Just a heads up but this chapter is quite a long one, as I’ve stuffed in an entire country here. I’m going to start with some overall information and impressions of Singapore followed by some cool things you can see, amazing gardens, culture and lastly some traditional dishes. Personally I think it’s all well worth a good read, but I’m also quite biased on the matter. Carry on as you see fit!
Singapore has over 50 small islets, but most of these belong to Indonesia.
Singapore is a small but powerful little city-state just off the coast of Malaysia to the south. According to Wikipedia, it was originally founded as a trading post for the East India Company but gained complete autonomy sometime in the 1960’s. Since then its economy exploded, earning it a place as one of the Four Asian Tigers (along with Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea). Its economy is based off of finance and trade and has one of the busiest ports in the world. This is pretty evident from nearly every coastline you can see.
This is off a beach at a theme park called Sentosa. Not convinced about water quality here…
Singapore likes to impress. They want to have the coolest archetecture, the best designs, be the most hospitable, have the most shopping malls, have the nicest airport, and they certainly do an excellent job. This is a great place to visit and you can do nearly everything in 3-4 days. The best part is that most things are close together here, so you can see everything on foot. Be aware though that even in the dead middle of winter Singapore has the climate of a steam bath.
The initial thing that struck me about Singapore was the sheer number of shopping malls. On this one little island, there are something like 233 of them. They are literally EVERYWHERE. You will walk down the street and see the same store fronts on each side (and maybe again on the next block). You will walk through 3 different shopping malls and never realise you even left the first one. You will see The Body Shop 35 times in 35 different locations. You may try to walk purely through shopping malls just to be fully air-conditioned all the way from points A to B, and you may even succeed (but you will definitely get lost). Some of them offer you something unique just to set them above the pack:
A free playground and water park on the roof? The kids will never be bored again!
Yes, it’s a gondola ride in a shopping mall.
Enough of shopping malls for now. One must just accept the fact that you cannot possibly avoid them here. On to more interesting things.
Marina Bay is the most happening part of Singapore. As a tourist or traveller, this is where everything is. Thomas and I settled into the cheapest most hole-in-the-wall hostel we could find, and it was still very close to Marina Bay (and a shopping mall). The walk around the bay is definitely the first thing you should do, and since Thomas had actually been here before it’s the first place he showed me.
Starting on the left, that twisty thing is the Helix Bridge. My background considered, I am very fond of this walking bridge because it is modeled after the double helix structure of DNA. As I mentioned, Singapore likes to be the best. Not only does this bridge look cool, but it offers a little shade as well as viewing platforms along its length so you can get a good view of the bay. And the cherry on top: it has little lights along the path representing the four base pairs of DNA, and they are even paired correctly. I tried to seatch what gene it came from, if any, but a quick google search yielded nothing. I will let this one go… for now.
That next building you see that looks like a ship on top of 3 pillars is Marina Bay Sands. It’s a resort and currently the hottest thing in Singapore right now. It is immediately recognisable from everywhere.
The ground floor is a shopping mall. Just saying.
The ship on top of Marina Bay Sands includes a resort and an infinity pool (the kind where it looks like the water meets the horizon) exclusively for guests. There is also an observation deck available that visitors can buy a ticket for. Or you can do what I did and ask to go up to the bar. They will let you up for free (presuming you will buy a drink). On top, you will find spectacular views along with spectacular drink prices. Thomas recommended that I go up for the sunset and early night, he is usually pretty spot on about his recommendations.
These are the Flower and Cloud Forest domes. I’ll get to these later.
Another interesting building you may have noticed is the ArtScience museum. It’s the one that looks like a giant baseball glove. For the record, that other large building between the museum and Marina Bay Sands is a shopping mall. That’s where you can ride in a gondola.
I never did take the time to go inside; museums aren’t really my thing. Surrounding this building though are extensive lotus ponds. They are gorgeous and offer plenty of shade: the perfect place to lounge and relax during a hot afternoon.
Continuing the walk around Marina Bay among the tourist information centres, free outdoor lounge chairs, cooling misted fans, round spinning hotels and numerous shopping malls, there is another thing to likely catch your eye. It’s a large statue of a lion with a fish tail spewing water from it’s mouth. This is the Merlion, and is the symbol of Singapore. It represents prosperity, which is fitting for a place such as this.
What was my favourite part of Singapore though is Gardens by the Bay. It is directly behind Marina Bay Sands and is free for everyone; I found the time to come here almost every day. The gardens are well-planned (like everything else here), and the Supertree Grove is the most striking feature.
Gardens by the Bay has a total of 18 supertrees, and the tallest has one of those spinning restaurants on top. They are hollow metal structures covered with epiphytes (plants that don’t require soil, such as orchids and bromeliads) which are misted several times a day with an integrated watering system. You can see from the inside that they are actually wired to the structure.
There is also a walkway suspended from the supertrees. It’s 5 dollars to go up and well worth it. From there you have a great view of the Gardens, Marina Bay Sands, and the two domes.
The Flower and Cloud Forest domes are two paid attractions in the Gardens. One hosts a massive collection of flowers, and the other contains a cloud forest atmosphere. I did not go into either. To be fair though, they are not cheap and I already had my mind blown with all the crazy flowers here. Not to mention I had quite recently spend a couple of days in a real cloud forest in the Cameron Highlands. They do look pretty cool from the outside though.
Just about everything in Singaore seems photogenic somehow.
When night falls on the gardens, it gets better. The supertrees light up in beautiful changing colours, and twice an evening they put on a free light and music show. Following that is a free water and laser show in front of Marina Bay sands, both of which you should see at least once.
The suspended walkway between the trees stops letting people up shortly before the first light show. If you can make it up beforehand and just wait a little, then you can see the show from above. If I ever go back, that’s definitely on my to-do list.
Now as mentioned previously, Thomas had already been to Singapore before. He only planned on staying for one night before flying back to Sydney. However the rest of my stay was not nearly as solitary as I expected it to be. For starters, I was able to meet up with a group of friends from my exchange in Melbourne who were passing through for a day. That was pretty lucky.
I was also introduced to Astrid from a mutual friend in Canada, and she is now a good friend of mine. Astrid comes from the Philippines and was working in Singapore when I first met her. Since then I have seen her in two countries (soon to be three), stayed with her family back home and now she is living in Canada about 500m away from my old rented house. It’s a small world.
Either way, it was Astrid who thought that we should see the Singapore Botanic Gardens. It wasn’t on my top priority list becsuse I just assumed that anything after Gardens by the Bay was just going to suck. And it’s a bit far- you need to take a bus. What I forgot was that this is Singapore: when they do something, they do it well.
Flame tree flowers. They look like cute little ribbon bows.
While these gardens don’t have giant metal structures covered in orchids that light up and play music at night, they do have some other exotic things.
Yes, I wanted to try standing on one. No, I didn’t want to risk falling in.
The most notable thing about these gardens for me was the orchid garden. I am very fond of orchids so naturally I would be drawn to something like this. It was 5 dollars to get in to the display, and it’s some of the best five dollars ever spent.
The sheer number and incredible variety of what they had to offer was unmatched by anything I have ever seen. They definitely have some pretty interesting orchid breeding programs going on there. However just the set-ups and displays of orchids in this place would be enough to impress even the most uninterested brown-thumbed person around. I’ll show you some of the more interesting flower shapes I came across.
Happy cartoon character orchid.
Pink alien swarm orchid
Skull orchid
Little bird orchid. It’s a Spathoglottis, and my personal favourite.
Like Malaysia, Singapore is also a very multicultural place. There are four official languages (English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil) and something like 20% of the population are immigrants. Multicultralism is promoted here though, so you get the same situation where you find a Mosque on the same street as a Buddhist Temple next to a Hindu one.
The most impressive of these temples is by far the Buddha’s Tooth Relic Temple in Chinatown. Yes Singapore has a Chinatown, like every other major city out there. Yes it’s the best place to buy cheap souvenirs, like every other Chinatown out there.
Back to the temple. It got its name because it supposedly contains an actual tooth relic from the Buddha himself. I can’t show it to you though; not only are pictures not allowed in that room but it’s covered in so much gold there could literally be anything in that shrine. Here’s the front entryway instead.
Upon entering the temple, Astrid and I were both given cloths to hide our legs, as we were wearing shorts. This goes for both genders here. On the roof was the garden of 10,000 Buddhas. Each wall pannel had a grid filled with a tiny Buddha statue. One can only assume the number is correct.
The upper floor contained the tooth relic, and all floors below held various pieces of Chinese Buddhist art. They also told the story of the Buddha over many wall pannels, so if you are into theology then plan to spend an afternoon here. The ground floor had the more functional area of the temple: people would come to pray and leave their food offerings on a very elaborate structure.
Imagine THAT being served to you at dinnertime!
The thing with Singapore is that it actually has the biggest wage gap of any first world country. If you leave the Marina Bay area and head further north, many parts look just like other parts of Asia: little street-side food shops, dirty alleys with cramped apartments and people hawking durians on the street. It is a common Buddhist practice here for people to offer food, but usually the food offerings are more ordinary things (like some rice or oranges or cans of soda) and the shrine is a little more plain.
So what happens to all the food? It gets collected and given to monks to eat the next day.
While on the topic of culture, there are a few rules one might want to follow while in Singapore. Singapore likes to be the best, but who admires a dirty city? There are strict rules for certain things that we wouldn’t normally bat an eyelash for: littering, spitting, smoking, chewing gum, jaywalking and not flushing toilets are all illegal in public places, though whoever polices that last I feel really sorry for. These things can all land you a hefty fine of around $500. Anything else that is illegal in the west is most likely illegal here too, but with a more serious punishment: they have the death penalty for posessing certain illegal drugs, for example. I don’t mean to scare you though. I’ve seen locals doing everything in public but chew gum (I never checked the public toilets) so people aren’t normally bothering to police for these things. Oddly enough I actually found a chewing gum add!
“Remember that thing you used to love that is now illegal?”
Singapore being so close to Malaysia has many dishes in common, yet there are others which are uniquely Singaporean. Astrid, luckily, knew what some if the best ones were and took me to a few different places to try them. Some of them were even in shopping malls. The food was fantastic, shopping mall or no, and there are definitely a few things I am going to add to my own cooking repretoire one day.
This first one I actually ate with Thomas. It’s called laksa soup, and is very fishy and spicy. We were told it is excellent in Singapore and very different to laksa soup in Malaysia. Unfortunately we were not able to find it in Malaysia due to our impeccable timing, and we found the fishiness of the dish to be a little overpowering. It’s always possible though that we just got a bad vendor though.
This next one is called Poppiah. The similarity to a spring roll stops at the appearance. It is actually a soft rice wrap surrounding bamboo sprouts, chillies and most importantly peanut sauce. Peanut sauce, I discovered, is one of those things that can make life truly enjoyable. Singapore is just full of it.
They call these both “carrot cake”. Seriously. When I saw it on the menu I was thinking what any westerner would: why the heck would I want to eat a slice of carrot cake for dinner in Singapore? Well it turns out that by “carrot” they actually mean “daikon radish.” I suppose it is a root vegetable and could resemble a monstrous white carrot with a little imagination. Anyways, these “carrots” are mixed with rice flour snd steamed to make a chewy wobbly sort of cake. They are then cooked in one of two ways: the first is to fry it with eggs to make white carrot cake (top), and the second is to fry it with sweet soya sauce and add sambal to make black carrot cake (bottom). These are very traditional Singaporean dishes, and definitely something I will try one day.
This next one is called satay and it’s barbequed meat on a stick, usually chicken, served with peanut sauce. The peanut sauce is either already on the meat or as a dipping sauce on the side. This is very common all over Malaysia and I believe it has made its way west too. If you happen to come across it then you are definitely in for a sweet peanut-saucy delight!
This next one is another dish that I will definitely try to recreate someday: it’s called Rojak. It consists of a mixture of large chunks of fried tofu, fruits and cucumber covered in a special sweet sauce and sprinkled with crushed peanuts. It’s best eaten with skewers, but you can use the fork if you have no sense of fun.
I know, this looks familiar, and people even drink coffee with it here. It has a few uniquely Singaporean changes though, so hear me out. This is called softboiled eggs with kaya toast. I believe the eggs are (mostly) cooked by cracking them into a bowl and pouring a little boiling water into it. You are given a spoon instead of a fork for a reason. Kaya is a sort of sweet coconut jam that they spread on to a very dry crumbly toast with butter. It’s really delicious, and I have even seen kaya in a few asian grocers. That is definitely something I will add to my pantry, though I may pass on the soupy eggs.
The last of the savoury dishes, also popular in Malaysia is called bak kut teh. It is a soup made of boiling pork bones along with various spices originating in the poorer areas of town. There was a small restaurant beneath my hostel that I used to frequent because I could easily get cheap rice there, and one day the waitress just gave me a bowl of broth to try. Smart woman. The next time I came for a meal I ordered the full bowl of soup. This soup usually comes with unlimited broth too, so most people will consume 2-3 bowls of broth while they take their time with the meat. The waitress comes around with a steaming kettle every so often to refill bowls as needed.
This is chendol. Like many desserts in Southeast Asia, the main ingredient is shaved ice. This was my favourite shaved ice dessert (until I had halo halo in the Philippines, but that’s a story for another time). Coconut milk is poured over the shaved ice, followed by palm sugar, sweet red beans and a green rice jelly that’s slightly salty. It’s the perfect thing for a hot afternoon.
Last but not least, this is what Astrid calls “dirty ice cream”. You buy it from a street vendor who cuts a chunk of ice cream for you with a knife and hands it to you in a slice of sandwich bread. Literally an ice cream sandwich. Mine was durian flavoured.
So, after nearly a week I had seen and experienced just about everything the avarage visitor can see and experience here. Except for the airport. But that’s a whole post unto itself.
For all of these pictures and more, you can find them in the Singapore album of my flickr account here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/michelledeme/
This was just brilliant. It was very well cared for, and the butterflies were very tame. I was wearing pure black that day and they still landed on me. This would keep anyone entertained for a good long while.
Traveling- Somebody's Gotta Do It 