Apr 6th: Singapore Sightseeing

Day 3 (Day 2 in Singapore).

Not wanting to waste a minute in our shirt stay we set our alarm for 7:30am but we’re awake hours before that!

First thing we did was the highly-recommended ‘hop-on, hop-off’ bus tour of the city. Pretty good but not cheap. It gave us a quick overview of what was what and what was where.

This was followed by a 40 minute boat trip along the river. It gave us a different perspective of the city with decent, informative commentary, though heavily aimed at American tourists.

We learned of the original Singapore, a city of slums and cut-throats - a far cry from today’s modern metropolis. There are many bridges over the river, mostly named after Scotsmen!

Singapore financial district from the river boat

Back in the bus we went to Marina Bay. We had hoped to visit the roof terrace of the amazing hotel there but it was sold out. We settled for buying tickets for it for tomorrow morning.

We then walked around the corner to explore the Gardens By The Bay. These were spectacular, especially the two biomes which are a sort of cross between Kew Gardens and the Eden Project 

Succulent section of the Flower Dome

The biomes were the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest. Click the link above for more photos that I can add here but here is one a example: 

As well as the biomes there was a 200 metre long sculpture of 62 endangered animals. It was staggering  I filmed it in 5 or 6 sections but it would take up a lot of space  I might add it later so check back in  few days  

At 7:45pm there was a 15 minute light show to pop music on the 15 or so ‘super trees’  it was quite something- and free!

We took the excellent underground (the MRT: Mass Rapid Transit) back to our base (more on that later) and then, learning from last night’s mistake, ate in a restaurant - Tsui Wah - we had passed several times that always had a queue of locals outside. Excellent sweet & sour pork to finish the day well.