Notes From Elsewhere — The Aiza
We landed in Singapore a little before ten at night.
I remember stepping out of the airport into that warm, humid air, and then getting into a cab, and just… looking. The roads unrolled in colour, every building lit like it had been dressed up just for that moment, lights reflecting off glass and wet pavement, the whole city glowing like something out of a dream. I remember thinking, quite simply, this is magical. Not in an exaggerated way, just a quiet, honest thought, the kind you have when a place is genuinely more beautiful than you expected it to be.
I didn’t know yet that the night still had a very different kind of story waiting for us.
The First Surprise
We’d booked a Grab to our hotel, and it dropped us right across the road from the entrance. Simple enough, except we had two kids with us, several bags, and a road to cross before we’d even technically arrived.
We got ourselves and our luggage across, walked in, and that’s when the evening quietly shifted. In India, when you arrive at a hotel, there’s almost always someone there, security at the gate, a bellboy for your bags, someone at the door who at least nods you toward the front desk. It’s such a small thing, but it’s a kind of comfort you don’t notice until it’s missing.
Here, there was no one. Just a quiet lobby. And the reception, we soon discovered, was on the third floor. This was a fully self-check-in hotel, something we hadn’t looked into beforehand, hadn’t even thought to ask about. So there we were, two adults, two kids, and a stack of luggage, trying to figure out where to go and how.
Finding a Trolley in the Most Unexpected Way
The area around our hotel was full of life even at that hour — a 7-Eleven here, a little restaurant there, that late-night hum you get in a city that never quite switches off. And somewhere in that hum, we spotted a stray cart trolley, clearly left behind by someone who’d been using it minutes earlier for a supermarket run or something similar.
We didn’t think twice. We loaded our luggage onto it and wheeled it across the road ourselves, grateful in a way that felt almost funny in hindsight, grateful to a trolley someone else had simply left behind. By God’s grace, as I keep thinking back on it.
Once inside, we found a proper luggage trolley near the entrance, switched our bags over, and made our way toward the lifts. Along the way, someone passing by noticed us looking a little lost and asked where we were headed. We told them the hotel name, and they pointed us the right way. Small kindness from a stranger, exactly when we needed it.
We finally reached the reception on the third floor, collected our room keys, and made our way in.
A Different Kind of Good
Looking back, that stretch, crossing the road with kids and bags, hunting for a trolley, figuring out an unfamiliar self-check-in system in an unfamiliar city, wasn’t exactly bad. It was just different. Nothing like what we were used to.
If we’d known beforehand that the hotel was self-check-in, I think we would have prepared differently, mentally braced ourselves for it. But there was something quietly satisfying about how it turned out anyway. Not depending on someone else to check us in, not waiting for assistance that wasn’t coming, there’s a kind of self-reliance in that experience I didn’t expect to appreciate, but I did. It felt like a small, good habit the city had nudged us into, whether we wanted it or not.
And once we were finally in our room, at a lovely little place called Citadel, all of it softened into something warm. The room was genuinely nice, and the strange, slightly chaotic start to the night began to feel less like a mishap and more like a story we’d tell later.
Little India, Lit Up for Pongal
We were staying close to Little India, and that night, stepping back out, the streets were alive. It happened to be January, Pongal season and the entire area was dressed in decorations, string lights, colour everywhere, and people out celebrating in a way that felt both festive and familiar. For a moment, it didn’t feel like we were far from home at all.
That’s the thing about that one night in Singapore, it wasn’t just one experience, it was several stitched together. The awe of the ride in. The confusion and small struggle of arriving with kids and no one to help. The unexpected kindness of a stranger and a borrowed trolley. And then, just a short walk later, the warmth of Little India glowing with a festival we knew by heart, even this far from home.
A mixed night, in every sense. But looking back, I wouldn’t trade a single part of it.
This is a piece from Notes From Elsewhere, a series on The Aiza about places I’ve travelled to and what they left me with. If a place has stayed with you the way that night stayed with me, I’d love to hear about it.