A Few Days in Singapore

We left Crystal Serenity to continue her world cruise, and changed our base to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel for the next few days. Bruce had suggested that we needed to stay for more than a day to see a lot of the interesting sights, so we took his advice and were stunned at what we found.

Firstly, the Marina Bay Sands is not just a hotel, it is a full hotel, casino, shopping mall and restaurant complex - think Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas and you may come close. The hotel and casino are owned by Sands Las Vegas, so it is run very much like those hotels. The only difference is that the casino is across the street from the hotel, not attached to the lobby, like in Las Vegas. And the casino is one of only two in Singapore, the other being the Resorts World Sentosa Casino, owned by Genting, which also owns Crystal.

Secondly, the hotel is just plain HUGE! There are about 2,500 rooms over the 3 towers, and because it was a long weekend for Easter - yes, even though only about 5% of Singaporeans are Catholic, they still get Good Friday off - the hotel was actually over capacity. That was probably due to the huge number of kids everywhere!

Of course, the big draw for this hotel is the amazing infinity edge swimming pool up on the 57th floor. Considering the number of people in the hotel, it was not overly crowded. There was also something of a control measure in place to keep gawkers away - you could only access the pool if you used your own room key card at the access gate, and there was always hotel staff there to make sure people weren't trying to share cards!

Here are a few photos of the hotel:

The view over about 1/2 the lobby from the
bridge to Gardens By the Bay

From our room - the round building in front is the
ArtScience Museum

The nightly light show in the bay. We only saw it
from the 51st floor.

The view over Gardens By the Bay. The gardens and the
hotel complex are all built on reclaimed land. This must
be where all the clean fill from all over southeast Asia ended up!

The 57th floor infinity pool. It is 150 metres long over 3 sections, but not
too wide, and a constant depth.

Looking along the pool from one of the bar/restaurants.

Doesn't Gordon Ramsay always strike you as 'larger than life'?
Our first night's dinner was Fish and Chips at
Bread Street Kitchen in the shopping mall.

On Thursday we walked over to the Gardens By the Bay. All of this, the gardens and the whole Marina Bay complex, was built on reclaimed land. All of the material was imported(!) and it has increased the actual size of Singapore city by about 25%.  It is expensive enough to stay and eat in this city, but apparently condos in one of the buildings near the bay run about $6 million US to buy; nobody mentioned how big they were, but from the outside they looked about standard 2 or 3 bedroom sized.

The Gardens By the Bay is truly an amazing feat of sustainability engineering. The Supertrees in the centre of the gardens (which are really big living walls) and the two huge conservatories are set up to work together for everything from collecting water to releasing warm air from both the conservatories and the biomass incinerator that recycles plant materials and trimmings into both electricity and fertilizer. And it is all spectacular to see, too!

In the Flower Conservatory, there were so many gorgeous
displays - no, that's not a real mushroom!

The Japanese cherry blossom display was only on for
a few weeks and attracted lots of photographers

The artwork in the displays was also
just beautiful....

...and whimsical. The red flowers in
this display are all made of Lego!

In the Cloud Forest conservatory, you can go to
the level of the top of the rainforest and
work your way down on this walkway.

The orchid display - a prizewinner in the
orchid world.

From the walkway - the central column is covered with all
sorts of plants and flowers.

One of the small displays.

The light show at night is just beautiful.

Friday and Saturday we took the Hop-On, Hop-Off Bus on two different tour routes. First we went out toward Orchard Road and the Singapore Botanic Gardens, where we walked around for a couple of hours. What a beautiful park, and, because of the holiday, full of families.

These geese are sculptures, but the lizard is real - and must
not be harmful since he's not enclosed at all.

One of the swans on Swan Lake

Big open spaces for community acitvities

Monica's only chance to look over Chopin's shoulder!
This sculpture was a gift from the Polish government.

It overlooks a natural amphitheatre in the gardens. Just out of
sight behind the trees is a Symphony Bandshell where
public performances are held regularly.

Then we found a boat cruise on the Singapore River for about 45 minutes, and saw parts of the city from another angle.

The Marina Bay Sands, Shoppes and ArtScience Museum

Under the bridge to the outer part of the bay. It is now closed
off from the sea and is used as a reservoir for the
whole city. There must be some stringent rules on
boating, as we were riding around on drinking water!

Boat Quay, one of the old merchant and sailor areas of
the original city. Lots of restaurants and a walking path all
along both sides of the river.

The Merlion, half lion, half merman, and
old sailor's tale that has become one
of the symbols of Singapore.

And on Saturday we took the route that went through Little India and Chinatown:

At the entrance to the Little India area.

One of the temples. 

Beautifully decorated homes above the shops.

And there are other ethnic groups with enclaves in the city too, like this Islamic temple:

And some interesting sights, among them the famous Raffles Hotel:

How do you like this building? It looks like the
tower is completely flat from this side, but
it is really the same shape as the far one!

The world famous Raffles Hotel! And, guess what? Scaffolding!!!

The Park Royal Hotel looks amazing with these outdoor gardens.

And, of course, Chinatown! The Chinese were the first large group to come to Singapore. Most worked for the shipping companies.

Most Singaporeans live in government assisted housing which
is still very expensive. A 99-year lease on an apartment like
this would cost around $250,000 US. All that, and
still hanging clothes out to dry!

A beautifully decorated theatre in Chinatown.

And then went back to the hotel to enjoy a little more time at the pool. Oh, and to repack some stuff in our suitcases.

Even the hot-tubs have infinity edges up here!

There is a wide range of celebrity chef restaurants in the Shoppes at Marina Bay, and we went to Osteria Mozza on Saturday night. This is a collaboration between Mario Batali, Joe Bastianich and Nancy Silverton, all of whom have been around for a number of years. A great meal, especially since one of the available sharing plates was Foccacia de Recco, which we had in Recco last summer. Had to try it!

On Sunday we had a reservation for brunch, or long lunch, at OSIA, Scott Webster's restaurant at the Resorts World Sentosa. We thought that would take up much of the day, so we weren't planning much of anything else, although it was suggested that we take a look around Sentosa if we could. Our limo pickup wasn't scheduled until after 10 p.m. so we weren't in any big rush.

Everything in southeast Asia seems to be big - and Resorts World is no exception. 'The bigger, the better' is the standard motto, from office towers to hotels to casinos. There is a full Universal Studios theme park in Resorts World, there is a full range of resort hotels on Sentosa Island, including a Hard Rock, a Sofitel, and a 'W' Hotel - this is THE getaway spot for anyone within flying or driving range of Singapore. Yes, driving - it only takes a couple of hours to get to Singapore city from Malaysia via the bridge to the island.

So here's a quick glimpse of a very small part of the Sentosa resort, Festive Walk, where the high-end restaurants are located, and one of the open plazas with shops and other restaurants, even another location of Din Tai Fung, where we went with John and Marilou in Hong Kong:

Sweet tooth, anyone? This is the entrance to a shop called
Candylicious, sort of like the Hershey store in Times Square, NYC!

Another version of the Merlion - there's
a viewing balcony in his mouth

Looking down over Festive Walk

At noon we headed to OSIA for our much-anticipated brunch. The restaurant is not overly large but very nice, with an open kitchen. The regular fare here is steak and seafood, cooked the Aussie way - it probably smells delicious at dinner time!

Inside the restaurant

Our menu - pretty expensive, but Singapore
just is. It was worth it, though.

 The brunch menu, as you can see, is quite extensive, and is served in a way we haven't seen here at home: You get ALL of the sharing plates, plus a couple of little things the chef dreamed up to add in, you choose one of the mains, and then you get ALL of the desserts! We were figuring to waddle out of the restaurant by the time we were done!! Of course, with a special meal like this, we had to take photos:

Granola

The flatbread

French oysters

Salmon and potato salads

An extra bit - ham with truffle potato

And another one - poached egg in a
foamy mushroom 'soup'. Looks a
bit different, but it was delicious

Our mains - scrambled egg on brioche, wilted spinach,
bacon and veal 'meatloaf'. Monica recognized the meatloaf immediately
as the familiar German dish of 'Leberkaese'.

The dessert tray, just enough to share after the rest of the meal.

Wonderfully delicious, and fortunately everything was just the right size that we were full but not stuffed. We decided that we would check out the Southeast Asia Aquarium, also in the resort, for a little exercise before we went back to the hotel. The big central tank here probably rivals the one in the Dubai Mall for size!

Sea Dragons, in the same family as
Sea Horses and about the same small size.

The main viewing window for the aquarium. About the size
of 3 school buses long by 2 school buses high!

  

Back to the hotel to get the suitcases closed up, and then we took a last walk across to the Gardens By the Bay to check out the lighted trees.

The conservatories and supertrees

Lights on the hotel make it quite the view

 This was quite a trip, the longest we have ever done, and though we had some concerns about whether we could handle 6 weeks on a cruise ship, we found that the time passed a little more slowly with more sea days, and very quickly when we were busy in ports. But with some planning of our days to include exercise - we had walked around Serenity's promenade deck about 142 times during the cruise (at .30 miles per lap that's 44 miles!) along with all the walking we did on excursions - and being a little more careful with what we ate, we found that the effects on our waistlines were minimal. Of course, that's due to the fact the salt air shrinks clothes, as everybody knows!

This was an area of the world we had never seen before, and it is an interesting one. Lots and lots of people, as most of the cities we visited had populations of 8-12 million, and growing economies. It will be interesting to come back on a future cruise and see how these places have changed.