Singapore 14-18th January 2015

We arrived in Singapore late in the evening and headed to the Big Hotel, which was quite central being only a couple of streets back from Orchard Road.  Most of the clientele were young, or are we getting old! 

Checking in at reception Mike was convinced that he was being checked out by one of the local talent for some action, not that Sheila noticed!  We proceeded to our room to be surprised by its size, clearly not in keeping with the hotel name. We negotiated a change to the largest of the rooms available and whilst this was still smaller than anything that we experienced in 10 weeks of travelling it was smart, clean, and quiet at 16 floors up, and had a very comfortable bed. 

Mike had been to Singapore twice before on business but to give Sheila an idea of the layout of the city we decided to take rides in the circular City Sightseeing buses.  Well this turned out to be more difficult than we could have imagined. Mike obtained a list of bus stop locations off the website and we took advice from some of the locals as to where these busses stopped. We were fully expecting to see signs on the bus stops with their adverts or logos, as experienced in other major cities, but not at all. We kept on spotting the buses but then they disappeared around corners. Eventually working backwards we discovered the starting point at the Suntec Centre.  

Once we obtained the bus pamphlet then everything droped into place since all bus stops are numbered on their posts and the specific bus stops are listed in the pamphlet with the exact route marked out. The City Sightseeing Tour busses in Singapore cover three different circular routes and whilst it is probably possible to cover all three in a day one would probably have little chance to explore. We purchased a ticket to cover two days.

The city has had considerable expansion since Mike was last in Singapore with a larger business district, more high-rise buildings and some new exotic looking buildings including the Marine Bay Sands complex with a boat like structure on top of three high-rise towers, a saucer shaped topped structure, which is the Supreme Court Building designed by Sir Norman Foster, and the Art Science Museum.

Marine Bay Sands 

Supreme Court

Art Science Museum

The first day we peeled off to take a look at the Gardens by the Bay, which included the artificial Supertree Grove and Skyway, a 22m high walk way between the super trees, and two domes one housing exotic flowers and trees and the other the Cloud Forest.

Supertree Grove

On the second day we took a different bus tour and headed off to the Botanic Gardens, which includes special sections covering orchid, healing and ginger plants, each being quite extensive. 

National Flower of Singapore

In the evening we headed off to the Night Safari, which being a Friday was exceedingly busy but none the less well worth the visit. Travelling around in open-sided and low-level trams one is stunned by how close one comes to wild animals, a matter of a couple of metres or less with, in some places, no physical barriers.

The following day we decided to make our way out the Changi prision museum using the public transport system.  This demanded a ride on the MRT train system and a transfer for the last part of the journey to the buses. We purchased a one-day travel card, which took the best part 40 min, partly due to the queue and partly due to the slowness of the computer system. Then we had a 30 minute MRT ride, followed by another 30 minutes on a bus. It didn’t help that we found ourselves heading in the wrong direction on the bus and travelled two stops before Google Maps came to the rescue! The whole trip would probably have taken no more than 40 minutes by taxi and not been too expensive, probably $20 or around £10.  

The museum is towards the Changi Airport and very close to the current prison. The current prison still retains a part of the old wall. In the museum, which is quite small we joined a guided tour. The guide was exceedingly informative. He initially described the rationale for the Japanese joining the war and how they attacked both Singapore and Pearl Harbour within an hour of each other.  The plan was to gain access to the oil fields in Sumatra thereby furthering their expansion into East Asia without being open to possible threats by the Allies in Singapore or the Americans in the Hawaiian Islands. The museum consists of letters, drawings, photographs and personal artefacts chronicling the stories of the POWs and civilian internees. The museum undertakes research for people who had relatives in the prison.

The original plan was to head onto Palau Ubin, an island just off the coast, that is far less developed than Singapore and hire some bikes. However, the time was getting on so we headed back into the city to do a little more sightseeing. We headed for the river, bought some late lunch (4pm), and then strolled along the river to see the Supreme Court, Parliament Building and the famous Merlion.