Happy New Year Singapore style

New Year’s Eve is always different from one year to the next, but never more so than when you experience the traditions of different places and cultures. This one was really different. We had a very nice but very quiet poolside meal at the hotel (Goodwood Park off Orchard Road – more later) complete with four course dinner, wine and champagne. We could see, though, that the wild side of New Year was a non-starter with the controlled, reserved company we were keeping.
So at 11.30 we left our placid backwater for Orchard Road.
BANG. The place was full of partying, young people, mostly Indian, all of whom were in great spirits without resorting to any, if you get the drift. It was chaos. People were buying white spray by the bucketload, and the trick was to spray the opposite group and make them look like snowmen before they did the same to you. Polite, middle-aged people like ourselves were easy game. The Indians thought it was even better fun to “bomb” nubile Chinese girls with their sprays (strange pickup trick, must try it sometime).
We woke up to New Year’s day and it’s as if nothing had happened. The streets were clean, shops were open. It’s a bit of a pain shopping in the smaller shops in Spore as you get hassled a lot to buy, buy ,buy; bye bye! but you can really get bargains as long as you know what you want and know what it costs before you start to barter. You buy stuff up to half price if you do the “no, no, njaa, maybe, perhaps, can’t you do it cheaper, OK then” trick.
New year’s day was also our last day for now in Spore, so it was a tropical hike up and down their “mountain” (large hill with cable car and 48,000 people in the queue) while we whiled away the hours before our next port of call, Auckland and another flight of over 10 hours.
Goodwood Park Hotel, an Oasis off Orchard Road.
If you are heading to Spore for any reason and don’t have to go bargain basement for accommodation, we heartily recommend the GoodWood Park Hotel. It’s just a stone’s throw from Orchard Road and has a colonial luxury about it, with 2 pools, a gym and an arctic aircon system. (33 degrees outside, Pia wore her fleece inside). It really is a beautiful hotel with excellent service. We searched for the hotel on the Internet and got something like a 60% reduction on the room rate per day. Mind you, we booked well in advance.