Singapore, Singapore
March 11, 2014
After pulling our heads together from a crazy night in Kuta we slumped off to the airport sad to leave Bali behind. If you haven’t been it’s a wonderful place with wonderful people. It may have changed a lot over the years and Kuta has to be one of the biggest resorts I have seen but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to get away from that and get into the heart of the country and the people. It’s a truly memorable place to visit and I highly recommend it if your thinking of heading this way.
So off to Singapore it was. Singapore is now the most expensive City in the world so we are only staying for two nights. Even a standard hostel here is 4 times the amount of most other hostels around Asia. We didn’t arrive until the early hours as our flight out of Bali was delayed so we had to sort out a shuttle bus as the public transport was shut at this time. £9 each lighter we arrived at our hostel, disheveled and extremely tired from our Kuta antics the previous night. Straight to bed it was with weary feet and eyes.
The next morning we both still felt shattered but only had one full day in Singapore so needed to make the most of it. We headed straight out and off to a travel agents first to book a bus up to Melaka in Malaysia for the following day then hopped on the MRT down to China Town to have a look around. China Town was pretty decent and dates back to the times of the Chinese immigrants the same as Little India here harks back to the days of Indian immigrants. The place is nicely restored and maintained with old colonial style buildings brightly painted.
It’s a little bit glossy tourist overkill down there but if you creep off to the side streets and indooor markets you can get a bit more of a real feel of the Chinese community that lives there. We grabbed some really tasty cheap food in an indoor market at what must be the most popular stall in there. A queue snaking its way back past other stalls was a good sign that this was the place to eat at so we grabbed ourselves some Soy Chicken and rice and a very succulent Char Sui with Noodles before heading off on foot up to the river and Clarkes Quay.
Clarkes Quay is pretty disappointing. It’s a big money tourist area round there. Seriously expensive average looking fake theme bars trying to sell you a pint for £10 is what you will find so we followed the river round and down towards the Marina. There are some seriously nice hotels around the river and marina area. Ferrari’s etc all lined up in private parking bays and some very exclusive looking restaurants line the river banks all the way down. We timed it just nicely as when we hit the marina it had just came in dark and the light show from the Marina Bay Sands hotel was just beginning. It reminded me a lot of Hong Kong, as does Singapore as a whole really. They both have a similar kind of feel about them. Lots of wealth evident and big tall skyscrapers. Hong Kong definitely has the edge with the sheer number of tall buildings that are crammed in but Singapore is light years ahead of any other city I have visited. The place looks unbelievable. Futuristic buildings and structures surround the marina area. I was expecting Obi Wan Kenobi to pop out somewhere or a droid to fly past it’s that staggering. The light show was pretty cool with lasers and light projections going off all around and some pyrotechnics on the water as well.
From there we headed round past Esplanade Mall and found some live music going on as part of a week-long music festival that’s currently going on. It was pretty decent and free as well so can’t complain. From there we headed over the Helix bridge and then cut down past the Art and Science museum and into the ‘Gardens by the Bay’ This is the place with all the crazy man-made tree sculptures and walk ways that are lit up at night like something out of Avatar. It really is a very tranquil place to go and walk around and to sit in. Huge 100ft tree sculptures that have real vines growing up and around them and suspended walk ways that curl their way through ‘Supertree Grove’.
We could have spent a lot longer there as it was so so quiet and peaceful sat under the delicate blue glow of the trees but time was getting on and we needed to catch the last MRT back up to Little India and our hostel so we took a quick walk back through the impressive Marina Bay Sands Hotel and back home to catch up on some more sleep.
The next morning we were up a little earlier and were going to head further out of town to a tree top canopy walk but I don’t think either of our feet would have coped with much more walking so we headed a bit further up the bay on the MRT to the promenade and checked out the F1 pits and the big viewing wheel called the Singapore Flyer. What is bizzare to see is how vines have grown up around the structure that supports the road above. I don’t know if it is intentional to try and add more greenery and to soften the sea of concrete that is around that area of town but it very much looks like nature taking back what is hers among the man-made metropolis.
A quick MRT ride back up to the hostel again and here we are sat waiting for our bus up to Melaka. Singapore has been a very short whistle-stop affair but it’s probably been long enough as I am not a massive fan of wandering around cities for days on end but I have to admit that Singapore is a very impressive looking place. The architecture and lighting on a night is stunning. It’s like wandering around a city in the future compared to European cities. It doesn’t have the history or culture of European cities but at least it looks as though they are trying to give the place an interesting character all of its own.
