Today’s Singapore presents a very tidy, very modern, even futuristic face — which we enjoyed exploring.
Singapore’s hyper-modernity is a relatively recent development. Here are a couple images from around the time of independence in 1965.
Here is what the city center looks like today.
A bit of a change, yes? By the time modern Singapore achieved independence, the tiny terrirory had been a trading hub for centuries. The English East India Company arrived in the early nineteenth century, and, except for the years during the Second World War, the British stayed largely in charge until the mid 1900s. Briefly, Singapore was part of Malaysia, before gaining full independence in 1965. So, a lot of the city that we see today blossomed in the last 50 years.
If you’d like to know a bit more about how Singapore went from post-colonial trading port to one of the richest places on earth, here’s a nice concise article to get you started.
But we’re just going to show you some of the hyper-modern places we visited!
For visitors who arrive by plane and allow themselves the time, the Singapore Changi Airport is a worthy destination in itself. If you check out YouTube travel videos about Singapore, you’ll find that most include quite a lot of awestruck time there.
Singapore Changi Airport is a very busy place. It is the busiest international airport in Asia, and the fifth busiest in the world. You can probably picture a vast complex of terminals and concourses, and the usual airport-mall shops. Yes … and!
Five years ago, a partnership between the airport authority and a major Singaporean developer opened a bold mixed-use development smack dab in the middle of four giant airport terminals. They named it the Jewel. OK, that’s sounds like good marketing-speak. But it really is quite something.
In organization, it is a complete multi-story ring of a retail mall. In the center of the ring, you find an immense enclosed tropical garden. At the center of this garden, regularly, a torrent of water falls from the glass sky.
And all of this is at an airport!
We had planned just an overnight between our arriving flight from Paris and our departing flight to Cambodia the next morning. It was just an afternoon and evening. Instead of transiting in and out of the city center, we booked a hotel at the airport, and then spent our time just exploring the Jewel. There was no shortage of diversions there.
Weeks later, when we had a little more time in Singapore before flying back home, we made sure that we spend the evening of our departure in the Jewel. While all this is certainly a monument to consumerism, it also diverts and entertains with shiny style.
Here’s the famous sky fountain in the center:
At night, the fountain becomes a water and light show:
High above the gardens, there are more gardens!
Other than the airport, we spent three days in Singapore proper. We stayed in the heart of the city — in Downtown and Marina Bay. This is the center of shiny modern Singapore.
On one side of the bay, you find the financial district with its expected collection of office towers.
On the other side, you find the Marina Bay Sands development — unlike anything you’ve seen before! And that’s what caught our whimsy. More about that a little later.
Let’s start with a stroll around the bay. We’ll begin at the base of Marina Bay Sands across from Downtown.
(By the way, the weather in Singapore is HOT and HUMID! We former Hawai’i folks thought we understood tropical weather. Alas, no! Hawai’i is a gentle little baby compared to the grown-up heat of Singapore. 95 degrees F / 35 degrees C and 95% humidity! Which for the casual temperate-climate visitor like us poses a challenge. It really is not very pleasant to stroll around the city in these conditions. You have to dart from AC to AC. That’s too bad, because there are so many interesting places to wander to and through. The next time we visit Singapore, we’re going to have to figure out how to acclimate quickly.)
We passed through the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay – mostly for a dose of cool air.
This complex, designed by DP Architects and Michael Wilford & Partners, is also known as the Durian. Perhaps you know that the durian is a famous tropical fruit. It’s all bumpy on the outside (like the theatre roof), tasty on the inside — but also astonishingly stinky.
The so-called Merlion is now a symbol of Singapore. It sure looks old-school mythological: a head of a lion and the body of a fish. Must be a centuries-old story behind that, yes?
Actually, its a commercial trademark from 1964. The Singapore Tourist Promotion Board commissioned it for their corporate logo.
The Merlion’s creator was British zoologist Alec Fraser-Brunner, then curator of the Van Kleef Aquarium in Singapore. The Merlion’s fish-like body is a nod to Singapore’s origins as a fishing village historically known as Temasek. The lion head recalls the legend in the Malay Annals when Sang Nila Utama, a Srivijayan prince of Palembang, first landed on the shores of this island. He saw a strange beast near the mouth of the Singapore River which he later identified as a lion, leading him to rename Temasek as Singapura (lion city in Sanskrit). (source)
For two nights, we stayed at a remarkable hotel in the Downtown area: the Parkroyal on Pickering. When this hotel first opened, about ten years ago, we’d seen articles about it because of its notable architecture, especially its elevated green gardens. We had to see if we could stay there.
We asked for a room on the same level as one of the sky gardens. Really quite magically forest-like right in the middle of the hard-edged city.
The design of this hotel inspires us. It was a joy to “live” for a moment in this beautiful bold place. Not just a place to sleep!
The architect is WOHA of Singapore.
On our last night in Singapore, we splurged big time to stay in the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, and to swim in the rooftop pool. Marina Bay Sands Hotel is that most-curious collection of three towers capped by a surfboard. The pool we fixated on runs most of the length of that surfboard.
Marina Bay Sands is another architectural beacon that we’d seen photos of years ago. It’s scale and composition are so outrageous; they compel it to be memorable and alluring. The architect is Moshe Safdie; he has been designing notable, and often controversial buildings for decades. He burst on the international scene when he designed Habitat 67 for the Montreal World’s Fair in 1967. He was also the architect for the Jewel at the airport.
Marina Bay Sands is the full development, including the hotel, a convention center, casino, retail mall, restaurants, and museums. The hotel contains over 2,500 rooms. There’s nothing dainty or boutique-y about it! Somehow, the hotel management and staff succeed in balancing the immensity of the place with bright attentive service.
But, our main goal was to swim in the infinity pool on the 57th floor. Apparently, it is the world’s longest elevated swimming pool: 146 meters / 479 feet long. It was simply an outrageous guilty pleasure to float around in that pool, high above the bay and the city, under heavy tropical skies.
Extending from the feet of Marina Bay Sands out toward the sea is Gardens by the Bay. The Prime Minister of Singapore and his government spearheaded this green development in the early 2000s. Their intention was to provide a new outdoor recreation area for the citizens — and visitors — of Singapore.
One of the most striking elements is the Supertree Grove. Eighteen tree-like structures, some as tall as 50 meters / 160 feet, create an otherworldly forest. We chose to visit after dark, both because the temperature was a little lower, and for all the colors and lighting. It’s all completely designed and manufactured — like much of Singapore itself — and yet outrageously fun.
We visited in the last few days before the Lunar New Year. So glowing dragons were everywhere in Singapore, including swirling around the Supertrees.
On the evening of our visit, a group of musicians was rehearsing on an outdoor stage — getting ready for the New Year festivities.
Also in the Gardens by the Bay, two seashell-shaped conservatories rise from the park forest. In these conservatories, you escape from the sea-level tropical heat to a cooler air-conditioned mountain-level tropical forest, or at least an artful composition of orchids, ferns, bromeliads, anthuriums and mosses.
You take an elevator to the top of the “mountain” and stroll down along paths of greenery and flowers, as well as whimsical arty objects.
Natural beauty:
An some whimsy:
It was fun, very pretty, dramatic, artificial, beautifully executed, and very relaxing. And cool!
OK, so that’s a bit of our brief experience of shiny modern Singapore. But there’s more to the story here. Next time, we’ll glimpse and taste some of multicultural Singapore.