Kieran does Travel: Singapore 1

We land in Singapore in the evening. Learning from our mistake in Dubai, we catch the metro to the stop nearest our hostel. The hostel is in Kanpon Glam, which is the Arabic area of town. It's a pretty happening place on a Saturday night, when all the restaurant seating floods out into the street, as does a market. We check into our hostel, we're staying in what is advertised as a 16 bed dorm but is really two 8 beds next to each other. We go out and, as we're in the Arabic area of town, eat at a Turkish place. We order Lahmucun which is a Turkish pizza - the tomato sauce base is replaced with ground meat. It's pretty tasty and very filling. We decide to hit the hay shortly after.

The next day we wonder round the city. It's a pretty amazing place. We eventually find ourselves in Raffles Place, which is a mall. My parents had recommended the food court. The food court is impressive, with just about every Asian cuisine you can think of on offer. We have a Thai meal which was pretty good if a tad small. We then head out to Singapore Zoo. The zoo is one of major attractions here as it prides itself on having completely natural enclosures and no cages. It's also huge. We walk around for a few hours, there are animals here I've never heard of (the only names of which I can remember are the sloth bear). We also head to the 'River Safari'. We didn't really research this, and thought it was a boat trip. It turns out to be an additional, slightly smaller river-themed zoo. We manage to get the last boat ride but we don't see anything on it. We see a little bit more of the river safari, including a large aquarium with manatees in, but we have to cut it short because we have booked in a 7.45 slot at the Night Safari.

The Night Safari is yet another zoo, but as you might guess is nocturnal. Low level lighting allows you to see another large variety of animals. The main route is via tram but there are trails you can walk through. We do the tram ride then a few trails, but tiredness takes over and we skip the last few. On reflection, we probably should have started the day at the main zoo (you could easily spend a whole day at the zoo) but it doesn't matter too much - we've had a great day. We've seen thousands of different species from all over the world in just a few hours.

Best Sign Ever

Simples

Oh, the huge manatee!

The next day we get up a bit late, probably due to all the walking we've done. We haven't done a museum yet during the trip, so we head to the highly recommended (via tripadviser) Asian Civilisations Museum. This is in a great spot right by the river, and turns out to be well worth it. We see a few exhibitions on religion (we're both Religious Studies graduates) plus an exhibition showcasing artifacts recovered from a 9th century shipwreck only a few years ago. It's most Chinese porcelain, which is all in pretty good nick considering it's been in the ocean for over a millennium. I was a little disappointed they didn't have any parts of the wreck, but maybe I just need to manage my expectations better. Elsewhere in the museum, they are two large 3d oval shapes, one white one black hanging from the ceiling. A security guard walks over to me and asks if I am hungry. Confused, I say no. He then asks me if I know what the oval things are. I also say no and he points me in the direction of the description on the wall. Turns out the shapes are two massive grains of rice. I now get the joke.

Ricely done

Down by the river

We have a quick drink and Heidi decides to go back. I want to explore a bit more, so I do a walking route suggested by our guide book. This starts at a large church we have seen before, and goes past the Parliament building and a bit more of the river. During the walk I head into 'The Arts House' because there's an exhibition about Chairman Mao's cultural revolution which, luckily, is free. The exhibition is full of photos taken by Li Shenzhong, who was hired by the government as a photographer but was also taking pictures for the underground resistance. It really is a chronicle of human misery, with pictures of people being walked through the streets will placards round their necks listing their 'crimes'. There's a huge photo of the hundreds of thousands of people who attended Mao's funeral - this being the man who had more people killed than Hitler.

My walk ends up at Merlion Park, where I get a great view of the Artscience Museum, which looks like a metal flower, and the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, which looks like a boat parked on three skyscrapers. I head back to the hostel to pick Heidi up and we go out to Lau Po Sat - a food court in the centre of town. The building feels like a Victorian Train Station and the choice is even more overwhelming than at Raffles Place, but generally has a less corporate vibe. We eventually decide on a stall called Wok OK and each have a really tasty, and cheap, stir fry. After dinner we go to the Gardens by The Bay.

Gardens by the Bay aren't just gardens by the bay - although there is a bit of that. At the heart of the gardens is Supertree Grove, a collection of giant energy converting structures that light up. We take a convoluted route into the gardens (including a long stretch where we didn't see anyone else). When we reach the supertrees, we find that we've missed the last light show at 8.45. The trees are still impressive, mind. We walk around the gardens a bit longer then head into a mall that we need to go into to get to the metro. It's in this mall I spot the DC Comics cafe. As the name suggests, this is a cafe (and shop) populated with DC Superheroes merchandise and themed food and drink. It looks like it's just closing up so we note it for later.