Singapore

March 11, 2019

It turns out that DaNang is a mere 2.5 hours by air from Singapore. So what the heck.

Off to the land of quirky laws, $20 beer and fantastic looking man-made park areas.

My cousin and his wife proved to be wonderful hosts (as we expected).

We visited the Marina Bay Sands hotel bar – way up on the 57^th floor which provided a wonderful view of the city. Our visit was at night and of course we indulged in Singapore Slings (invented at the Raffles Long Bar here in the city). From this windy perch we were able to get terrific views of the Gardens by the Bay area, a man made park with futuristic looking trees full of lights.

Night view of Gardens by the Bay

Futuristic trees

Singapore has quite an interesting history. It was originally founded as an outpost of the British East India company, and later became a British crown colony. It was unfortunately occupied by the Japanese during WW2 in a major defeat which cost many lives. In 1963 it, along with a couple of other British colonies joined Malaysia as part of gaining independence from the British crown. This did not work out too well and they were expelled from Malaysia in 1965, at which point they became a sovereign nation.

Singapore has no natural resources but did possess a good location for shipping, and is now one of the busiest container shipping ports in the world. It is in the top 3 of several categories including finance, logistics and interestingly oil refining. It would seem that the oil refining business grew as a direct result of the port business. Huge ships stop there for fuel, maintenance and off loading of container to smaller more vessels to bring goods to other harbours.

The place is very clean and well designed. Even though it is hot as Hades walkways throughout the city are shaded so travel on foot is easy and comfortable. The Economist has rated it as the worlds most expensive city to live in, and we can attest that restaurant/bar pricing is very high. You can eat though really well, for significantly less at the assortment of hawker centers around town. Not so sure you can drink for less though.

Fabulous meal of Satays and Chinese from a hawker centre

My new favourite thing is this machine found on the street in the Little India area. You feed in a $2 bill and it takes a couple of oranges, splits and squeezes them and provides a sealed cup of juice. Got to love it.

Freshly Squeezed OJ from a vending machine - got to love it

We also visited the Botanic Garden which was free for the bulk of it and $5 for the Orchid area, so quite the deal.

My cousin is a dragon boater, and this apparently is a big thing in Singapore. We had the opportunity to see boats come in after practice (no races while we were there) and it looked like a tremendous network of fitness and camaraderie. Some of the boats are beautifully painted (well the Canadian one are). Apparently this group, which seems to be made up of expats from a variety of countries, is only one of several dragon boat groups including ones that represent international companies.