Spectrum of the Seas Review: Day 7 – Singaporefeatured

It usually takes me a few days to figure out how I feel about a new place. I need time to get my bearings, to figure it out, to feel it out. My mind races to associate any new place to any place I’ve been. I draw connections and then I start pulling out the unique bits.

Sometimes, I don’t have a few days. If it’s a new port of call, sometimes I only have a day and other times, just hours. It took me weeks to figure out how I felt about Malta when we visited last year. It can take a number of visits before I have a feel for it, before I know what I’m doing or where I’m going and before I have any authority over my location.

Our first day in Singapore was our getting to know you. We were feeling things out, getting the lay of the land and observing anything and anything we could. When we travel through ­­­North America and the Caribbean, Central America and even Europe, some things change, but really, a lot of it stays the same. We were vastly coming to realize that here in Asia, everything was different, from how you stand on an escalator to how you board public transit and even non-verbal cues. But with that first day of watching and learning in Singapore out of the way, we set out on day two with a renewed sense of purpose, ready to take the day on with a better understanding of what we were in for.

We woke up to bright, clear skies that made way for dark rain clouds in the time it took to get out of bed and brush our teeth. But as quickly as the rain clouds moved in, they pushed out. The sun came peeking back out and we were treated to a full arch rainbow over the skyline. If there’s a better way to start a day than a view like that, I haven’t found it.

Stephanie and I had decided the evening before that our big thing for the day would be Gardens by the Bay, a dazzling series of attractions at the Marina Bay Sands. You don’t pay for a single admission that covers everything when you visit Gardens by the Bay but rather, you kind of piece together an a la carte experience with the attractions you want to visit. Stephanie bought us tickets to the generic Gardens by the Bay attractions (which covered the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest) on Klook (a ticketing and experiences marketplace) for something like S$20. When we got there, we decided to also get tickets to the Floral Fantasy exhibit for an additional S$20 and the canopy over the Supertrees for an additional S$8. Oh, and on top of that, if you want to ride a shuttle instead of walking between buildings, that’s an additional S$3. Highly recommend the shuttle, by the way. The walk is long and Singapore is h-o-t.

The Hop On Hop Off bus would take us from the Suntec Center to the Gardens by the Bay, so after another stellar breakfast at the hotel, we walked over to Suntec to catch the Green Line of the Big Bus.

The first thing I noticed when we got off the bus was it wasn’t nearly as busy as I had expected, particularly for one of Singapore’s top attractions. That was a rolling trend throughout our time in Singapore, but I certainly wasn’t complaining!

We purchased our Floral Fantasy tickets at the door, with an entrance time between 11:00 AM and noon, so we had about a half hour to kill. We grabbed some cold drinks at a lovely café just next to the gift shop and geared up for a day of flower everything.

The shuttle tickets we purchased drove us from the main area out to the Floral Fantasy exhibit. Floral Fantasy is this larger than life installation where everything is just covered in these beautiful, perfect flowers. Tens of thousands of them, everywhere you look. Orchids, tulips, roses, gerberas – all kinds of flowers in all colors just everywhere. It’s heavenly in every sense of the word. We entered with a group of maybe ten others, but it quickly dispersed, leaving us to do our impromptu photo shoots throughout the exhibit.

The exhibit was truly exquisite. The way the flowers were arranged, the sensory experience of being surrounded by so many of them, it was really special and totally worth every penny we paid to get in. Walking through the exhibit took around 45 minutes and ended with a ride on the Flight of the Dragonfly 4D experience (which kind of felt like a Soarin’ Over Gardens by the Bay type of thing, if you get the Disney reference!).

After Floral Fantasy, we made our way over to the Cloud Forest, a domed mountain covered in lush greenery and foliage. The Cloud Forest also features the world’s largest indoor waterfall, which was just breathtaking. When you enter the Cloud Forest, you begin a walk that winds up and around the mountain. It’s not strenuous by any means (there are escalators and elevators so it’s less of a trek and more of a meandering stroll) and as you make your way upwards, the views of the walkways below and even the outward views of the city are just magnificent.

We skipped the Flower Dome because we had already seen Floral Fantasy and we figured the Flower Dome wasn’t going to be any better than the upgraded exhibit, so we headed outside to see the Supertrees. The Supertrees are these sky-stretching artificial trees that are quite literally larger than life. You can walk around them from the ground level for free, or for S$8, you can ride an elevator to the top for a canopy walk. It was a no brainer for me – I’ll pay for a good view! I really enjoyed the canopy walk. It was short – you can traverse the entire thing in under ten minutes — but the views of the trees, the resort and the Singapore Flyer were really fantastic. And with only five or so others up there with us, we really got the chance to experience it without the expected crowds.

Once we had our fill of Gardens by the Bay, we headed back to the bus depot to wait for the Hop On Hop Off bus. Unfortunately, this line only ran every 40 minutes, so we had a bit of a wait. By the time the bus came (a motorcoach for this line instead of the traditional double-decker bus), I fell asleep almost immediately and when I woke up, we were in Sentosa! But you know, gotta grab those naps where you can when you’re touring extensively through new places!

The Hop On Hop Off bus dropped us off back at Suntec and the plan was to head out on the Red Line to go to Little India, Haji Lane and Arab Street, some colorful places we’d bookmarked for a visit. Before we left, though, we wanted to grab a quick bite – we had breakfast at 9:00 AM and it was already past 3:00 PM! We popped downstairs at Suntec to Food Republic, another cross between a mall food court and a Hawker Center, smaller than Rasapura Masters at the Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands, but perfectly adequate for our quick snack. I got a cheese prata and Stephanie got some hand-cut noodles. We split an order of dumplings and, man, you guys. Even food court food was better than the best Chinese (and Indian!) food we were eating at home! The noodles in particular were just so crazy good. Even in a food court, everything was made fresh to order (all the way to the cook cutting the noodles by hand right in front of us!).

We pulled some cash out of the ATM on our way back up to the bus stop and hopped in line for the Red Line. Four stops later, we were walking down Haji Lane, a kitschy, colorful street filled with bright awnings, murals, fun cafes and unique boutiques. We walked up and down the streets taking as many pictures as we could, stopping in any fun boutiques we found along the way.

We also stopped for a Vietnamese coffee at one of the cafes because the jet lag was still real and the extra caffeine was so necessary. Vietnamese coffee is freshly brewed coffee served with a sidecar of sweetened condensed milk. I’d never had it before and I figured if it was this good in Singapore, I was in for a real treat once we actually got to Vietnam!

One street over from Haji Lane was Arab Street, which was home to a lot of Middle Eastern shops and eateries, as well as some of the brightest, prettiest buildings in the area. If we weren’t at the beginning of the trip, I probably would have shopped my heart out, but I was trying to be good so I settled for snapping some pics!

The original plan was to go to Chinatown after Arab Street to have dinner at the Maxwell Hawker Center, but neither of us were hungry, so we rode the Hop On Hop Off bus to a park downtown to snap some pics of the Marina and the Merlion Statue (from a great distance – they said the stop was Merlion Park, but the actual Merlion Park was almost two thirds of a mile away!).

We hopped back on one more time and rode over to the Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands because we really wanted some bubble tea and couldn’t find a decent enough place and we ended up hanging out downstairs at the Rasapura Masters Food Court for awhile. And hour and a half, two bubble teas and a beef pepper rice later and we were ready to head back out. And on that beef pepper rice? They literally serve it on a hot stone that you bring back to your table. It was delicious and less than S$9. The quality of the food and the price of the food was bar none to any place I had ever been before.

Every night at 8:00 PM, there’s a laser and lights fountain show by the ArtScience Museum, just outside the shopping mall. When we finished our dinner and discovered that it would be quicker to walk back to the hotel than it would be to take the MRT, we figured we’d catch some of it since the walk would take us back over the water. It was a little hard to see from the pedestrian bridge we were walking back on, but the views of the skyline all lit up were so spectacular that I don’t think I even have words for it!

The walk back took us around 20 minutes and for most of it, Stephanie and I were talking about how unique it was to be in a city as large as Singapore, filled with skyscrapers and great public infrastructure – a true big city – and feel as safe as we did. We were walking back, handbags, cameras, phones, everything, and we felt completely safe. I’ve only felt that way in one other place and that was in Switzerland. The entire time we’d been in Singapore – two full days at that point – we hadn’t encountered anyone who gave us bad vibes. We hadn’t been in any situation that made us feel unsafe. We traversed the city on tourist bus, on public transit and on foot and we felt completely safe. To add to that, Singapore is probably the cleanest city I’ve ever been to, probably because of the laundry list of illegal activities that could land you in jail (including but not limited to spitting, chewing gum, littering, jay walking and singing out loud in public areas). So you have a big city that feels safer than any place we’ve ever been and so clean we could probably walk around barefoot (…we didn’t, but we could have is all I’m saying!). That’s something special. It took us almost two days, but we both agreed that Singapore was one of the greatest places we’d ever been.

We walked through Millenia Center and back to the hotel, where we caught up on the day’s news, posted our snaps to Instagram and I ended the day in the best long bath with the bomb I purchased at Lush the day before. We only had one more day in Singapore and we didn’t know how to spend it, but we were excited to figure out what fun things we’d find!