Singapore Some Stupor On Me

I travel a bunch for work, often to some very interesting and beautiful places, and even when I don’t get a lot of time to explore and learn about the place I’m visiting, I try to at least go for a walk and try to get some decent photos of some cool shit. Normally I’ll then put all those pictures and random facts into my newsletter, The Fortnightly, but I’ve been getting the impression that a decent portion of the people that have signed up to the newsletter aren’t interested in any of that (mainly because I can see how many people open the newsletter, or don’t, when it’s a half arsed travel blog rather than actual news), and to be fair, photos of random places aren’t really what I intended The Fortnightly to be, and I don’t think it’s what most people signed up for.

But I’m in Singapore, and now I’ve got a bunch of thoughts and pictures I want to share, so here we are!

Actually I’ve got a pretty ridiculous amount of pictures, because I’ve been here for nearly two weeks and, unlike a lot of my trips when I spend most of my time working, on this trip I got two full days off, the majority of my work days only featured about 2 hours of actual work, and I accidentally stayed longer than I was meant to.

More that maybe anywhere else I’ve ever been, Singapore seems to have a bit of everything.

Like an undeniably epic skyline full of soulless corporate skyscrapers emblazoned with the names of some of the world’s biggest banks. (I can only assume that means that government here allows them to get away with all manner of shady criminal dealings)

But it’s not like all the older stuff has simply been bulldozed, there are still a lot of quaint little older buildings.

And not so quaint but still old and classy hotels and bridges.

And, of course, because it’s an old British colony, there are a bunch of regency style buildings that are now galleries and museums and so on. I’m very used to seeing this style, you can hardly move in Glasgow and London without tripping over something that has this vibe. The difference here is that they are often cleanly painted and well maintained, to the point that they almost don’t look real, like they’re made of plastic of modelling clay.

More colonial shit in Fort Canning Park (left) which was a British military base in WW2. And while I don’t know enough about architecture to say for sure, but I reckon this (right) is just as colonial, though maybe not British. At least someone gave it a nice paint job.

I didn’t hate all of the imposing skyscrapers, in fact I *really* enjoyed some of them, like the Parkview Square building (left) which looks like it should be in a Terry Gilliam movie or and Aldous Huxley book. And despite managing to get a couple of decent shots of the Marina Bay Sands hotel (middle & left) I think it’s one of the most stupid looking buildings I’ve ever seen in my life, as though someone knocked over the model at the initial concept meeting and put it back together wrong and they just built it anyway.

I got to see a nice sunrise each morning in the first hotel I was in, and at night the view had a sort of proto-Blade Runner feeling to it, which was helped a little by the robot cleaners running around the corridors (when you get in their way they just sort of wait for you to move, it’s pretty passive aggressive).

It’s a pretty green city too. It used to be said that Singapore had a garden in the city, but more recently they’ve been rebranding as the city in a garden. I’m sure people that live here don’t think much of it but I was repeatedly stunned by the types of plants that are in little planters at the side of the pavement (right). And people make good use of the parks on a daily basis, though I couldn’t help laughing to myself when I noticed them all occupying the opposite spaces that British people would (left), mad dogs and Englishmen and all that!

The Merlion is the official mascot of Singapore. I would say it’s a mythical creature but it doesn’t have very deep historical roots, having been invented in 1964 when the Singapore Tourism Board needed a symbol to put on stuff. It’s still makes for a pretty cool statue though.

Singapore might be the most multi-cultural city I’ve ever been to. It’s certainly one of them. There are large contingents of India, Chinese, and Malay people living here, all of them bringing their own bits of culture and religion and, like any other multi-cultural place, there are parts of town that are almost exclusively populated by a single ethnic group. For the first ten days here I was staying right on the edge of Little India where I got to see…

Some insanely beautiful temples covered in figures and tableaus…

Fantastically colourful buildings…

Balls and elephants and cows with traditional Indian designs on them.

Murals celebrating Indian industry…

And culture…

And pheasants, I guess(?).

And proving that even if something is sacred, that doesn’t mean you can’t be silly with it.

I didn’t make as much time to visit the Malay quarter, and when I did I was more focused on finding tasty food than taking pictures, but it was full of energy and life and people late into the night.

And I haven’t been to Chinatown yet, I’m planning on heading there tomorrow but I’ll have posted this by then so if you want to know more you’ll have to just go there yourself.

The Gardens by the Bay are probably one of the city’s most iconic attractions, despite only being 14 years old. Most of it is totally free to just wander around and look at, like a lot of stuff here.

If you want to go up to the viewing platform inside the main Supertree, or the walkway suspended between them, you’ll have to buy a ticket. But every evening there is a light show set to music, which is free to view, and people gather at the Supertree Grove and lie on the ground to watch the display. I took some pictures and a short video but honestly none of them even come close to doing it justice.

I also didn’t pay to go into the two *giant* greenhouses, the Flower Dome or the Cloud Forest, but I did wander around a get to see some stunning wooden carvings…

And the various old sculptures and modern art just lying around.

But like I said, Singapore is trying to sell itself as the city in a garden, so of course there is a massive Botanic Garden. I was only there for a few hours so there was a lot I didn’t get to see, but I did go around the Orchid Garden.

I saw a lot of orchids that looked pretty much how I expect orchids to look, delicate and beautiful.

And I saw some that looked more like an alien that might take over your body if it gets half a chance.

And something or other that my friend thought was a young pineapple. I can see where she’s coming from but I’m not convinced.

But it’s not all plants, there were a few small buildings with good educational displays about the plants and the local culture, like baby carriers and carved people with some well defined butts.

There has been an absolute shit ton of development here over the past 20 or 30 years, mostly constructed on top of reclaimed land (a very inaccurate name for dumping dirt into the ocean until it gets tall enough to rise above sea level, in case you’re unaware). This particular one is the Artscience Centre which is exactly what it sounds like, a bunch of artistic installations and galleries showing off things that have some relation to science.

These are a couple of my favourite things from the Flesh and Bone: The Art of Anatomy exhibit.

Little India wasn’t the only place where I managed to find some cool murals. The centre of town has a good amount of pieces that look like they’re officially commissioned, like this next to the Elgin Bridge…

Or the outside of the Singapore Council of Women’s Organisations….

This random building…

And the Coliwoo building. No I don’t know what that means either.

The theatre I was working in had some brilliantly weird and slightly unsettling stuff inside.

And a display out front that was less odd but still interesting.

And I also managed to find some things in side alleys that I felt were more likely to be street/graffiti are that exists just because some people need to do art sometimes, even if they’re not given permission.

I went on a Ducktour! Which is not a tour where you get to see any ducks, but one where you get to ride in an amphibious vehicle.

Specifically this one. They drive into the water and putter around the bay for a bit. There’s a guide sitting at the front who gives a few random facts about the city and the buildings and the duck boat (it was a US Army vehicle that was used in the Vietnam war and when the Ducktours people bought it it was full of bullet holes. Obviously I took a bunch of pictures during the tour but actually all the best ones are already up above.

Across the road from the theatre was a mall that was hosting a balloon festival and had an enormous display that was completely free to wander around and marvel at.

I poked more of the things that I probably should have and I can confirm that all of it did in fact seem to be genuinely made of balloons…

Even the spiky bits on this giant durian fruit guy. I can’t even imagine how long it must have taken to put it all together!

I went to visit the Museum Of Ice Cream, and got a transfer tattoo, mainly because it was free.

As was all the ice cream! Once you’ve bought your ticket you can spend as long as you like in the place, there are around 20 flavours to try, and they will give you as much ice cream as you like, and there is a “Sprinkles Pit” at the end (a ball pit with large plastic sprinkles instead of balls) which inexplicably was *not* full of sickly sweet children’s vomit!

And that was meant to be it. I was supposed to fly home. Instead I lost my passport and got stuck here for another 5 days. I’d like to say there’s a big dramatic story I can tell you at this point, a blow by blow account of the stresses and trials involved in working out how the hell I was going to get home. And it was stressful, but it was also boring, tedious and extremely bureaucratic. In short I had to apply for and Emergency Travel Document and get my work to book a new flight home. Thankfully one of the people I work with had already planned to stay for a few days to have a little holiday, so I got booked into the same hotel as her and we’ve just been continuing to enjoy seeing a bunch of cool stuff.

Like Mandai Wildlife Reserve, which has…

A penguin house which was having routine maintenance done, meaning the penguins weren’t allowed to swim around…

A whole section for rescued birds, which was the only bit where the birds were actually confined to cages…

A really good tree…

Flamingos that look like garden ornaments when photographed, and little birds that seem like they’ve been coloured in by someone who doesn’t know what colour birds are meant to be.

Some very manufactured but still enjoyable treks through the “wilderness”…

Numerous mean looking reptiles…

This derpy looking sturgeon…

And multiple areas where it feels like you’re walking through a place designed *for* the animals, rather than them being penned in for our viewing pleasure. (There is an actual zoo section that I didn’t visit for exactly that reason.)

But my favourite bit was a boardwalk which skirts around the edge of the reservoir, it’s completely free to go and walk along it and if you’re lucky, which I was, you can spot some actual genuine local wildlife, like dragonflies (or maybe a damselfly?) monitor lizards, and best of all…

Macaques!!!

And then today I went to Hell’s Museum, a museum about death and how we deal with it. Just from that short description I was sure I’d find it interesting, but I really wasn’t prepared for how convoluted and bizarre the place and its history is. I don’t have the energy to get into it but I’ll share just a few of the 112(!) pictures I took and just say you should read about Haw Par Villa and Aw Boon Haw who conceived and commissioned all the completely batshit stuff that’s there! It’s like Storybook Glen on acid! (IYKYK)

In case you’re wondering…

Don’t ask, I *really* have no fucking idea!