Our guide explained that Singapore has increased in area by over 20% since independence in 1965 due to land reclamation. Remember, that’s for a country that is smaller in area than New York City.
We started our day by visiting some of that reclaimed land and the “Gardens by the Bay” park. It tells you something about the vision of a country’s government when they spend so much money of creating new land just to allow a garden park to be built on it. The vertical “trees” allow for a third dimension of gardening.
We didn’t have time to pay admission and explore, but we saw some of the largest non-column supported glass domes that contained temperature temperate plants in wet or dry environments. Singapore takes their greenery seriously.
We then crossed the Marina for some city glory pictures.
We walked from the Marina to the Asian Civilizations Museum. Again, no time for the entire museum, but we saw the contents of a wrecked ship from the 10th century. They displayed the model of ship on waves of ceramic bowls. Seems 95% of the ship’s cargo were such bowls. There was big money in plate-ware back then. You can compare the display with a similar sunken horde I saw in the Shanghai museum.
Somehow this fancy dragon vase survived the sinking.
There was an amazing chest masterfully decorated with mother-of-pearl.
Around the corner was a statue of the founder of modern Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles.
After two days of walking around in the heat and humidity, it was time for a drink. And you don’t come to Singapore without visited the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel.
The Long Bar is famous for creating the “Singapore Sling“, an gin-based cocktail. The story goes that way back when, it was not seemly for women to drink hard liquor at a bar, they could only drink fruit juices. So, a smart bartender invented a cocktail that looked like fruit juice.
Of course, that’s all in the past now. Our guide told us a local saying: “In the past, girls used to cook like their mothers. Now ,they drink like their fathers.” Ah, progress.
The bar itself wasn’t amazing, but that’s fine. I liked the ceiling fans that waved back and forth rather than spinning.
Thus ends my Singapore adventures. I fly home tomorrow at 9:00am and land in San Francisco at… 9:00am the same day. The International Date Line is weird.
The next blog posts should be in July for my two weeks in Kenya and Tanzania. See you then, Cruiseboysians!