Long before Rick Steves and Peter Greenberg showed us how to travel, Burton Holmes was delighting audiences with original travelogues and short films. The fascinating Burton Holmes Archive has a treasure trove of information about early travel writing and the earliest travel films.

“The Burton Holmes Archive is the world’s largest repository of films, photographs, programs, scrapbooks, and other ephemera related to the life and career of Burton Holmes, the “Father of the Travelogue”.

Burton Holmes coined the term “Travelogue” in 1904 to advertise his unique live stage presentations combining stories of his travels with slides and motion pictures. Sophisticated and elegantly attired, Holmes became the world’s most famous traveler during the first half of the 20th century through his books, magazine articles, lectures and films. Born into a prosperous Chicago family in 1870, Holmes turned a chance encounter in the early 1890’s with John L. Stoddard, the then reigning 19th century travel lecturer, into a lifelong career. Each summer for over fifty years Holmes would roam the globe and then tour American auditoriums in the winter; during the 1945-46 season alone, at age 75, he gave 157 two-hour lectures. Slowed by ill health and television, Holmes retired to Hollywood in 1952 and died there in 1958. His company, Burton Holmes International, survived into the 1970s.”

You can discover some of Holmes’ film clips from the 20s and 30s on Youtube.

That is how I felt when I visited Scottish Highlands in the month of April this year. It was like a completely different world. It is one of those very few places, where you get the sense of getting close to nature and get lost in its beauty.

Being a novice with camera, I wondered how I can capture what I see in to an image.  But in a place like Highlands, maybe we don’t need to worry about these skills. A click in any direction comes up with such beautiful postcards…..

After a very filling breakfast buffet at the Marriott, we decided to head to Marina Bay for the afternoon. Just as we started to cross the helix bridge however, a gigantic thunderstorm roared in that had us stranded there for about an hour, under not-long sheets of blue plexiglass, until we finally decided to make a run for it. It was the most ear-splitting thunder I’d ever heard, and it often came less than a second after the accompanying lightning, meaning we were right there, stuck in a bridge under barely any cover, in the middle of the storm. I luckily managed to snap some photos of the cool-designed helix bridge beforehand.

The helix bridge to Marina Bay Sands.

You can kind of see the rain starting in

That little blue thing kept us (mostly) dry.

Thankfully, the light at the end of the tunnel for us was the Marina Bay Sands, a giant Vegas-esque shopping mall, food court and theatre. It even had the faux-Venice river running through the place, complete with Venetian boats and little outfitted sailors. It was certainly more than enough shelter from the rain, which continued to pour outside for quite a while.

The bridge to Marina Bay Sands.

The heavy rain is visible from the glass ceiling at the Sands.

Interior of the Sands.

Aside from the miles and miles of designer shops, the highlight was the food court, which featured “masters” of street cuisine for seemingly every type of Asian food imaginable . We ate Mee Siam and “Kopi” – Singaporean coffee, which is prepared in a special way by roasting with sugar and margarine, bringing out a really rich, sweet flavor.

One of the street vendor- gone-Sands chefs.

Our Mee Siam.

Mom drinking her Kopi.

By the food court was what appeared to be an ice-skating rink: there were certainly people skating on it, wearing the appropriate ice blades, but the air there was completely room temperature. Upon closer inspection the “ice” turned out to be some kind of plastic thing made to look like ice, that you could still somehow blade over… Will have to try this in future. Interestingly, there was a large casino in the Sands (adding to the Vegas flavor), but it was restricted to Singaporean citizens and permanent residents only. Nevermind, we definitely had enough to occupy ourselves with with all the stores.

Interesting clothing displays in the hallways.

A very cool installation for Prada: video surrounded in 3 sides by running water.

After the rain cleared up, we checked out the Art and Science Museum right next to the Sands, but decided against seeing yet another Dali exhibit costing over 30 dollars for entry.

A very sleek fountain up front.

This cracked egg is actually the Art and Science Museum.

Instead, we decided to take a look around Marina Bay proper. The place is all modern architecture, ginormous glass skyscrapers belonging to banks, the definition of urban prosperity, and to top it all off, the whole Bay started as a development project in 2005. It just goes to show how efficient this place is at moving forward, which is brilliant but also rather intimidating.

Glass, glass everywhere.

The Standard Chartered building.

Banks galore!

Finally, feet sore and eyes exhausted from all the sight-seeing and window-shopping, we got to squeeze in on the MRT with all the bankers coming home at the peak of rush hour.

My mom is here in Singapore with me for the first week, to help me get settled. For the first two nights, we stayed at the Goodwood Park hotel near Orchard Road, a vintage-looking place based on some Rhineland castle. It was a gorgeous place, far lower in height, probably because of its age (it was built in the early 1900s) than just about everything around it, but really impeccably furnished and designed. What amazed me most was the quality of the service; everyone, from the concierge to the guy who brought in the luggage to the people whose only job it seems is to open the door, was chirpy and enthusiastic and overall extremely pleasant.

“What I experienced was an unshakeable desire to eat just about anything and everything”

For the first day (May 29), we just walked, or rather wobbled, around the food court/underpass adjacent to the hotel. Within a few short steps there was already a British snackfoods stand, a Taiwanese food store, an all-you-can-eat Chinese/Singaporean buffet, an Indian creperie, bubble tea and the ever popular Toast. Unable to make a decision, we ended up downing some lackluster rice. But unfortunately before we could remedy this meal by adding even more food to our stomachs, I was overtaken by jet lag and passed out promptly at 3 pm, only to wake up at 1 am and spend a tortuous morning lying in bed begging the sleep gods to take me in.

The next day (May 30), we started off in Little India, where unfortunately all the stores seemed to be closed when we went there, and then headed to Chinatown via MRT. Chinatown had just about everything I could want to eat, ever. I greedily started the morning with a bowl of iced grass jelly, which was perfect for the weather. My mom and I ate and walked simultaneously through the multi-storied indoor mall there. Each level specialized in some kind of alternative Eastern medical or cosmetic practice. The first had all these creepy, very makeshift stands where cosmeticians offered lip tattoos (so the peckers appear fuller!), eyeliner tattoo, mole removal, etc etc. The second was all footwork: reflexology, massages, pedicures. The best there were these spas where little fish eat at your dead skin. We couldn’t resist: we sat in one of them, for hands and feet, for 15 minutes. It was surprisingly fantastic. Ticklish and, frankly, scary at first, the swarms of fish suckling at our limbs ended up producing a very pleasant, vibrating feeling. We left there with super soft hands and feet and fantastic iPhone-shot videos.

The fish have the timebox.

And then, exotic adventure of the day attained, we came upon the hawker center. In short, it was miles and miles of brilliant. Just about every variety of Asian food I could imagine was present, and we had no idea how to choose. Perhaps subconsciously avenging the mass devouring of our dead skin cells from earlier, we ended up sharing an absolutely delicious fish soup, which was so rich in flavor and cost only around 3 sing dollars. Stomachs filled to the brim, we wandered around a bit more, then finally headed back to Orchard.

Hawker noodles are more for less!

Goodwood offers an afternoon tea that looks so colorful that we almost could not resist suffering our bellies to take in even more food for the day. Instead, we opted for the healthier option of devouring a massive tower of mango snow ice (I like to reassure myself that it’s mostly water) from a store in the underground shopping center.

Don't be fooled by the apparent excess! It's not THAT unhealthy...

On the way back, we happened upon a desserts shop called Canele near the hotel that featured a colorful assortment of macarons, and we decided to undertake teatime ourselves in our room.

Well look how gorgeous.

DIY afternoon tea: cute teacup set + macaron

After a short rest, we set out in the evening for some drinks and a light dinner. We’d seen that the Marriott down the road had a patio restaurant that was constantly very crowded, so we stopped there and ordered some wine and assorted sate, which was very good. Slightly drunk, we spent the rest of the evening wandering around Orchard, which is kind of the Singapore equivalent of Fifth Ave. I was extremely excited to find a Topshop, and naturally I ended up purchasing a dress from there. By chance, the Topshop here had a myriad of discounts applicable to me: extra 10% off (5% for sale items) for tourists with a foreign passport, extra 7% off for Mastercard users, and a whole section of the store quarantined off for 50% discounted past-season clothing.

And so the evening ended, with me pushing through swarms and fashionable-looking young people who’d crowded the streets for late-night entertainment, shopping bag in hand, a symbol of jetsetting urbanite success. I managed to stay up until 9 or 10 pm that night, and slept like a baby.

TRAVEL WITH YOUR FAMILY

There are many airline ponts programs to choose from The use of  airline alliances is one of the most important thing to decide when you are choosing which airline to transfer your american express points. So you could have airfrance miles but then you have access to delta and lufthansa flights.  So if you have settled on Airfrance now what you need to see is how well does the online usability work for that airlines program.Can you make online reservations without speaking to an agentCan you buy miles at a cheap price.Can you upgrade on line.. What is the availbilty of flights to your destination

There are many airline ponts programs to choose from The use of  airline alliances is one of the most important thing to decide when you are choosing which airline to transfer your american express points. So you could have airfrance miles but then you have access to delta and lufthansa flights.  So if you have settled on Airfrance now what you need to see is how well does the online usability work for that airlines program.Can you make online reservations without speaking to an agentCan you buy miles at a cheap price.Can you upgrade on line.. What is the availbilty of flights to your destination

There are many airline ponts programs to choose from The use of  airline alliances is one of the most important thing to decide when you are choosing which airline to transfer your american express points. So you could have airfrance miles but then you have access to delta and lufthansa flights.  So if you have settled on Airfrance now what you need to see is how well does the online usability work for that airlines program.Can you make online reservations without speaking to an agentCan you buy miles at a cheap price.Can you upgrade on line.. What is the availbilty of flights to your destination