Singapore Part 2

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It’s day two of our Singapore stay. We walked miles yesterday, 24,000 steps, and I’m still tired. We decide to go back to the Garden On The Bay.

We take the Cunard shuttle bus to the Marina Bay hotel. We stroll through the grounds of the gardens. Entry is free and they are lush and verdant, the flowers very colourful. We wander round the Chinese ,Indian, colonial, palm, Malay and many other themed gardens. The lay out is lovely and relaxing. The planting is interspersed with tasteful sculptures which take their theme from the immediately adjacent planting regime or subject of the garden. Although I am not clear what the twenty foot long naked baby hovering a few feet above a grassed area is supposed to mean.

Walking towards us are three people with around 10 dogs each, all very well behaved all on leads. Bizarrely one white dog is wearing a red coat which covers it’s body and legs, the sort you see in the UK when it is raining or cold and the owner feels nature didn’t provide Fido with enough protection. (Or they want it to stay clean / dry.) We've no idea who owns them or why they are walking in such a large group, but presumably this is a commercial dog walking arrangement. Amusingly each walker has dogs of near identical size, there is a small size dog group, medium sized and large sized. Regardless each of the animals looks like it is about to be entered into Crufts, they seem to be primped to within an inch of their lives. not one of them is making a noise, either towards it’s compatriots or us.

I’m struggling in the hot and humid weather, the sweat is pouring off Ian, whose mid blue T shirt is turning a distinctly darker colour. So we decide to end our walk in these wonderful grounds.

(As we walk out of the Gardens we are passed by a group of four, two men and two women in their mid twenties. All are oriental and slim, but one is unlike anyone I have ever seen before. She has very long blonde hair (extensions?) has clearly had breast enhancement surgery (using considerable amounts of silicon) and is wearing a cream coloured net corset as the only garment on her top. She is a strange mixture of the totally alien and common. She seems to be a total fabrication to meet someone’s (hers or someone else’s?) vision of what an attractive woman should look like. She is both amazingly attractive and and almost repulsive at the same time. Ian’s description)

I have to slap Ian as he seems to lose concentration.

Visiting the Sky Park was however on our must do list. So on the way back to the shuttle bus we join the queue to ascend 57 floors to the observation deck. You have all seen pictures of the Sky Park even if you didn’t know what it is called. As with all these buildings the life rides are so quick that you have to ‘pop’ your ears as you ascend. The views from the top are amazing. You are looking down on every other building. The Singapore equivalent of the London Eye is below you, the huge steel structures in the gardens as well as the two green houses are seemingly tiny, the double helix bridge across the estuary looks like a model. Looking to the horizon it is high rise buildings literally as far as you can see. You understand why social discipline is so vital in a city like this. People have very little space, anything other than politeness and courtesy would result in mass brawls and violence.

We get back to the ship just as the sky is darkening. Shortly after, the tropical downpour starts. We can see the wall of rain advancing towards us as we stand on the balcony. As the leading edge passes over the Cruise Terminal roof below and in front of us (remember we are on deck 11 so effectively at least 9 - 10 floors above the dockside) we can hear it drumming on the metal sheets. Then it covers us, the balcony gives protection but the drops are hitting with such force that they are splashing further and further towards the door. After a short while we withdraw into the cabin. We previously had been looking at the 40 - 50 large ships moored in the straits just outside the docks. These stretched from perhaps a mile to five miles away. All are now invisible behind the sheets of water cascading from the skies. The noise is similarly impressive. The torrent continues for 30 minutes or so before slackening off to a mere heavy drizzle. We’ve seen tropical rainfall many times previously, but you forget how overwhelming it is. You definitely would not want to be caught without your umbrella or lightweight shower coat. (In reality nothing short of a building is going to keep you dry.)

So that was Singapore this time round. Impressive, clean, well ordered, safe and with nothing we saw being older than 25 years old. That includes some of the land which is reclaimed from the sea. Obviously there must be grotty run down places but not immediately visible. The people were universally friendly, helpful and polite. There is also an underlying steel. When they indicate you should go in one direction or another, if you hesitate or take a step the wrong way the ‘suggestion’ is reiterated but is now clearly an order. It is efficient and effective but more restrictive than we are used to. An example, we saw a group of 40 (Ian counted them) 3 - 4 year olds all in identical school uniform sat in a the public space in a building waiting to do something. Every single child was sat quietly waiting to be told what to do next. We could see them for 10 minutes or so. During that entire time the children just sat and the staff accompanying them did not have to talk to them once. Difficult to imagine a similar group of UK nursery children behaving in the same way.





We are now headed off to Bangkok and Vietnam before returning to Singapore for one more day on the 23rd February. As a quick point, several hundred passengers got off today and were obviously replaced by several hundred others. Most of the new cruisers seem to be oriental and we presume that many of these are doing a quick 9 day trip, Singapore to Singapore.

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