If you’ve been to Singapore lately, no doubt you’ve visited the latest development areas around Marina Bay and the Gardens. If not, do yourself a favour and put this city on your list to visit. Whether it’s a few days stopover or a destination point, you will not be disappointed!
Andy met me after work yesterday and we took a river/harbour cruise to get our bearings. It’s a bit of a tourist trap at $25 per person for the 45minute round trip, but honestly, we are glad we did it. The slow pontoon type boat took us on the river and into the new Marina Reservoir past the different Quay areas and the video guide highlighted the various points of interest and history of the buildings and bridges as we went along.
From the tour we could identify the areas we wanted to come back and visit for a closer look. There were plenty of photo ops as well as the boat is slow moving and the lovely operator was keen to take our picture for us with some of the highlights in the background – ie, the Merlion and the Marina Bay Hotel.
After we disembarked the cruise, we walked around to the ‘Gardens by the Bay’. Our walk took us from Raffles Quay all the way around the Marina Bay Area and into the Gardens. We arrived on Sunset and honestly I was totally ‘wowed’ by the sight. By no means did we manage to cover it all, but we did experience the fantastic light and sound show of the ‘Supertrees’. The Supertrees are vertical gardens that are so ‘other worldy’ that they simply shouldn’t be missed. We managed to time our ascent to the Sky walk with the light show. The skywalk is an $8 ticket – well worth it. Although if you are afraid of heights, probably not. The walkway is suspended from the canopy of the supertrees and is 22m high. It does sway and move slightly. There is an expected 15minute time limit, however by moving very slowly we managed to eek this out to 30mins and take in some of the light show from this perspective. The light show can be enjoyed just as much from the ground.
We’ll be back to the Gardens on the weekend to explore further and visit the Forest areas.
After the light show we made our way to Little India to the Tekka Market for dinner. Dinner was Naan and two curries, plus a beer each and the total came to $20 for both of us. We are appreciating the quality cheap eats here in Singapore!
We met a few locals at the Tekka Market. A stall owner popped over to see if we needed anything and to have a chat. There was no angle, and he was really chuffed to answer some of our tourist questions. He was so excited to tell us about the local temples. He spoke fast and with a heavy local accent, but still we managed to gather that the local Chinese temple is the most famous and at Chinese New Year thousands of people flock to the area to celebrate and receive blessing. He couldn’t quite explain the location of. A further temple, so he called his brother over to give us directions. Again they were just genuinely thrilled to engage and share knowledge of their neighbourhood.
We did observe an elderly lady walking the market collecting empty cans and boxes for recycling talking to herself as she went about. There was a young lad in uniform collecting rubbish and walking around with the bins. The old lady simply walked past him and handed him a box. He dutifully took the tape off it and flattened it and handed it back to her. A wordless understanding and acceptance.
We headed back to the hotel having thoroughly enjoyed the evening.
Where the Sun Rises 