It"s the twilight years for one of Singapore"s pioneer tour guides

Geraldene Lowe-Ismail has been a tour guide in Singapore since 1969 (Photo: Koh Sze Kiat)

Geraldene Lowe-Ismail has been sharing inside stories of Singapore with tourists for four decades.

One of Singapore’s pioneers tour guides, nothing would give her more pleasure than to continue her tours for many more years, but at the age of 75, she does not deny that she faces some challenges and plans to cut back her work.

“Sometimes, names will slip my memory, so what I do is to never deliver the tour the same way, so that keeps me mentally sharp,” she said in an interview conducted at the void deck of the condominium where she lives.

Her mobile phone, which is not a smartphone, is specially designed for seniors with its big number buttons and a big display.

Her health, too, is setting her back. At the end of November, she will be leaving Singapore for medical treatment in Australia and hope to be back around next February, she said.

“When I’m in town, I will plan some tours, but (it) won’t be full on like in the past,” she added. Her latest group tours here will last until mid-November.

During a tour of shophouses in Singapore, inSing went along to watch her work. The veteran tour guide led a group comprising of a handful of Caucasian expatriates, tourists and the odd one or two Singaporeans.

Check out more photos: Singapore’s 75-year-old pioneer tour guide at work

She is a very good multitasker for sure – speaking through her microphone, ­shuffling through documents, answering and receiving phone calls from a mobile phone slung round her neck, and giving instructions to a new bus driver who was unfamiliar with the tour route.

‘HOW HIGH IS THE MERLION?’

Lowe-Ismail has been a tour guide since 1969 and is arguably Singapore’s oldest and longest-serving one.

After Singapore’s independence in 1965, she and another expatriate, George Thompson, were asked by the newly formed Singapore Tourism Promotion Board (now Singapore Tourism Board, STB) to train the pioneering batch of tour guides and to write the literature that was presented to tourists.

These days though, you won’t find her spouting any of such literature from STB.

“All these tourist board and Government statistics. They ask tour guides to tell tourists about the newest Government policy, national statistics like how many babies are born a minute, how many ships go through the port, how many this and that. A few years ago, a question for the (tour) guide course was, ‘How high is the Merlion?’ Who cares how high the Merlion is?

“I know some guys who take the tour guide exams and fail because they don¹t know how high the Merlion is. People say I am naughty… (but) I show people the real Singapore and talk about social matters,” said Lowe-Ismail, who is married with three children.

“I used to get criticism from the (Singapore) ministers, and they will tell me, ‘Geraldene, Geraldene, why do you delight in taking the tourists to Sago Lane?’ They (the ministers) grew up in Chinatown… All they see is that I’m showing the dirty side of Singapore. ‘You must only show the good things, like Sentosa or, bird park, zoo.’ But I said this is what fascinates the visitor.”

UNUSUAL STORIES

Lowe-Ismail accepts between 15 to 20 people per tour and handles bookings by email. If you do not book early, they are usually full closer to the date.

She conducts tours primarily for members of expatriate clubs and associations in Singapore, taking them to see black-and-white colonial bungalow houses, old World War II sites, or shophouses along Emerald Hill. She also gets requests from special interest and corporate groups for customised programmes.

However, that is not the reason why her tours are popular – it is the little insider stories she shares that make the tours more intriguing.

During one of these tours, the group passed a stretch of seven terraced houses along Emerald Hill and she told the group that they were apparently built by a man who married seven wives in a desperate attempt to produce an heir. He finally adopted seven boys, one for each wife, and this was where his seven families lived.

She said to laughter in the crowd: “It wasn’t to carry on the family name or to inherit the business though. It was for his burial to be dignified and proper. You needed sons to carry the coffin and he was a big man. So he calculated that he needed about seven.”

In another segment of her tour, Lowe-Ismail, who counts Russian, Chinese, Arabic and “others” in her family bloodline, took the group to her favourite halal coffee shop to have a teh tarik (Indian-style pulled tea) and a curry puff along the back lanes of Chinatown.

There, she introduced the group to the coffee shop’s proprietor and pointed out where the old Malayan railway used to run.

SLOWING DOWN

As she walked, there was a noticeable limp, and she used her umbrella as a walking stick. Climbing up and down the tour bus in her orthopaedic shoes was a bit of a struggle because she had to negotiate them step by step and she got out of breath doing so.

She said: “I don’t do so many walking tours, more bus tours now. I enjoy walking, but because (of) my kidney stone problem, it gets hard. But I would like to do it for as long as I am able.”

That is, if Lowe-Ismail has her way. Her husband has been “nagging” at her to retire from her tour guide work.

He and their three grown-up children emigrated to Perth in 1985. They are Australians but she has remained a Singaporean. Her children have moved out of the family house in Perth.

For 20 years, she has been travelling back and forth from Perth, doing tours whenever she is back in Singapore.

“I am so not used to Perth. The weather is so dry. It makes your skin flake and crack. It is either too hot or too cold, you know. I keep on having kidney stones, so I come back to Singapore to have them treated.

“So my husband always says, ‘Stop all your nonsense and then go back to Perth.’ This is the big battle you see,” Lowe-Ismail explained, though she did hint that she would eventually move to Perth but the “packing up is going to take a long time”.

“It is not a question of the money. This is my passion and my interest. I grew up here (Singapore) so I like to do tours here,” she said.

On retirement, she said after a long pause: “I don’t know. If I can still talk and get on and off the bus, then why not? I would like to, but one has to be practical, maybe.”

Certainly, she said, even if she is not able to walk, it would not be a problem.

“I’ll just do a wheelchair tour, lah,” she exclaimed.

Geraldene’s group and private tours will run until mid-November. For more information, check out her website at http://www.cookerymagic.com/geraldene.html or email her at geraldenestours@hotmail.com

It"s the twilight years for one of Singapore"s pioneer tour guides