Three-Course Feast with a Side of a Stellar Singapore View
Day 80, 2024 Grand World Voyage
Saturday, March 23, 2024; Singapore.
Sailing into Singapore is another iconic experience. The Zuiderdam wove its way at dawn through a maze of anchored ships, heading toward what appears to be another ship flying through the sky. It’s the Marina Bay Sands hotel, with a platform shaped like a ship’s hull floating above three 50-story towers.
This morning we were fortunate to arrive at the nearby Marina Pier just as the sun was rising in the opposite sky, reflecting off the hotel. Nearby is Gardens by the Bay, a 250-acre park with more than 1.5 million plants representing 5,000 species. Highlights include the Supertree Grove, with 18 structures stretching into the sky, and two giant conservatories, or greenhouses.
Today’s highlight was lunch for seven at Spago, Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant high atop the Marina Bay Sands. I made the reservation a month earlier, repeating my 2018 experience. The three-course meal is $48 and gives you the same view as a $27 ticket to the observation deck, but with lunch included. Plus we overlooked the infinity pool made famous at the end of the Crazy Rich Asians movie.
Earlier in the morning, our immigration process was just as thorough as in previous visits, but expedited by new kiosks. We still have to pass through each and every time we leave from and return to the ship, but with dozens of kiosks, the previously long lines were gone. Our longest line was for 20 minutes waiting for a taxi, as hundreds of passengers were disembarking the Queen Mary 2 as we were leaving.
The Singapore subway system, called the MRT, is easy to ride (just swipe your credit card on and off) and has a station a half-mile walk from the cruise terminal. But for three of us, a taxi cost just $8 and took us directly to the conservatories, where we decided to start the day before lunch. We were relieved to find that both buildings are air conditioned, as the temperatures were in the 90s and the humidity high.
The 3-acre Flower Dome (largest greenhouse in the world) features a number of gardens, includin: Australian, Mediterranean, South African, South American and Californian. Whimsical statues fight for attention among the plants and flowers.
As we had been in Japan too early for the cherry blossoms, we enjoyed the Sakura Japanese special exhibit at the center of the Flower Dome.
Next we moved to the Cloud Forest, figuring we had time to explore it before lunch. Not being a fan of heights (and having visited before), I limited myself to the lower level with its special display of orchids found around Machu Picchu. My sisters took the elevator to the top of the 135-foot Cloud Mountain. From there, visitors descend via walkways passing through environments representing Southeast Asia and Central and South America.
After our two-hour lunch, we jumped on the MRT to Little India, a vibrant neighborhood crowded with Saturday shoppers. We wandered through stalls and small shops selling food, flower petals, fabrics and clothes. Most had a sewing machine near the entrance with a man (always a man, it seemed) making clothes. Perhaps we were just tired and hot, but I didn’t find it as enchanting as on a previous visit, so after getting our fill of photographs we headed back to the ship.
I had an hour or so to rest before setting off for my evening ship excursion to the Night Safari. Friends have raved about the world’s first nocturnal zoo on the north end of Singapore’s island. To be honest, I found it a bit disappointing, but perhaps because it was extremely crowded with families and their small children. A week night might have been better.
After a 45-minute bus ride, we started our visit with a 30-minute tram ride. By now it was dusk and growing darker by the minute, so the animals – elephants, deer, lions, rhinos, etc. – were not easy to see and certainly not to photograph. Unfortunately, our tram driver frequently stopped by the various meadows too soon for those of us in the back car to see the animals.
After the ride, we headed to an amphitheater for a wildlife show, featuring birds of prey, foxes, pigs, a raccoon dog and huge porcupine. Next, we had the option of walking some of the wildlife paths, but I was hot, tired and hungry, so headed to the food court where I enjoyed some of the best chicken satay and peanut sauce that I ever had. And then slept for the entire ride back to the ship, glad that tomorrow will be a day on my own.
Made me hot and tired just reading about your day! Singapore has overgrown itself since I was there in the late .80’s. All I remember from our trip to the Butterfly Gardens was that they had a Siamese cat in a cage.
Hi Jo, the Singapore skyline from MBS and your Little India photo inside the store (presumably Mustapha’s) revived a few memories. Sorry your Night Safari tour didn’t go so well – the fishing cats were always the highlight for us (and we went many times over three years with various visitors), but you had to see them early in the evening before they had had their fill and just became still-life cats. We saw Elaine’s screen capture of the shipping around Singapore, and up the Malacca Strait – it’s not without good reason that our radar operators referred to it as the iron highway as the paints from the many ships looked like a superhighway traversing the length of the ocean between Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula. Are any of your MBS dining companions on the P2P next year? (We have just learned that Arnie and Peggy have cancelled their 2025 GWV and will instead do the P2P as far as Buenos Aires, and the 2025 Legendary Mediterranean. It will be great having them aboard for the first segment of the P2P!
We had an overnight stay on the 2015 cruise and having been to Singapore before, we decided to book an overnight at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel which gave us access to that famous infinity pool plus view of the lovely light show of those tree structures in the Garden on the Bay.
As always, I much enjoyed your blog and photographs!