From Melaka it is supposed to take about 4 hours by bus to reach Singapore. Mine took 8. This had nothing to do with the border crossing, mine was far easier than others I knew. Then again I did not any contraband (FYI an e-cigarette is a 20 000 SGD fine) and I had proof of onward travel to Vietnam. No, my ridiculously long trip had everything to do with the bus. I choose a bus that would take me to the Golden Mile Complex in Singapore, less than a km from the hostel where I was going to meet Vince at. According to Wikipedia it also happens to house the North Korean Embassy. This bus was supposed to leave at 2:00pm, it didn’t show up until 3:15 and didn’t leave until 3:40. We then had some random stops and traffic delays. All of this meant that instead of arriving at 6:30, I got to the Golden-Mile Complex at 10:15pm.
This long bus trip, coupled with the fact that I saw not one, not two, but three cigarette butts along my walk to the hostel somewhat diminished my first impressions of Singapore. After all Singapore is supposed to be extremely clean. Luckily, after some food and sleep my impressions improved!
Biking around Singapore:
Singapore is easy to get around by various ways. It’s got an awesome public
transit system (best way to get to the airport). It has Grab/Uber and it’s very walkable. But one of the most fun ways to get around is by bike. It’s also great value! Mobikes is an application that you can install on your phone, and for 5 SGD (1 SGD is ~ 1 CDN) you can unlock and ride a bike for 2 h each day for 180 days! Then when you get to your destination you lock the bike up. When you’re ready to go again you find a new bike. Very easy! I used this visit some of the destinations listed below. Along the way I saw some interesting things – like this otter crossing the road, or a fallen tree surround by tape and pylons. Safety first Singapore!
Walking around Singapore:
Biking/walking along the water front you come across a number of interesting things including the merlion where a plethora of people are trying to get pictures that make it look like they are drinking the water coming out of the fountain. I did not. We also found the place where Sir Raffles first stepped ashore on Singapore, which soon after resulted in the British establishing a colony in Singapore. Nearby there we had a Singapore Sling, because you kind of have to, and listened to a local band performing renditions of numerous popular songs.
From one end of the Harbour front you can walk across a DNA shaped bridge to reach the Marina by the Bay. Along the bridge are a number of lights with bases on them. Much to my horror, and the amusement of my companions, there were non Watson-Crick basepairing! I guess the artists should have used a proofreading polymerase when building the bridge, or maybe some mismatch repair! But the bridge is pretty cool none-the-less.
Marina by the Bay:
One of the premiere attractions in Singapore is the Marina by the Bay and the nearby Gardens by the Bay. It is easy to see why. Built on land reclaimed from the ocean this mammoth complex is estimated to have cost approximately eight billion dollars when it was completed in 2011¹. It’s a giant shopping complex, with a casino and hotel that has THE infinity pool. Unfortunately at 800 dollars a night around christmas it was a tad out of the range of my travel budget!
There is also a pretty cool Art-Science Museum there which had a lot of trippy light shows and other things worth checking out.
Inside the Art-Science Centre
Every night there is a light show on the water in front of the Marina Bay, which is impressive, so much that I went three nights!
Nearby is the Gardens by the Bay. It’s a collection of gardens, ponds, various indoor ecosystems, and these structures called supertrees It’s a pretty nice place to walk around and during the christmas season they had part of it as a christmas theme park – complete with “snow” (aka foam).
Fun fact: Do you know anyone who has swam in the ponds at the garden by the bay? Well I do. Wanting to capture the beauty of the area Vince set up his drone and after a few minutes of filming the supertrees he decided to take the drone down along the water. Unfortunately the drones navigation system didn’t work properly (its supposed to avoid obstacles) and it ended up stuck hanging in a branch on a tree on an island in the middle of a pond. After sweating for several minutes Vince concluded that he needed to swim out and get it. This plan was immediately kiboshed by an arriving security guard who told him that he would have to wait until morning. O this was around midnight. Luckily after what seemed like forever, and discussions with her supervisor, his supervisor and then the head of security, it was agreed that Vince would be given a window of 10 minutes in which he could swim out to the island (it was maybe 1.5m deep and 10 m away) and retrieve his drone. By this time the drones battery had died and it was getting increasingly closer to the water. So with his water proof bag in tow and he swam out retrieved his drone and returned to the shore. Remarkably the drone still worked! We hastily left the Gardens by the Bay and caught a Grab back to the hostel.
The National Museum:
December 24th marked the 5th anniversary of the death of my dad and I spent a good portion of the day thinking about him, his death, and the way that my families and my lives were drastically changed following his death. I think being away from my family made the day more difficult for me but I ultimately decided that the best way I could honor his memory on this sombre anniversary was to do something that we both liked to do. I went to a museum.
The National Museum in Singapore is in a building that has been a museum in one form or another since the mid-1800s (although its had add ons and renovations). It was spared by during the Japanese occupation during WWII and following Singapore independence it morphed into a museum to the history and nation building of Singapore. It has a collection of artefacts from periods ranging from ancient times to colonial times, thru Japanese occupation, and independence to the present. This included a number of galleries that described the transformation of Singapore from a third world country to a developed garden state in a generation. The museum was a nice distraction for me, and my Dad would have enjoyed this place too. Although I think he would have liked it more if there had been a train or two!
Christmas in Singapore:
Maybe owing to its large expat population, or as a grab driver told us because Singaporeans love to shop and this gives them an excuse, but Christmas is big in Singapore. Christmas decorations and music was everywhere! We even managed to find a mall Santa or two.
Christmas day Vince and I decided that we would try to escape this flurry of Christmas activity by doing the least Christmasy thing we could think of. We would go to the beach. After spending sometime at the manmade beaches at Sentosa, and getting the obligatory selfie to send everyone at home who were experiencing a proper white christmas we rode our Mobikes back to the city, stopping in Chinatown for dinner and shopping. I got a Go-Pro, before returning to the hostel.
A tourist SIM card in Singapore is 15 SGD and gives you 5 days of access and 100GB of data! I made use of this and the safety of Singapore to FaceTime my family while walking the streets of Singapore. It was nice to be able to see my family and hear my three-year old nephew tell my about Santa coming and how he got a new digger for Christmas! It definitely made me feel more positive about being a way from them at this time of year.
The next day I spent some more time walking around Singapore and replenished some of the things that I had ran out of (aka gravel after my fun-filled boat trips in Thailand), I also spent way too long and way too much to find somewhere that I could print my e-visa for Vietnam. The next morning exhausted from some people who really need to learn some hostel etiquette and not turn on the lights and talk at 3 in the morning I made my way to the airport and set off for Ho Chi Minh. I fell asleep before the plane took off.
Links:
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Bay_Sands
The Travelling Scientist 