The Singaporean Pit Stop
So we gave ourselves 3 nights in Singapore to check out the city state before continuing on to Bali. I’d traveled in Southeast Asia for 4 months back in 1999, but had avoided Singapore. As a developed nation, I thought it would be too sterile to be interesting (and too expensive). I was glad we went this time.
Singapore seems like what growing, vibrant cities should aspire to be. It is modern, but has historical and cultural centers. It is clean and has wide roads to handle transit, but has extensive green spaces mixed with with design. It’s a cool place. It also seems very tolerant and cosmopolitan. It has hindu temples, mosques, and many different ethnicities around town and all seemed to get along.
We holed up at a mid range hotel called Hotel Destination Singapore Beach Road that was near the Gardens by the Bay outdoor park. The breakfast buffet gave us a sense of how countries in this region cater to Western tourists. The “Western Tourist” is the Australian and it was an Aussie Breakfast, with baked beans, hot dog type sausages, marmite, marmelade, and a bunch of other typical food items like tea, coffee, and pastries.
From the hotel, we used the Grab App (Uber/Lyft in Singapore) and ventured out to to see the city. We headed to the Gardens By the Bay area as this seemed like the top of the top for the city for me. Amongst many other things it has two domes - The Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest Dome. They were both pretty amazing and are both housed in cool, curved, elliptical, glass domes. The Cloud Forest Dome is… surprise, a cloud forest in a dome. It’s tall and you ascend many meters from a lush waterfall at the bottom that rises 5 stories to cold misty clouds at the top. As you climb you experience the change in vegetation along the way. I really liked the carnivorous plant section. It had several types of pitcher, pitfall trap, snap trap, suction trap, lobster pot trap, passive glue trap, and active glue trap plants all in one area.
Next door is the Flower Dome. It may sound boring but it was possibly even cooler than the Cloud Forest. There were so many different types of trees, plants, and flowers from around the world, from Argentina’s palo borracho (drunken stick) to the Monkey Puzzle Tree,to a very fat olive tree that makes you question what you know about olive trees.
The domes are next to the SuperTree Groves. These are the iconic metal trees filled with green vines, orchids and other flora that reach up 16 stories and also light up at night. I’d seen images of these trees many times and wanted to see them in person. They don’t disappoint. During they day they are neat and you can see the plants snaking up their bases very well. At night, they light up in a magical way that makes you feel like an adult version of Alice in Wonderland. We walked through the grove during the day and at night. At night we just lie on one of the benches for as long as the kids could bear to soak in their beauty.
Nearby there is also a park with a lake, a double helix bridge, and a ferris wheel, the Singapore Flyer. It was the tallest in the world at 541 feet until Las Vegas built it’s High Roller 9 feet taller in 2014. Milagro was pining to go on it. I wanted to go too, but I needed to finish a board presentation for a group I’m working with one day a week.
We also went with the kids to the Lotus flower shaped ArtScience museum. One of the exhibits enabled kids to draw and color pictures of objects and scan them. Then the scanned objects became animated across a panorama scene with dozens of other objects that others had drawn. It as pretty neat and all four of us partook.
In preparation for our trip, Soledad and I bought new Google Pixel 3XL phones for the good pictures and unlimited raw photo back ups. We also bought Milagro a Google Pixel 3a (mid-level) phone so that we could get a hold of her wherever we and she are. Both phones use the Google Fi plan that gives you phone and text in 120+ countries so it’s been pretty handy.
Well… back at our hotel on our 2nd day Milagro dropped her 3 week old phone and cracked the screen on the tile floor despite the “protective” phone case. She was devastated. Fortunately we had been paying for the replacement warranty so I got online chat with Google. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that my replacement warranty was with Google USA and Google would only ship the phone to a US address. And we’d have to ship the phone back to the US. Google provided a free FedEx shipping label, but I didn’t know if that covered international shipping. Nonetheless, the next (and our last morning) I Grabbed over to Southeast Asia’s regional FedEx center with my shipping label and they accepted the phone package shipping without any additional charges. Score!. I’d already asked Google USA to ship the new phone to my buddy Bjorn who would sit on it and await further instructions. I got back in the nick of time to the hotel and we packed our bags and headed for the airport to Bali.
We left Singapore without seeing and doing all of the things we would have liked. For example, I had marked down the Singapore Zoo where you can have breakfast with orangutans as a “want to do” but wasn’t able to fit it in.
The kids have been great. Did I mention we are also getting used to our new 13 hour time difference?
I’m writing this post a bit after the date (sorry, I plan to catch up). However, with the benefit of time I can say that Singapore was the most expensive place we have been to thus far on our trip. I didn’t realize it while there as we came directly from the United States and I was prepared for a “Singapore is expensive mindset”, but as I look back over our hotel records and realize it was $170 per night (total, including taxes, etc.) and compare it to our travels since, I thought I’d add that perspective. Singapore is a wonderful, modern country, but it will cost you more than the other countries in the area. If you are starting off a long Asian vacation, it can provide a good buffer to culture shock as you ease in to the territory. Another item that affects the price of hotel rooms in most of Asia is that most hotel rooms are built for 2, max 3 people. This means one full/double bed, 2 single beds, or a larger room with one full/double and 1 single bed.
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