.jpg)
We are sad to have to say goodbye to some friends today as the 2nd segment in our Grand Voyage comes to an end in beautiful Singapore.
Singapore is a pretty amazing place. It is a small, clean, modern, multi-cultural city-state located just south of Malaysia and just north of Indonesia’s Riau Islands. It is made up of 63 islands and most of the people live in the downtown urban area of the main island known as Singapore, Singapore (just like New York, New York).
Here is the Top Photo Gallery:
Click here for the detailed Singapore Photo Gallery.
It is governed with a parliamentary republic with its foundations in the English common law system. Approx. 5 million people live in Singapore, approx. 3 million were born locally with the remainder made up primarily of Chinese, Malay (Malasian) or of Indian descent. There are four official languages: English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil.
We learned that when you are in Singapore you must follow their very strict rules or risk heavy fines or worse. There is no spitting, no chewing gum in public, no graffiti of any kind, no littering, and you must flush public toilets after using it (or face a fine). There is zero tolerance for drunk driving and illegal drugs. If you are caught with even very small amounts of illegal drugs, you are sentenced to death!
All boys at the age of 18 must enlist in the military and serve 2 years. They also have very stringent rules about the percentage of any one religious group living in apartment buildings. They do this to keep their myriad cultures blended in all aspects of living.
Today we took an overview tour of the island on an air-conditioned coach with approx. 30 other Regent cruisers.
Our first stop was a visit to a local “wet” marketplace, where on Sunday’s they have stalls filled with fish, vegetables and most everything else. Unfortunately, it was Monday so there wasn’t much going on.
As we drove around the island, which is only 272 square miles, we got a good overview including how close Singapore is to Malaysia…at one point it gets low enough at low tide that people can walk across! Creates an interesting immigration situation.
Our next stop was at a beautiful hillside military cemetery. We learned that Singapore fell to invading Japanese forces in WWII (1942). Winston Churchill called this loss “the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history”. The Sook Ching massacre of ethnic Chinese living in Singapore claimed between 5,000 and 25,000 lives. The Japanese occupied Singapore until the British repossessed it in September 1945 after the Japanese surrender.
We had a great lunch at the Orchid Country Club and even got to see some school children play in a bowling match. Continuing on, we were brought to the Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery. This is a very large Buddhist Monastery spanning many acres with multiple elaborate buildings done in ornate Chinese architecture. It has one of the largest and most spectacular bronze images of Buddha rising 45 feet high and weighing 55 tons.
Dale and I hadn’t realized that the tour today was over 6 hours and, since we wanted to see a bit more of downtown, we opted to jump off the bus and take a taxi to Raffles Hotel.
The hotel opened in 1887 and was named after Singapore’s founder Sir Stamford Raffles. My Dad had told me that he and my mom had some Singapore Slings at the Long Bar at Raffles – saying that a British businessman was buying them in an effort to use up the remainder of his Singapore dollars before leaving the country. Dale and I had one each and the total was S$61 approximately $50.00 US! I would guess 20+ years ago they probably weren’t as pricey.
After our drink we walked around the property and then out to the main downtown area where we decided to do some shopping. The shopping mall we entered (called Raffles City) is very modern with all the top end shops and brands represented. We had a great experience, found what we needed and took a taxi back to the ship in time for dinner.
We sat outside on the back of the ship at La Veranda and we were delightfully surprised with a light, color and water show from a nearby attraction. Pretty cool. We really enjoyed Singapore and think it is one of the safest, prosperous and culturally diverse cities we’ve seen so far on this trip. We hope to visit again someday.
Photography Comments:
What an incredible city. Sterile by some measures, especially in terms of eliminating the excitement caused by drugs and crime but who would miss that? Our tour was a bit short on photo ops, especially on a gloomy day when the marketplace was closed and the tour didn’t include the vibrant downtown area. But, we managed to get downtown anyway, albeit without actually making it to the real downtown area replete with all those big office buildings. I had to settle for a drive-by in a cab…not even as good as a bus by the way. If we had to do it again we would have taken the The Ins and Outs of Singapore because they actually DID go on a subway (a great system here), take a rickshaw ride (the guy I saw wanted $50 an hour) and also went to the really high end retail complex downtown. Oh well, there’s always next time! It was an honor to pay respect to the incredibly dedicated military men who died in wars protecting this critical city state. The Buddhist temple was amazing but with mid-day white-out style lighting it didn’t do the colors justice. I also noticed on editing that the colors weren’t as vibrant as I thought. Much of the spectacular nature was due to the intricate detail of all the snakes and dragons but much of the exterior color wasn’t as vivid as you’d think…maybe it is fading already even in this fairly new building. I found out after we were there that it wasn’t cool to take pictures of the people praying, even from the outside. Nothing bad, just not cool. I guess you need to put them in the picture with photoshop?