I’m finally recovered from the worst hang-over of my life, AKA jet-lag. Two weeks ago, Adam and I made our inaugural trip to Asia and our vacation was everything I hoped it would be.
Since we lean hard to the “nerd” side of the adult spectrum, we certainly spent an inordinate amount of time learning about the history of Singapore and exploring significant museums and monuments.
Since we were there for a week, I’m not going to drone on about every little detail; for brevity’s sake, I’ve composed the following list of my Top Five Highlights of Singapore.
- Gardens by the Bay: HANDS-DOWN this was the most incredible man-made tourist attraction I’ve ever seen! I’m not sure if the scale is effectively translated through the pictures, but essentially there are 2 giant glass domes which house impressive ecological systems. One, the Flower Dome, is an immaculately manicured indoor garden where visitors learn about flowers and foliage from all over the World. The other, Cloud Forest, contains the World’s tallest indoor waterfall
(approximately 115 ft). Simply, stunning! Trying to capture photos of this inspiring place with our iPhones was worthless, we tried to in the magical experience instead. If you want to see professional photography of Gardens by the Bay, do Google Image search. - National Museum of Singapore. The building is a perfect mesh of classical Palladian, Renisannance and Modern architecture. The exhibits range from Singaporean colonial history, ethnic customs, and popular culture to the impact of WWII in the region. “Story of the Forest” was my favourite exhibit as we descended to the bottom of the glass rotunda via a circular ramp and proceeded to lay on the floor while an impressive digital sensory presentation (vision-audition-olfaction-tactician-thermoception-equilibrioception-proprioception) took place all around us.
- Chinatown and the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. We arrived in Singapore during the final days of the Chinese New Year festival, which was not by design but complete happenstance. The area was a constant bustle of people, languages, sounds and smells.
I thoroughly enjoyed sifting through the countless shops, while Adam enjoyed local beer and some epic people watching. We also spent an afternoon at the Red Dot Design Museum where award-winning innovative, modern, and futuristic concepts are curated within a geometrical gem of a building alongside the bay. - Little India Our hotel was mere steps from the famed Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple and Serangoon Road. The streets were lined with Gold Jewelry shops and Hindu shrines. A strange highlight of our time in Little India was our shopping excursion in the Mustafa Centre, essentially the real-life version of shopping Amazon.com. The shelves were stocked with not just 1 of everything known to man, but at least 4 varieties of the same item. Overwhelming is an understatement. Another unique attribute of Little India is the colourful colonial buildings facades that slightly resembled the vibrancy of La Boca in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- Hawker Centre Last but most certainly not the least, the food in Singapore
was OUTSTANDING! Think of a typical American mall food-court, but get rid of the crappy chain restaurant food, limited selection, ridiculous prices and general cleanliness…and there you have a Hawker Centre. (We only ate at two “real” restaurant meals during our entire stay and those were on the recommendation of an Uber driver to not leave Singapore without trying “SteamBoat” – (Chinese Hot Pot) and of course dim sum). My favorite hawker-stand was in the Tekka Centre in Little India, where we actually ate twice! I don’t think Adam could name a favorite but in his top list would be: chili crab at the East Coast Lagoon Food Centre (resort-like setting on the beach), the tandoori chicken and murtabak in Little India, Tom Yum soup at Food Republic, or the assorted roasted meats at PekKio. ]
