Leisure & Travel

Singapore’s myriad charmsA shopper‚s paradise and one of the busiest business hubs worldwide, in 2005 this island city-state (682 sq. km) attracted 8.94 million foreign tourists ‚ a tourism inflow 100 percent greater than of India (3.84 million sq. km)Hitherto a shopping, tourism and job-market destination for Indians, the city-state of Singapore (pop. 4.2 million) is rapidly transforming into a major education centre in South-east Asia. Recently the Singapore government invited India‚s high-profile IIM-B (Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore), ranked among Asia‚s top-10 B-schools, to set up a bricks and mortar campus in the city-state. Former Singapore prime minister Goh Chuk Tong visited IIM-Ahmedabad and reiterated his country‚s interest to host IIM campuses. Moreover the National University of Singapore has also announced plans to open a study centre in the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. For visitors from India‚s chaotic, unkempt cities and worse villages, spic ‚Ëœn‚ span Singapore with its 630,000 strong Indian population is likely to prove edifying in terms of what is possible in civic planning and intelligent governance. Singapore is a shopper‚s paradise as well and one of the busiest global business hubs worldwide. Unsurprisingly, this nation state with a majority (60 percent) Chinese population, is also a major tourist attraction. In 2005 the island city-state (682 sq. km) attracted 8.94 million foreign (including 583,000 Indian) tourists ‚ a tourism inflow 100 percent greater than of India (3.84 million sq. km).Situated on the southern tip of Malaysia, the earliest known record of Singapore is in a third century Chinese account which describes the nation as pu-luo-chung or ‚Ëœisland at the end of a peninsula‚. In terms of ancient history, little is available by way of records and documents. The earliest recorded history of the island dates back to the 14th century when the region was a territory of the mighty Indonesian Sri Vijayan empire, and was known as temasek (sea town). In the latter half of the 14th century, this small but strategically located island had earned a new name ‚ Singa Pura (Lion City) after a visiting Sri Vijayan prince saw an animal there, closely resembling a lion. It was only in the 18th century during British rule, that the next notable chapter in the history of the city-state was written. Observing the need for a strategic ‚Ëœhalfway house‚ to harbour, refit, provide and protect the Royal Navy, as well as to discourage Dutch expansion in the East Indies, Sir Stamford Raffles decreed Singapore a free trade city. Its policy of free trade attracted merchants from across Asia, the Middle East and even the US. By 1824, a mere five years after the founding of modern Singapore, the population had grown from 150 to 10,000. By 1832, Singapore became the centre of government for Penang and Malacca. The operationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1869 and advent of the telegraph and steamships increased Singapore‚s importance as a centre for the expanding trade between east and west. During World War II, its strategic location on the east-west…