Before the engine started, I already knew this wasn’t going to be a typical city ride.
Not because of the chrome.
Not because of the curious looks from passers-by.
But because of what was happening quietly beside me.
Floating somewhere between the engine hum and the city air was my friend, Stephan — freshly ten years old, city kid, birthday boy, strapped into a sidecar that felt anything but ordinary.
“Rescue me,” Stephan said, half-laughing.
I laughed back, mostly because I understood what he meant.
This was his first time on the road like this — not behind glass, not sealed inside a car, not wrapped in chrome and quiet. Everything came through at once. Sound, smell, movement. No insulation.
If you grow up moving through cities inside vehicles designed to block things out, this feels like a lot. But I just watched the way he sat a little straighter, the way his head kept turning — left, right, up — as if the city had suddenly widened.
Maybe this was his rescue.
Not from anything dramatic.
Just from routine.
From predictability.
From the idea that cities are something you rush through, not something that opens itself up to you.
Maybe ten years from now, he won’t remember the route. He won’t remember the facts.
But he might remember this feeling —
that once, on his tenth birthday, the city revealed itself in colour, movement, and sound,
and for a moment, he was carried through it.
Singapore Sidecars Ride: Not a Tour. A Conversation on Wheels.
Climbing into a sidecar changes your posture immediately.
You’re no longer in control.
You’re not navigating.
You’re not deciding what comes next.
You’re carried.
The city moves around you — colour first, then texture, then sound. The red sidecar flashes past a shophouse wall. Yellow catches sunlight at a junction. Grey blends quietly into the street, understated but present. The vintage car glides along, anchoring the whole experience in another rhythm.
Our guide, Kevin, didn’t behave like a guide in the conventional sense. He didn’t launch into a script. He didn’t bombard us with dates.
Instead, he asked questions.
“Do you know who that statue is?”
“Why do you think these buildings face this direction?”
“Have you ever looked up here before?”
Sometimes we guessed.
Stephan and his best friend Luke — full Gen Alpha confidence, raised in the era of instant answers — eagerly shared what they’d learned from school, YouTube, and the internet’s endless buffet of information.
Sometimes they were right.
Sometimes they were wrong.
“That’s Princess Victoria, right?” both boys said confidently.
“No,” Kevin replied calmly. “It’s a guy.”
“What? But the hair—”
“Long hair doesn’t automatically make someone a princess.”
We laughed. We debated. We shrugged.
Kevin didn’t rush to correct us. He let curiosity breathe. He let wrong answers exist long enough to become part of the story.
That restraint — that patience — felt radical.
The Radical Act of Not Googling (or Asking ChatGPT)
At one point, my hand instinctively moved toward my phone.
Then stopped.
Something about this ride — the pace, the openness, the human presence — made Googling feel unnecessary. Almost intrusive.
Instead of reaching for screens, I waited.
Instead of scrolling, I listened.
Instead of fact-checking, we let another human hold the story.
When a story is told by someone beside you — not delivered by a device — it carries warmth. It creates connection. It becomes shared.
We human has outsourced understanding to algorithms for so long that we’ve forgotten how powerful it is to learn imperfectly — through conversation, pauses, laughter, and the occasional wrong answer.
When You’re Not Driving, You Start Seeing
Sidecars also slow you down without announcing it.
I noticed layers of paint on an old wall — three, maybe four. History stacked quietly, refusing to be erased.
I noticed buildings I’d passed countless times but never really seen. This time, I looked up.
And here’s the strange thing: when you look up, other people start looking up too.
It’s contagious.
Suddenly, the city feels alive again — not as infrastructure, not as something to optimise — but as a shared space of curiosity.
I wondered if the ten-year-old was noticing these things too.
Or maybe he was noticing something else entirely — the hum of the engine, the breeze against his face, the thrill of being seen and unseen at the same time.
When we asked Stephan what tarik meant, he said, “Kopi.”
Then, almost immediately, “Milo.”
Maybe that was just what he felt like drinking at that moment.
Kids answer honestly — just not always correctly.
Tarik means to pull.
Knowing When to Stop Talking
Kevin knew when to stop talking.
That’s not something you learn from scripts.
He knew when a story had done its job — when explanation would only dilute experience. Locals understand this instinctively. They know where a story should begin — and where it should end so you can sit with what matters.
I’d heard many of these stories before — or at least I thought I had.
But this time, I listened differently.
Maybe because I wasn’t trying to extract content.
Maybe because I was watching the kids experience everything with fresh curiosity.
Touching. Asking. Feeling.
The city softened. My inner noise got louder.
Can you hear yours?
Capture the Moment. Keep the Feeling.
This experience doesn’t insist on photos.
What stays isn’t the footage.
It’s the feeling.
The slowing down.
The shared laughter over wrong assumptions.
The gentle reminder that cities aren’t meant to be conquered — they’re meant to be met.
And maybe this rescue mission wasn’t just for us.
Simon, the founder of Singapore Sidecars, built this after his own life was forced to slow — during his wife’s cancer journey, and through the foundation work that followed.
When life strips things down, you realise speed isn’t always progress.
Answers aren’t always necessary.
Presence matters more than polish.
And Just Like That…
The rescue mission became my own.
The ride ended — but the journey didn’t.
Now, when I walk the city, I look up.
I listen longer.
I ask better questions.
Somewhere between a ten-year-old’s birthday ride, a line-up of red, yellow, and grey sidecars, and a vintage car quietly holding space beside them, something clicked.
We weren’t rescuing each other from the city.
We were rescuing ourselves —
and maybe the next generation too —
back into presence.
And honestly?
That might be the most meaningful ride of all.
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If you’re curious how this experience felt in motion, I captured it in a short video
Watch the video from this Singapore sidecars ride below 👇
