Singapore: City in a Garden

 The Republic of Singapore is unusual. It consists of a main island and 63 smaller islands. It’s the third most densely-populated country in the world and yet it’s very green with lush gardens and many parks. It’s also growing, not by annexing neighbours, but by massive land reclamation projects. It became a self-governing sovereign nation in 1965 and it has increased its size by 25% since then. It has four official languages and multiracialism is enshrined in the constitution. Also, the whole country is a city. Almost nothing is grown nor manufactured here, labour is brought in from other countries when construction projects need done, and the city is shockingly clean - especially for one that’s around the same size in area as Calgary, but with six times the population. Singapore’s economy revolves around tourism, tech, and financial dealings and has a ridiculously low unemployment rate. One in six households have at least $1 million of disposable income (cash on hand, not net worth). This is a good thing for the locals, since Singapore has also been ranked as the world’s most expensive city for several years running.

Full disclosure: we visited here for a few days in 2019 and saw a lot more of the city then. And because Singapore is such an amazing city, it would be silly to only mention the things we had time to see on our short time in port on this trip, so some of the things mentioned here and some of the photos are from 2019.

One of the first things you’ll notice about Singapore is the architecture. It’s amazing. It probably has more unusual-looking buildings per square kilometre than anywhere else in the world.

Of course, the one building that everyone thinks of right away is the massive Marina Bay Sands hotel with the giant surfboard-like gardens on top.

Or the Gardens By the Bay, with the grove of ‘super trees’ and the two enormous greenhouse domes.

Inside the domes are massive waterfalls, hundreds of plant species, and nature-based public sculptures and other artwork.

Even the airport is astonishing, with its Rain Vortex - the world’s largest indoor waterfall.

The performing arts centre looks like a sleeping porcupine, or maybe a hedgehog.

Or maybe it’s supposed to look like a durian fruit. These things are delicious, if you can hold your breath while you eat.

I should explain. The flesh of the fruit is really tasty - the texture is like a ripe banana and the flavour is similar, but with a bit of tartness and a hint of citrus thrown in. I tried some as a topping on some shaved ice and liked it a lot.

That said, you have to eat it at arm’s length, upwind. When you get the spoon near your face, you hold your breath and don’t breathe again until you’ve swallowed. Trust me, you do not want to allow the aroma of the durian to impact the flavour. At all. It’s incredibly strong and it permeates everything around it. You can smell the durian vendors for a half block before you see them and they aren’t allowed on public transport at all.

Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says, “its odor is best described as pig-excrement, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock.” That’s not far off, actually. We were here during the fall in 2019 and we could barely stand walking past a durian stand then. This time, in late November, it was still unpleasant, but not bad enough that we had to keep from gagging. Since there are nearly 300 varieties of durian, it’s quite possible that the ones available in the winter are a different sort than what we encountered last time.

Our tour on this trip included a drive-around on a bus (thankfully without curtains) and a stop at the Merlion fountain. It was interesting hearing the different pronunciations of that word as I walked past various tour group leaders. Our guide said “mer-LIE-un” and I heard one other say “MER-lee-on”. One guide, for Viking bus #4’s group, had the right one, I think, which is “MER-lion” in the same way that you’d say “mermaid”. It’s half lion, half fish. It’s Singapore’s national symbol.

From there, we stopped in Chinatown for a Singaporean coffee. Traditional coffee here has the beans roasted with butter and sugar and the coffee itself is normally served with a dash of condensed milk. That’s so common that if you want it without the milk, you have to specify it. If you just order “coffee” it will come like this:

It’s actually delicious. If you’ve had Vietnamese coffee, it’s similar to that, but without the chicory added.

We poked around Chinatown for an hour or so, looking at the shops and other stuff.

Then it was back to the ship. Unfortunately, Singapore required that we go through customs and passport control every time we got on or off the ship, so if you needed to run back to your cabin to retrieve something you forgot, or wanted to drop off something in your room and come back ashore, it could take a long time. So when the bus dropped us off at the terminal/mall, Rob and I parted ways. He was going to look around the mall a bit and head back to the ship and I headed straight for the monorail that would whisk me across to the island of Sentosa. We could see it from our ship.

There are several ways to get to Sentosa, one of which is a gondola that passes through a building before traveling right over our ship, but I opted for the monorail, since the station was right there at the dock.

Sentosa is a resort island. It’s home to golf courses, a large aquarium, a marine life discovery centre, a giant water park, a Hard Rock Hotel, and the reason for my excursion: Universal Studios Singapore.

Because I went on the tour in the morning, I didn’t get to the park until nearly 1pm and because I knew the process of going through customs to get back to the ship could be lengthy, I figured that I’d need to be back on the monorail no later than 3pm. Two hours is about all I’d have for a park I’d never been to with six new-to-me coasters to ride. It’s doable as long as the crowds aren’t too bad. When I got to the ticket kiosk, it gave me the option to buy an Express Pass, which allows you to skip the queues once for each of the main rides. The ticket to get into the park was $91 already and the Express Pass would add another $60. Sticker shock set in and I opted to take my chances on the queues being short enough to get everything done.

The park is very well done. It’s immersive in its theming and it’s very clean.

I made my way to the back of the park to ride Battlestar Galactica, the star attraction coasters, first. That’s when I saw the sign outside the queue that said the average wait time for that ride at the moment was one hour. Well, crap. I guess I’ll need that Express Pass after all! I asked where I could buy one and I was told that it’d have to go all the way back to the front of the park to the Universal Studios store. At least I’m getting my exercise in, but I’m killing off valuable time! I finally got my pass and made it back to Battlestar Galactica. Even though it’s called by one name, it’s actually a pair of coasters, one for the humans and one for the Cylons. Two completely different coasters fighting for space on the same piece of land.

I don’t have any pictures of the elaborate theming in the queues because the park doesn’t allow ANYTHING to be taken into the queue. Too many idiots would ignore the warnings and try to take out their phones on the rides, risking injury to themselves and other riders and even people on the ground around the ride. Everything must be locked up in a free locker outside the ride entrances and you’re even checked with a metal detector wand as you enter the queue. I showed my Express Pass to the queue jockey and was directed to a separate lane. I walked right past literally hundreds of people in the lineup and right up to the coaster and got on the next train out. The Express Pass was expensive, but it was absolutely worth it to get all the rides in during my short visit. The first coaster was Human and it’s a traditional sit-down coaster. It has a really nice start, with a LIM (linear induction magnet) launch up the hill and a nice steep drop.

After that, it’s mostly just a series of zig-zags and spirals. Honestly, it doesn’t live up to its appearance. It’s also a shame that the park doesn’t seem willing to attempt launching both coasters in sync - which it’s clearly designed to do. Having the other coaster interact with the one you’re on adds a lot to the experience, but even then this ride would be average at best. I was a bit disappointed, as I’d really looked forward to it. Ah, well. Gotta do the Cylon coaster next.

Cylon is an ‘inverted coaster’, meaning the cars hang below the track like a ski lift. A few manufacturers make this sort of coaster and while you can rely on a Bolliger and Mabillard brand inverted coaster to be a great experience, other brands such as Vekoma are notorious for their suckage. Unfortunately, this one is a Vekoma. I prepared for the worst.

Ended up in the back seat (the park doesn’t allow you to choose your seats, they fill the train from the front to the back) and was thrilled to see that on this trip, the Human train was leaving the station at the same time, so we would “duel” or “dogfight” as we should. Another LIM launched lift and drop, just like the Human side, but then things got nuts.

A cobra roll kicked things off and I was shocked to discover that Vekoma actually got it right. Smooth, no jitters, and perfectly engineered with no wallops to my head from the restraints. I’d have never guessed this was a Vekoma coaster. Fantastic. The rest of the ride is mostly a blur of crazy speeds, near-misses with the Human coaster, and surprise flips and twists that I absolutely didn’t see coming. It’s a good ride. It’s a really good ride. Probably top twenty for me, out of 900+, and absolutely in the top three inverted coasters I’ve ridden. I loved it.

Unfortunately, the Express Pass only gets you past the queue once per ride, so there was no time for another spin on Cylon. Had to move on to the Egyptian section of the park. Having just been to Egypt, the decorations here felt really cheesy, but the scale of them was impressive, anyway.

The signature attraction here is the Revenge of the Mummy coaster, which is all indoors and housed in a giant temple guarded by a pair of Anubis.

It’s basically a family-friendly coaster in terms of size and speed, but it incorporates a crazy amount of special effects based on the movie of the same name, complete with forward and backward sections, haunted house-style jump scares, and a room with a ceiling of fire. It’s stupid, giddy fun just like the movie.

Jurassic Park came next with the one coaster I was afraid I wouldn’t get to ride.

It’s a Setpoint brand “Swing Thing” coaster and with single cars holding just four people each, the capacity is so limited that the Express Pass isn’t available on this ride. If it were, the pass holders would likely fill up every car and the regular queue would never get to ride. I looked at the sign at the entrance and saw that the estimated wait time was 90 minutes. Just what I was afraid of. However, just under the “Y” in “Flyer” I noticed the best sign ever: Single Rider

WOO HOO! Because the capacity is so low on this ride, Sending a car out with an empty seat would be heresy. Sometimes, however, you might get a group of three riders and you need a single rider to fill the empty seat. To make that easier, they have a separate queue for single seat-fillers and that meant that instead of 90 minutes of queuing, I only needed to wait for the first empty seat. I was on the second car out. Perfect!

The ride itself is no big deal, but it’s fun to fly over the heads of folks on the ground. Next up is a really weird hanging coaster (literally half of the coasters in this park hang below the track, probably a record of some kind) themed to the story of Puss in Boots rescuing the goose that lays golden eggs.

It’s strange and kinda fun and perhaps if I remembered anything at all about the story, it would’ve been better.

Last up is Enchanted Airways, which is a peppy little family-friendly coaster with a dragon on the front. Very cute.

And that was all the time I had - I managed to get all six coasters in, but didn’t have time for the other stuff. And that’s fine, really, since the other rides are all copies of the stuff at the other Universal Studios parks and they’re mostly simulator rides, where you watch a movie on a screen and your seat moves along with the video. I’m not a fan of those and sometimes they make me queasy, so I was fine in leaving those behind.

I wish I’d brought my Lego store passport book with me, since there were two Lego stores between me and the ship. I thought maybe I could run back on board and get my book, then get it stamped, but the lengthy customs clearance process made that impossible. C’est la vie.

And now, we sail into the sunset as we leave one of my favourite cities. Tomorrow, a sea day to relax and recover from a very busy day in Singapore.

On to Thailand!

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