Amazing Singapore - Part 1

Amazing Singapore Part 1 ….

" To see the world, things dangerous to come to,

   To see behind walls, draw closer,

   To find each other, and to feel.

   That is the purpose of life."

Just like the quote, who would’ve thought that a plan to visit Kutch Utsav in Gujrat would transform into a 4 days vacation trip to Singapore…it could happen only if I’m involved in such planning😊.

This was a 4 days marathon trip, so I’m breaking this blog in two volumes just like the movie Bahubali Part 1 and Part 2😎.

This is the excerpts for Day 1 and 2 of my trip.

                         I was originally planning to explore Incredible India and wanted to visit Kutch as part of the Kutch Utsav which happens annually for a couple of months in Gujarat. Instead it was destined for me and my cousin to explore the beautiful city of Singapore instead.

                       Our plan was to start on Children’s day 14-Nov-2019 night and return on 19-Nov-2019 early morning from Bangalore. It was a Bon Voyage trip for my cousin outside the country, so I hope she had a good time with me on the driver’s seat😊.

                       With lot of apprehension and excitement, we started our journey on 14-Nov-2019. We reached Singapore Changi airport on 15-Nov-2019 early morning 4.30 am. We landed amidst the mist encircled runway which in itself was adding some special effects.

    

                      Changi airport is a small but quite intuitive airport. It seemed newly refurbished with new structures in the airport like the Enchanted Forest, which was a small enclosure with blown glass sculptures with mosaic artwork. This was similar to some of the artifacts in the Chihuly glass museum in Seattle. 

                      We then finished the immigration formalities and took a taxi to our friend’s place in Pasir Ris. It was a 15 mins drive and the taxi driver was quite helpful and dropped us right near our block. It was almost 6 am when we arrived.

                        Our friend has been expecting us and was very excited to meet us. It was indeed a pleasure to meet such nice people. I felt quite at home even though I met them for the first time.

I left my cousin and her friend to catch up since they were quite good friends and started unpacking some of the goodies we took. I had a good ginger tea and also experimented with a new type of tea using Lemon grass, mint and ginger which was indeed quite refreshing.

                        Our whole trip started right from exploring the airport to visit to the local school Overseas Family School which was attached to the apartment complex where we stayed. We tagged along with our friend to drop her kid to the school. It was quite a nice place with huge ground, lockers for the kids, artwork made by kids on display and a friendly security staff who were greeting all parents, kids, guests very cheerfully.

                         It had just stopped raining and we were just hoping that rain would not play with our trip which would not allow us to roam around much. Luckily, during the course of our stay we did not face any issue and the weather turned out to be almost perfect😎.

Day 1:

Itinerary for Day 1: 

Singapore Botanical Gardens, Orchard street, National museum of Singapore, Fort Canning park, explore the local transport – taxi, bus, metro

                      We freshened up and got ready to start our journey. We had the MRT metro passes ready for use, which could be used in buses/ metro trains similar to the Orca card in Seattle. Since it was for the first time in Singapore, I wanted to understand how things work here before venturing out too much.

                      We took a taxi to Singapore Botanical gardens as our first pitstop. Pasir Ris is almost on the coast line away from the downtown and close to the airport. It took about 25 mins for us to reach the gardens. Along the way I could see the actual city and local streets with Chinese temples, Indian temple with gopuram like here, a mosque , churches each indicating the mixed culture in Singapore and the various influences. All along I could feel the island kind of feel which I had already experienced in Mauritius be it with the kind of plants around, the culture of the people and the streets.

                     The Botanical gardens is indeed quite huge and well organized. The weather turned out to be quite pleasant, so we could see people relaxing in the gardens, kids enjoying the fountains that is set all along the gardens and the gardens and playing in the huge park, I could see chickens roaming around too😆…

                     We explored the lush green garden with a variety of flora and reached the Orchid gardens. The Orchid is the National flower of Singapore and we could see a whole variety of orchids each more beautiful than the last. It is indeed a very worthy place to visit if you like the floral varieties. 

                      One surprise element was that we were not the only visitors in the place. There was a stretch with series of floral arches along the path. As we were walking we saw that there was a large monitor lizard that was crossing the path from one side of the garden to the other which was so unexpected. Its good that we got a chance to see this but I got more cautious as we walked along the same path further ahead😊.

I also happened to see similar variety of pine trees which I had always admired in the pacific north west. I just sat for few mins in that stretch to relish the views. It was about time for lunch, so we thought of heading to our next pitstop..Orchard street.

                      Since we were new to the place, I took a taxi to EON Orchard mall. The mall was quite good but with all high end brands. It was all decked up for Holidays and the décor was amazing. I could feel the spirit of Christmas and the shopping that people would do during Christmas and it was still mid November. We then explored the food court a bit , though din get the right stuff to eat…atleast we tried something new.

                      From the mall we headed out to explore the Orchard street. The street view was much more creative than the mall. We walked along the Orchard street a bit. This street seemed to be the shopping hub with a whole stretch filled with various malls and the variety of Christmas decorations was amazing. 

We took a bus to our next stop which was the National Museum of Singapore. The journey in the bus was in itself like a city sight seeing tour. We reached the Museum in good time.

                      The National museum is relatively small as compared to other cities I have visited. But it had a nice Glass Rotunda which was the best part for me. As we entered, the digital experience designed by a Japanese company of the forest formation and how it looks at different times was amazing. The wild flower showering from the dome was like the experience in a planetarium filled with stars but here a variety of wild flowers was showering on us. There were many people over here. I just sat down on the floor for few mins and just relaxed in the views. It reminded me of my treks to Mount Rainier during spring which I went twice just to see the beautiful wild flowers in the Alpine setting. I loved it the most.

                     Since it was day 1 and my cousin was quite tired. We just made a quick walk to Fort Canning park which was closeby before heading back to the MRT metro station to get back home in Pasir Ris. We had good dinner and relaxed for the dayJ.

Day 2:

Itinerary for Day 2: 

S.E.A Aquarium, Sentosa resorts, Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, Cable car ride to Harbourfront, Gardens by the bay- Cloud forest, Flower dome, Marina Bay Sands (During day), Super tree grove, Dragonfly lake

                           We were all charged up on Day 2 and started early by 8.30 AM on our venture. We took the metro to reach Harbourfront. We used a different route everytime, so happened to know different ways to reach the destination. This time we took the bus to Pasir Ris Interchange (3 stops from Pasir Ris Heights) which is like a big bus stand like Majestic where people change their routes. We found that there was a mall ‘White Sands’ right at the stop.

                          We then had to figure out a way to change the various metro lines to reach Harbourfront which was again the point to take the Sentosa Express to reach S.E.A aquarium. I found the metro lines similar to the underground tube stations in London, so it was kinda familiar setup. Again it showed the different influences Singapore had taken in from other countries.

                         From Harbourfront station, we took the ticket to Sentosa express which is a monorail train to reach Sentosa world resorts..again similar to the mono rail I used in Seattle to reach one of my favourite spots near Space needle.Again weather was quite nice but bit sunny. It was vacation time for schools too, so there were quite a lot of people visiting the resorts.

                         Sentosa World resorts had the S.E.A aquarium, Universal Studios, Merlion attraction and other amusement activities.

                        We explored the place around with all the Christmas decorations, the fountains, also I found Hard Rock Café which surprised me…and a good food court. 

                                     It was a packed itinerary, so without much ado we stepped into the S.E.A. aquarium. It is indeed a good place. The best part was the water filled tunnel we had to walk through ,with all the sharks and other fishes swimming all around you with just a protective glass casing over your head. It was indeed great experience. 

I did find some exotic fish collection , but I found the Corals reef collection more interesting. I also happened to see the Sea dragon which was a first for me. Others I had already seen similar stuff in Point defiance zoo which is another of my favorite spots in Seattle. However, they had more of the aquatic mix belonging to the local water bodies.

                        We were quite hungry since we skipped breakfast . So we tried out some Malay cuisine this time which turned out to be a better option. The waterfront view outside the aquarium was indeed quite beautiful. I liked the view with the cruise ships anchored there with some taking tourists around the place. This place is a amusement park, so you could imagine that it was full of touristy activities.

                        After lunch, we took the ticket to Madame tussaud’s Wax museum and the cable car ride back from Sentosa to Harbour front . We again had to take the Sentosa express to Imbiah Station. We explored the place with a nice waterfall, walk way along the Sentosa island, then reached the Wax museum.

                        I have visited Madame Tussauds’ wax museum in various locations like London, LA, Amsterdam. However, I found the wax museum in Singapore quite different in one aspect. The wax figures were all the same…with some more of Bollywood influence here. They had a IFA section with our Bollywood actors.

                        The interesting part that really impressed me was the initial 30 minutes. They had a walk through the Singapore history act . There were actors who were portraying the various phases in Singapore history as different scenes enacting quite well.They enacted like the local Village folks, Chinese workers moving in for immigrants for cheap labour, World war scenes, fight for Independence, Modern day Singapore. It was quite a informative and engaging experience.

                        Then we took the cable car ride to Harbour front, which was also quite a cool experience.  Its crossing across the waterfront in a gondola. These two places I would recommend to folks to try.

                        We reached by 4 PM which was exactly as per our plan to reach Gardens by the bay since I wanted to see the sunset. We had to do lot of walking though. We had to walk through the Marina bay sands which is quiet an architectural marvel. It has three buildings all connected at the top. It is almost 255 meter wide which is bit over the height of Eifel tower. But it seemed a bit hyped up after I saw it.

                       We had to walk through it to reach Gardens by the bay. The Gardens had lot of view points with nice fountains , dragon fly sculptures, Asian flora in the gardens, Cloud forest dome, Flower dome(All climate controlled indoor stuff like the amazon spheres in Seattle), Supertrees (artificial though).

                      We first went to visit the Cloud forest. It had a artificial waterfall with all misty feel with spray of water all around. It was quite pleasant to see it. We had to walk to the top of the water fall and walk down along to see the artificial stalagmite formations, amethyst crystal rocks which were quite huge.

                     We then headed to the flower dome which I was quite bored with. It was an indoor garden with exotic flowers but all climate controlled. Most people were busy with pictures than actually seeing the flowers. They also had a Santa with Rein deer point with the Christmas décor.

                     One interesting incident was that since we were in the Wax museum, there were many people visiting but a bunch of three guys were in the same pace and batch when we were looking around. The same set of people had followed the same plan and happened to enter the Cloud forest and flower dome at the same time. They too recognized us. It seemed as though each of us were just out beating each other in reaching the destinations. It was surprising to find them even in the Skypark in Marina bay sands in the same time slot on Day 3.

                      It was already quite tiring on Day 2, on our way back we saw the beautiful waterfront with the Singapore flyer all lit up. It was pretty. We saw the Super trees all lit in full glory which is again another interesting piece of architecture.

                     We also had the plan to see the laser show in Marina bay sands at 8 PM, but we were quite tired for the day, so we postponed it to next day i.e.Sunday.

                     We headed back to meet our friends for dinner in a local restaurant. We tried some local Cuisines and tried out a nice Macadamia Mango ice cream bar. We took a bus to IKEA at around 10 PM. Imagine roaming around IKEA in the night😆. We just went in and explored a bit before heading back home. I was not too keen since I had already seen IKEA.

So ends Day 2 of our trip.

More to continue in the Amazing Singapore Part 2…

                                                    -       Nirmala