Singapore-Malaysia Tour

SINGAPORE: The Merlion at Centosa Island

Regardless of what may (or may not) be happening in the Club, our intrepid travel junkies are forever raring to go. They have toured the country, even covered its extremities -- from Goa to Gangtok, Kashmir to Kerala. They have also ventured overseas – to Bangkok in 2017. And now they are headed to destinations even beyond – Singapore and Malaysia.
Today, in what amounted to surmounting the first and biggest stumbling block of the tour, they received their visas

Nahid Khan proudly displays
her passport and visa 

for both the countries. Like the last foreign trip (to Bangkok), there had been no rejection this time also. Nahid Khan, Laxmi Hadimani,

MALAYSIA: Kuala Lumpur by late evening

Bhaswati Bose, Naheed Siddiqui and all others in the 15-member group can now happily pack their bags and plan out their day-to-day programme.
They would set out in a fortnight – on June 9 – and return after a week.
Of all the group members, Nahid Khan looked the most excited – not because she was going to tread on foreign soil for the first time. She would now be getting the thappa – the Customs and Immigration stamp on her otherwise blank passport. “Nobody can now tease me for keeping the passport uselessly,” she chirped like a child.
But like the others, she too had certain apprehensions: Will the weather be very cold out there? Or would it be raining, like in Mumbai? What food shall we get to eat there? What shopping can we do? Would it be very costly? How much money should each of us carry? Will we have to walk around a lot…
These are routine questions every traveller ought to ask. But most do not.

Lt Col Angad Singh (rtd):
Mention of Singapore has turned my mental clock back by 67 years when I last visited the place. It was only a few years after World War II. Singapore was a very attractive place then and many Indians were settled there. We felt so enamored by everything that we called it the 'New World'. It was difficult to get bored there. We wished we could stay there longer, but our tour of duty was more exacting. We had to leave early. Now of course, there would be many improvements and you can see far better things than I did. How I wish I could join the trip!