2023 Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabian Peninsula Trip
Day 57/105 - Singapore - What a place!
Let's start with time. Kuala Lumpur and Singapore choose to align, time-wise, with Japan and China as that is where business is conducted. We're wailing tonight to Jakarta which is east, and we have to set our clocks back an hour tonight to UTC+7. After this, we'll have to make up four hours before we get to Sydney. Timezones are stupid.
Today, we're in Singapore. Singapore is an island. It is also a city. It is also a city-state. It is also a country. Singapore used to be part of Malaysia but became independent in the 1960s. As a country, they have essentially no natural resources and don't produce anything. But, they are uniquely positioned, geographically, to be able to manage trade. That’s what they did. In addition, they figured out finance. Today, Singapore is a trade hub as well as a hotbed for banking.
We are docked just outside the city today. Today's tour, the optional, Iconic Singapore, took us to three stops.
River tour
We took a ride on a "Bam boat" - an electrically powered boat that navigated the river in town, passing by the sights and amazing skyline.
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| Apple flagship store |
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| The Marina Bay Sands |
Marina Bay Sands
Next up was the Marina Bay Sands - an iconic Singapore landmark. It looks like three towers with a ship on the top. Our tour took us up to the 56th and 57th floors for a panoramic view of the city. We walked through the incredible shopping with all the high-end stores.
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| They were getting set up for Christmas |
We went up to the 56th and 57th floors for panoramic views of Singapore.
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| One of those domes was our next stop - the flower dome |
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| Roof-top bar and restaurant |
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| Supertrees |
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| The flower dome and cloud forest |
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| It is too odd to not photograph |
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| The dragonfly bridge area - we will cross that later |
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| An expensive golf course |
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| The hotel's infinity pool is behind us |
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| Explorers’ Bar bartender, Ferlyn, and sommelier, William met us atop the Marina Bay Sands |
Flower Dome
Our final stop was in the Flower Dome - an indoor garden featuring cool and dry weather plants and flowers. The building is designed to be sustainable and have zero carbon footprint.
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| These were called fower stones - they were alive |
After that, we walked through the Super Tree area and made our way back to the Marina Bay Sands to catch the shuttle bus back to the ship.
We made our way back to the Marina Bay Sands to pick up the shuttle bus back to the ship. Along the way, we stopped at a specialty store selling watch winders. I love watches and have a fairly large collection, including many automatic watches – ones that get wound by the motion of your wrist when you wear them. Of course, you can’t wear them all every day, so watch winders come into play to keep them wound and keeping time. Today, I purchased a 16-watch winder with a digital and biometric locking mechanism. They will ship it to our home. I look forward to moving my automatic watches into this new winder, keeping them safe and properly wound.
We checked out a convenience store on the way back to the ship to document today’s odd chips.
We made our way to the Explorers’ Bar for what else...Singapore Slings. When in Rome…
We had dinner in the World Café before we sailed. Then, it was time to head to the room and put today’s post together.
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| Hard Rock, Singapore |
Tomorrow is the last sea day of this segment as we head to Indonesia.
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