All Summer Long

“Bag on the floor makes space for more” – Bag-down Benny

Our first footsteps in Asia have been imprinted in the many districts and gardens of future city, Singapore. Saving our legs where possible, we migrated our bodies around the place on the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit, or train), armed with a tourist pass and a screenshot of the system’s intersecting lines, enjoying painless travel between our digs in Lavender, downtown, the waterfront and everywhere else we’ve had the capacity to explore.

Puppeteer-ed by The Baron (as was almost everything else we did and to whom we owe a significant debt of gratitude in sparing us experimentation given the time constraints), a tour of some of the city’s religious buildings was our first port of call. We visited the Musjid Sultan mosque in Kampong Glam, the Sri Veeramakaliamman Hindu temple in Little India, and the Budda Tooth Temple in Chinatown. The latter was the most expansive tour of the three, through four floors of exhibitions, a meditation room, a rooftop garden and a wax sculpture display on the mezzanine. Emerging from the Chinatown MRT station into Pagoda Street, one of the busiest sections in the district, was a highlight of the day, as was exploring the Chinatown Market Complex rammed with hawkers and cheap fabrics.

“On your feet, offer your seat” – Stand-up Stacey

On our second day, we visited Singapore’s green front and took in some of the best views of the city. Cloud Forest is a mist-obscured mountain and waterfall, housed within a glass dome at Gardens by the Bay, with diverse vegetation, stalactites and suspended walkways. An elevator takes you to the top of the mountain through the mist, where you can feed your arms to carnivorous plants or enjoy a colourful display of Lego in the pond. In darkness at the base of the mountain, there’s a surprise museum about mass extinction throughout history. The display panels ask – are we next? There’s some touching videos about climate change and the destructive nature of humanity, which become all the more poignant when you’re released back into the serenity of the gardens. It was hands down the best of the two domes (the other was the Flower Dome, which was a nightmare of cacti and pollen), but unfortunately, just like Wang’s combination meals in Parr, you have to enjoy the sweet and sour sauce with the  sausage, unless you’re a resident of Singapore, entitling you to separate ticketing to each dome individually.

The Supertree Grove is one of the more surreal views on offer in Singapore, and its purple bulb-like structures can be seen creeping above the gardens from the open spaces of Marina Bay. Some of the trees are connected by another walkway called the Skywalk, which we climbed up to in the early evening. It was from here that we watched the science fiction, atomic sunset bleed into spaces in the skyline. I tried to take pictures with one hand while the other supported Nicola through a phase of vertigo. Neither the camera nor the wife took a nosedive, and we saw some of the best views of the skyscrapers illuminated in the emerging night. We stuck around for the light show, which turned out to be a cheesy Christmas special (presumably new for November) soundtracked with a mega-mix of Christmas covers. Afterwards, we strolled over to a second light show on the bay, and this was a more dramatic collaboration of lasers and fountains that reminded me how exciting the Waterworld attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood was.

“Giving way makes your day” – Give-way Glenda

The best views of the city were from the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, the renowned and expensive one with the boat balanced on top of two of its towers. From here we saw practically everything, and my highlights were the solitary boats floating on the harbour-front, which looked painted in the hazy sunlight.

On the last day, we visited a crazy theme park called Har Paw Villa. It’s full of weird, violent and gratuitous depictions of Chinese mythology in crude statues and dioramas. I took Nicola for a stroll through the ten courts of hell but I think she’s been selective in her recollection of this and choosy with the photos she’s uploaded to the blog. Just Google it. We also lost ourselves in several of the city’s sprawling shopping centres. Some of them were spacious and gleaming and we were lost in their sheer size; others were cramped mazes of stalls and we never knew where the hell we were. Bugis Street in particular was like entering a realm of fabric; we were practically crawling through tunnels of clothes. Nicola loved it though and she danced out of Singapore in a new dress.

https://www.lta.gov.sg/content/ltaweb/en/public-transport/mrt-and-lrt-trains/graciousness-on-pt.html