Asia: Singapore 2022

 

"Nobody in Singapore drinks Singapore Slings.  It's one of the first things you find out there.  What you do in Singapore is eat.  It's a really food-crazy culture, where all of this great food is available in a kind of hawker-stand environment." 

Anthony Bourdain

We leave Cyprus behind and head for the tiny Asian city-state country of.......

Singapore

Officially the Republic of Singapore, this island nation is comprised of a main island and 63 satellite islands.  It has the third highest population density in the world and four official languages, with english being the main one.  It is known for its glitz and glamour and is, without a doubt, one of the cleanest, safest and most orderly cities in the world.  For instance, it's a place where spitting is illegal and you can actually drink the tap water - a first for me in Asia.

Known as a foodies paradise!  The food here is cheap, delicious and with a plethora of variety.  This place is home to the cheapest Michelin-starred meal in the world ($2.50 Cdn) and has two street food stalls in the city being awarded a Michelin star!!

Singapore is the quintessential cosmopolitan city with a population of 6 million and is the 12th smallest country in the world.  It is only 42 km wide and 23 km long.....a good trekker could walk the entire country in a couple of days!!

We arrive in Singapore at 2:00AM after a 29 hour flight and headed straight to our hotel and bed.  The next morning we beeline to Song Fa Bak Kut Teh's for my very first Michelin-rated meal.  We were lucky, they had just open, and we walked right in.  A hour later the line-up of customers stretched a full city block! And yes the food was awesome!!

Singapore's name is derived from the Malay language, 'Singa Pura', which means "Lion City".  According to legend, Prince Sang Nila Utama gave this name to the island after he came ashore and saw a creature he believed to be a lion.  Also according to legend, Prince Sang Nila Utama drank a lot and had poor eyesight.

The iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel dominates much of the skyline.  We went in, we looked at the beer prices, we left.

In the 1960's, the city decided to create a clean and green environment to mitigate the harsh concrete urban environment and improve the quality of life in the city.  Today Singapore is known as the Garden City and most new buildings incorporate greenery into their facade.

Our hotel was near the tourist area of Clarkes Quay, Singapore's party bar scene and riverside dining spots, which all means over-priced and low quality, but hey, when in Rome.....

The historic riverside Clarke's Quay with the ancient Singapore bumboats lined off.  The bumboat (real name) is now used to ferry tourist up and down the 3.2 km Singapore River. 

Clarke's Quay has had more comebacks than John Travolta and Mickey Rourke, with the current resurrection featuring a desultory collection of restaurants and bars.

That look you get when your beer arrives fast and ice cold.......

......and that look you get when your beer doesn't arrive at all!!!

With Clarke's Quay firmly out of our system, we headed for the much more tolerable and equally close to our hotel; Chinatown.  The celebrated cultural heart of the city, it is a strange mix of ebullient commerce and nightlife.  It's a cultural experience to immerse yourself in the maze of streets that make up Chinatown - the only Chinatown in the world to boast a Buddhist temple, mosque and Hindu temple along a single street.

Wandering Chinatown where you can buy souvenirs and trinkets all made in China.

Dorian Fruit - that stinky (and I mean STINKY) fruit that is banned from just about everywhere, including hotels to public transportation.  Taxis in Singapore even have signs to let you  know they refuse to carry passengers transporting the smelly fruit.

The Temple of Heavenly Happiness is Singapore's oldest Buddhist temple.  The rooftop dragons represent the principles of Yin and Yang.

Devotees practicing their faith at the temple.

Statutes in Chinatown depicting memories of more desperate times when impoverished Chinese immigrants survived on their wits, hard work, prayers and good fortune.

Rows and rows of old shuttered shophouses line the streets of Chinatown.  Most of these have now been turned into luxurious boutique hotels and condos.

Standing in front of the massive Buddha Tooth Relic Temple.  Its main drawcard being what is believed to be a sacred tooth of the Buddha, however dental experts have expressed doubts over its authenticity.  For me the draw would be the 420kg gold pedestal that the tooth sits on (that's $26 million in gold....one mofo expensive tooth). 

Chinatown at night, city of light.

Chinatown's version of Jellybean Row.

Melanie heading for the buffet table.

We leave Chinatown and head for Little India - which is worlds apart but mere neighbourhoods away in distance.  Produce, marigolds, spices and other trinkets spill into the streets and crowd the sidewalks and the air has that constant smell of a million sticks of incense!

Marigold neck chains hang everywhere - the spiritual meaning of the marigold is that they represent the sun, symbolizing brightness and positive energy.  Who knew?

The shophouses in Little India are smaller than their Chinese equivalents just down the street.

The dazzling colourful Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple (say that five times real fast) is dedicated to Kali, the bloodthirsty consort of Shiva. 

Five hundred metres off the south coast of Singapore is Sentosa Island, the city's resort getaway.  In the 1960's the Singaporean government made a concerted effort to transform the island from tacky-second rate to tacky world-class.  Its beaches are made of imported sand complete with fake boulders and piped in renditions of 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun'.  Basically, Sentosa is almost entirely a synthetic attraction....making it a must see!!

There are a couple of ways to get to the island, this is the way we decided to go.

For something completely different, you can have a four-course meal served in the cable car complete with candles!

A skywalk allows you to walk a good part of Sentosa Island above ground.  Here's a little trivia: Sentosa Island used to be called Pulau Blakang Mati, which is Malay, and means 'island behind which lies death'.....alllll-righty then.

The beautiful and completely fake Sentosa Island beach.  Trickery I tell you! 

Right about now you're saying; is there anything else to Singapore besides cityscape and fake beaches?  Of course there is, and to prove it, we head for one of the premier attractions - the 250 acre Garden by the Bay.  Within a short walk of our hotel (what isn't a short walk in Singapore?) we spend 3 or 4 hours wandering around these award winning landscapes where they incorporate sculptures with nature.

Trails abound.  Hard to believe there's a bustling city of 6 million right next to this peaceful oasis.

Real rock sculptures as opposed to the fake ones found on Sentosa Island.

At 9 metres long and 3 metres tall and weighing about 7 tons, this huge piece of art, called Planet, seems to defy the laws of gravity as it floats on one arm in the middle of a raised field.

Melanie checking out the Baobab trees. It's covered in killer-like thorns....not Melanie....the tree.

Although millions of people visit this park every year, in most cases, we had the place to ourselves.

Perhaps the most prominent sculptures found in the Garden are the 18 tree-like structures, called Supertrees, that range in height from 25 - 50 metres.

The Supertrees are home to enclaves of unique and exotic ferns, vines, orchids and a vast collection of bromeliads.  There's even a walkway spanning several of the 50 metre Supertrees (you can see it in this picture).

My fav with any garden is the water feature - I've built three of them over the years.

A dragonfly sculpture with the iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel.

"And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look
Behind, from where we came
And go round and round and round, in the circle game."

Joni Mitchell, The Circle Game

And with the philosophical words of wisdom from Joni, we bid Singapore good-bye and continue our journey to the Philippines.  See you there!!!