By: O. Safitrie*)
Singapore is ready to open the 28th Sea Games that is scheduled on 5 June. The event will be started by a Torch Parade tonight, a night before the opening ceremony.
SEA Games torch flame will be transported in a safety lantern on a bumboat, and then a dragon-boat, via the Kallang Basin to the National Stadium for its final leg. After the torch arrives at the Sports Hub waterfront, it will be brought into the National Stadium in a torch relay involving 13 Singaporean athletes.
Singapore South-east Asian Games Organising Committee (SINGSOC) last week conveyed that people are very enthusiatic for this event.
SINGSOC’s chief of community and corporate outreach, Toh Boon Yi, said that extra seats had been added to the OCBC Arena halls to allow more people to watch fencing and volleyball.
“Demand for tickets is overwhelming,” Toh told last friday. “People have come to us to ask if there are more tickets, so we have opened up more seats at the venues where tickets for the sports held there have sold out, such as the OCBC Arena halls. We have found ways to increase the number of seats for sports such as fencing and volleyball.
“It shows people are looking forward to the Games. Singaporeans are (traditionally) late ticket-buyers, but we are very happy.”
Such enthusiasm can also be seen from the surge of flight searching to Singapore. Six ASEAN countries – Philippines, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam and Malaysia – had more than 50 per cent increase in the number of searches for outbound flights to Singapore, according to flight search statistics from Skyscanner yesterday. Meanwhile, at least 5 per cent to 46 per cent of searches for outbound flights to Singapore were from East Timor, Brunei, Indonesia and Thailand.
*)The Author Is Singapore Contributor
