where I had to convince my mother about the abroad trip and getting the visas, etc.)
Fast forward to September 2019, we had a Thai AirAsia flight to Singapore via Bangkok. I was travelling with one of my business associates. So technically Thailand became the first foreign land I stepped foot in – although it was only inside the DMK airport while we transited to the connecting flight to Singapore. I did watch the best sunrise from the sky before I landed in Bangkok. Literally the west side was dark while the east side lit up in the golden glow of the sun. After landing, I quickly grabbed a cup of tea (wasn’t very sure of the coffee in that moment).
Hours later, I landed in Singapore on a bright sunny day wearing the blue blazer that I had purchased just for this trip. Singapore has this magical view from the aircraft when you approach the airport flying over the East Coast. The entire city and its high rises are visible from the sky and the island looks unreal from above.
The plane flew over a bunch of boats sailing in the pristine blue waters of the Singapore Strait and approached the Changi Bay where the sea bed visibly transitioned into a concrete runway in no time. As the plane landed, the first thing that I noticed was the runway was actually like a flyover and I could see buses and cars passing below the tunnel. That amazed me as a concept especially coming from Kolkata and having zero foreign exposure.
The airport was humongous and for the first time in my life I saw a robot cleaner. For the 15 minutes we just sat and kept looking around trying to figure out how to reach our hostel in Jalan Besar. But before we could decide on the metro route, we walked up the terminal to reach the Jewel – the iconic structure that houses an entire forest inside of the airport with the huge circular waterfall.
I managed to take some photos and explored some branded showrooms on the way. Thanks to the helpful people of Singapore, we finally reached the bus stop that took us to the MRT (metro railway) station.
Although we boarded the train after issuing ourselves a travel smart card, we weren’t sure where to get off to reach our hostel – the Blue Jazz Hostel in Jalan Besar. Singapore has MRT lines that connect various parts of the city. While Jalan Besar had its own MRT station, the Changi Airport didn’t have a direct route, and I didn’t have the knowledge of the MRT switches at the time. Luckily we met with some Bangladeshis in the metro and they were very excited to see Bengali speaking people. So one of them actually guided us and got off the train at Lavender MRT to show us the road to our hostel. At first I was a little skeptical – “why is he being so helpful?” But later I realised, that’s just the Singaporean way of saying “Welcome to the City of the Future“!
