Travel and Aviation

Living in India really makes you crave a modern, green city and there are few cities as modern and green as Singapore. Even as you exit the airport onto the immaculate road surface it's amazing how green and clean the place is. It was a red eye flight from Bangalore but luckily I had drank two cokes on the plane and was ready to go. Firstly, we set out out for hawker centre. In Singapore food is the national obsession. People are willing to line up for hours to experience the best food. And in Singapore the best food is at the hawker centres, which were set up by the government to move food off the streets and into centralized locations. The hawker centre I attended was the Telok Ayer market. I'm going to be honest, I don't know what Good Singaporean food is. But this food was good. Sitting under fans larger than anything I had ever seen I enjoyed some classic spring rolls, choi, and a fresh pressed green apple juice. I was surrounded by foreigners, and was surprised to ...

Recently I flew on back on Malaysian Airlines in economy class after my vacation in Bali. The flights was from Denpasar to Bangalore via Kuala Lumpur International Airport. The flight from Bali to KLIA was about 3 hours and the flight from KLIA to Bangalore was about 4 hours. I was pleasantly surprised when I boarded the flight in Bali to find the Boeing 737-800 was equipped with TVs as living in India on flights its very rare to have a television. The stewardesses served a nice meal, and the selection of TV shows and Movies was excellent. We arrived in KLIA at around 7 in the evening and at least the part of the airport I saw was quite uninspiring. The place seemed modern yet stale and I was extremely relieved when I finally boarded the plane for Bangalore a few hours later. This flight encountered some moderate turbulence when we were flying over the  Andaman Sea, but all around was quite pleasant. Again the plane was equipped with great inflight entertainment, and we were fed a...

Oman is often overlooked in favour of its richer, grander neighbours, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Unlike its neighbors however, Oman is a nation where culture and history have not been forgotten. This does not mean development has been forsaken. Driving down a pristine four lane highway it is hard to believe that in 1970 the country had just 10 kilometres of paved road. On my week long trip to Oman I spent several days in the charming capital Muscat before heading to Oman's interior. There I visited a desert camp in the Wahiba Sands, as well as spending a few days in the historic town of Nizwa. In the 1940's, British explorer Wilfred Thesiger was told by his Bedouin guides that if he entered the town of Nizwa he would never come out due to its exceptional conservatism. Today, Nizwa is the hub for tourism in the interior of Oman. As I pulled up to the Nizwa Fort, I was struck by the enormity of the parking lot, and the lack of cars parked in it. A foreign couple got into their car...