My overall impression after three days in Singapore is that if you wanted to design the perfect early 21st century large city, you’d have a hard time doing better than this city/state. Aside from the humidity, it’s a great place to walk around, the public transit system is as good as any I’ve seen, the architecture is nicely diverse, it has an incredible selection of food, and it has its share of lush, tropical parks to break things up.
Gardens by the Bay
Gardens by the Bay is a 250 acre park that is also one of Singapore’s top tourist attraction. The primary venue is the Cloud Forest, which is a lush, green, moist rendition of an actual cloud forest and also includes a huge multi-story waterfull.
The Cloud Forest also now hosts Avatar: The Experience which was designed partially by James Cameron. It included a nice life sized model of a Mountain Banshee.
And allowed you to create an avatar version of yourself.
The rest of the Gardens by the Bay also had some wonderful things to see. Unfortunately, it quickly became very stormy the morning I was there, so I had to cut my visit short to get out of the rain.
The Pinnacle@Duxton
One of the coolest things about Singapore is the The Pinnacle@Duxton, which is a 50-storey low income housing development. Its seven connected towers are collectively the world’s tallest public residential buildings, and – at 500 meters each – they feature the two longest sky gardens ever built on skyscrapers. For a small fee the general public is allowed to access these sky gardens. The sights of the city are pretty dramatic.
Kampong Glam
Kampong Glam is the historic, and now relatively gentrified, Muslim Quarter of Singapore. It is anchored by the Sultan Mosque, which was built in 1836 and named after Sultan Hussain Shah, who signed two treaties with Britain which culminated in the founding of modern Singapore.
Chinatown
Cinatown is a section of central Singapore that has retained some its original architecture and Chinese ethnic flavor. It is the only Chinatown in the world to boast a Buddhist temple, mosque and Hindu temple along a single street.
Little India
Getting off the subway in Little India you are immediately accosted with the smell of incense and the sounds of Bollywood musicals blaring from some of the storefronts. It’s definitely not as gentrified as Chinatown or Kampong Gamm. It’s still a working neighborhood for the scores of Indian immigrants still coming into Singapore.
National Gallery Singapore
From the Wikipedia description: The National Gallery “… oversees the world’s largest public collection of Singaporean and regional art of the Eastern world, specifically of Southeast Asia, with a collection of more than 9,000 items.” It encompasses the previous City Hall and Supreme Court buildings with a magnificant enclosed area attaching the two buildings. As with many museums, the architecture can actually overshadow the art inside the building.
One of the nicest parts of the Museum is the 5th floor deck that provides spectacular views of the city.
