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On a typical Saturday morning, droves of trigger-happy tourists are out with cameras slung around their

necks, soaking in key attractions along the Singapore skyline - the Merlion, Marina Bay and The Esplanade.

In the eastern corner of Singapore, tour guide Geraldene Lowe-Ismail takes her little troupe on a different journey. At a quiet Sikh temple, they scoop up and savour sweet balls of still-warm semolina which have been blessed by the guru.

At another Sri Lankan temple, they watch as three priests perform a fire ceremony for a local family. Then at the door of a plain shophouse, they remove their shoes and gasp as they enter a stunning, award-winning architectural conservation where water from the second-floor bathroom cascades down as a waterfall.

Nothing is quite the usual when it comes to Lowe-Ismail's tours, including the tour guide herself. At 73, she is one of the oldest in her field in Singapore.

With a razor-sharp nose and fine features from her European-Chinese heritage, the dulcet-voiced lady may not look like most Singaporeans on the streets, but she is easily one of the most authentic authorities on Singapore history.

Once an old British soldier returned to Singapore to search for the chapel he had got married in.

No one he approached recognised the

SPARKLE

ABOVE: Geraldene Lowe-Ismail conducts quirky tours to places such as the Sri Senpaga Vinayagar Temple (top) in Tanjong Katong. RIGHT: At the same temple, priests perform a fire ceremony for a Singapore family.

chapel in the faded yellow photo except Lowe-Ismail, who finally tracked it to an old air force base around Changi.

"It's nice when I can help people relive their memories," says Lowe-Ismail, who speaks English, Italian, Spanish, Malay as well as some Mandarin.

She has a long history in this field. About 40 years ago, she was one of the first tour guides in Singapore to organise trips during which the tourists actually got their shoes dirty.

"In the '60s and '70s, American tourists used to come and they never got down the bus. I felt they were not seeing the real Singapore," recalls Lowe-Ismail, who has been in the travel

business most of her life and now di\ides her time between Singapore and Perth, where she has a home with her Singapore-born husband and three children.

She used to receive flak from some locals for showing tourists a different side of Singapore. But. over the years, she has won many over. One of her proudest moments was when accomplished Singaporean diplomat Tommy Koh called her the "oldest streetwalker in Singapore".

Lowe-Ismail is still walking the streets, albeit at a slower pace. On the morning I join her on a bus tour of Katong, she is clad in a floral blouse, practical combat pants and track

" :es. She keeps time with a thin-strapped lastic watch in bright hues, which would not •: K out of place on a teenager's wrist.

I notice that throughout the four-hour tour, has been talking with an unflagging smile

. her face.

I love to share," she says simply, when ed what has kept her going for so many s. "Especially when I see a spark of interest

someone's eyes which I might have ignited." This is what is different about Lowe-Ismail's

. You are not likely to see your typical ists and you might well get your feet dirty, narrative is less a textbook account than a

r.pelling Scheherazade retelling of historical

BELOW: Immerse yourself in Peranakan culture at Rumah Kim Choo along East Coast Road.

characters, including the parts she and even family members played in the story.

"She is authentic," declares a German expatriate who has joined his wife (Lowe-Ismail's regular) and two preschool daughters for the Katong bus tour. Having lived in Singapore for two years, the family has done all the usual sightseeing. "After the Night Safari, Singapore Zoo, Merlion and Singapore Flyer, it's good to experience something different. What Geraldene offers is true authenticity."

Her list of regulars includes expatriates living in Singapore who want a more intense, genuine taste of the real Singapore beyond the brochures, and locals like Anderson Teo has a

GERALDENE'S TOURS Black & White

Houses Bus Tour

The tour passes by Tanglin, Nassim

and Bukit Timah. Participants enter

four different black-and-white colonial

houses as Lowe-Ismail explains life

in the old days and how architecture has

changed over the years.

AH Things Malay Bus Tour

Participants will visit the new Geylang

Serai market, where they will find unique

Malay-style clothing, fruits, fish, spices and

vegetables, as well as taste traditional cakes and drinks.

Navarathri Night Bus Tour with Dinner

Participants get to enjoy a North Indian

halal buffet before visiting two temples

to see dances and music performed as a form of worship to the

Mother Goddess .

Traditional Trades Tour

Some ofthe traditional trades

which Lowe-Ismail has taken her

groups to explore include giantjoss

stick and paper house makers,

calligraphers and w o o d and

seal carvers.

Prices range from $ 4 0 to $65 for a half-day group tour. If you are interested to join a

tour, e-mail Lowe-Ismail at geraldenestours@ hotmail.com, or her col league Charlotte at

charlottechutours@qmail.com.

ready opinion about fellow locals who should join her tours.

"People are too busy these days to care about heritage and history," muses the 61 -year-old, who earns a living by making miniature scale models of heritage buildings in Singapore. He has gone on a walking tour of Emerald H i l l with Lowe-Ismail and visited a joss stick factory.

"Geraldene is amazingly knowledgeable with everything at her fingertips. A l l this history might be gone one day. I am still learning and I keep my mind open," says Teo, who is particularly fascinated at that moment by a young man, who is painstakingly and skilfully weaving a lacy hole into a Peranakan garment with a sewing machine, at the Rumah Kim Choo Peranakan establishment in Katong.

One of her most popular tours is the Black & White Houses Bus Tour - during which she takes her group to visit a few of the black-

ABOVE, LEFT & BELOW: Learn about Eurasian heritage and history at the Eurasian Community House in Joo Chiat.

and-white bungalows that are distinctive hallmarks of Singapore's colonial past. Often, Lowe-Ismail goes knocking on doors or taps on her contacts in order to gain entry into these private homes.

"I'm lucky that people offer me their house, she says. "They also understand it's more the architectural features I am focusing on rather than poking around their furniture."

With Singapore being such a racial and religious potpourri, Lowe-Ismail keeps track of several calendars — whether it's the Jewish, Mus l im or Chinese lunar ones — so she can organise special tours on the fly.

In conjunction with a Mus l im festival, she might go to the Geylang Serai market where the Malay community gathers. Or if it were a Chinese God's birthday, she might pop down to the relevant temple. "It's a little bit more colourful and not just more of the same old tour," she says.

Certainly, she wil l have something special up her sleeve for Chinese New Year, which happens to be the year of the most auspicious animal in the Chinese zodiac - the Dragon.