1°N

The first thing I discovered in Singapore: the equator is not my climate zone.

Singapore is one of the few major cities (well, it’s actually a city-state) that sits on or nearly on the equator. At 1°N latitude, that’s close enough for me.

The combination of heat and humidity was a shock to our systems—we had thought Tainan in Taiwan was hot, but Singapore was much hotter and more humid. Every day was about 31C/88F and humidity around 80% making the heat index (or ‘real feel’) in the range of 36C/95F).

And every day without fail, the sky darkened and it rained heavily for about an hour in the afternoon (which was actually a bit of a relief for a few minutes). Truly tropical weather.

Of course that makes everything green and lush, and every building and all public transportation is airconditioned, so it was always possible to escape the heat.

We had five days in Singapore, and we quickly discovered how easy it was to get around using the MRT (as the subway system is called) and also the buses, which helped to limit the amount of walking we had to do in the heat.

Along with every other tourist in Singapore, we first went to Gardens by the Bay and spent the day wandering through the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest.

The daily rainstorm came while we were in the Flower Dome, and we watched water sheet off the glass roof for over an hour, glad to be inside. There were multiple ecosystems, each with a different variety of plants and throughout, there were interesting and clever sculptures set in and amongst the plants and trees.

Both were exceptionally well designed- we were particularly taken with the Cloud Forest, with its multistory waterfall, tropical plants, various sculptures and Dale Chiluly waterlilies.

The rain had cleared by the time we went outside to walk among the giant ‘supertrees’ and along the way we encountered the world’s longest cast bronze sculpture- almost 200 metres long, it features 60 full-sized endangered animals, both land and sea. It was quite impressive.

We ogled the iconic Marina Bay Sands from below, as well as Singapore’s many impressive and architecturally innovative skyscrapers in the downtown area, with one in particul;ar really catching my eye.

On our last night in Singapore, we splurged and did a truly touristy thing — we went up to the Sky Park of Marina Bay Sands to watch the sun set, see a light show on the bay below and enjoy the city lights at night.

It was a bit of a swiz in that the ticket only gives you access to the observation deck- the really cool half of Sky Park with the trees and infinity pool is reserved for hotel guests, so we could only see it from a distance.

Nevertheless, the view was spectacular, and gave us an interesting overview of the city. The promised light show was a bit of a damp squib, so we left before it ended to escape the crowd descending the 56 floor elevator and returned to earth with the rest of the peons not entirely sure it had been money well spent.

We also went to see Raffles of course, with its echoes of the past glories of the British Empire. Being mere toruists, we were not allowed to enter the building and could only peer throught the windows at the hallowed spaces, like some sad Dickens’ characters…

It remains a grand edifice with beautiful grounds that occupy a square city block, but is now rather sadly placed amongst a sea of highrises, instead of next to the sea, as it was originally, a slightly forlorn and anachronistic landlocked oasis clinging to an earlier age when everything around it has passed it by.

Our own hotel was on the edge of Little India, literally across the road from an MRT station and a huge shopping mall where I saw the craziest store: Home Baking Day. In the shop window, a row of brightly colored Kitchenaid mixers and shelves full of ovens, baking ingrdients, pans and icings. A sign ouside said ‘no need to book in advance-just walk in and start baking’!

We had stretched our budget a bit to stay fairly near the CBD, and get a suite with a kitchen and sitting area, which proved to be a good decision, as Tom was still recovering from Covid and we could easily come back to the room during the day when we got too hot and tired.

We found being  tourists in Singapore to be incredibly easy: everyone spoke English, and as you might expect– since Singapore is notorious for it–everything is neat, clean, modern efficient and incredibly orderly—eerily so.

Arrows in front of the MRT doorways direct passengers boarding trains to stand at the edges, allowing those disembarking to use the centre of the doorway—and everyone complies without fail.

Cheery cartoon characters on signs in the trains urge passengers to give up their seats for the elderly and pack close together on crowded trains. One sign also lists all the prohibitions, including one against durians!

There is no graffiti anywhere (and precious little street art of any kind), no litter, no chaos on the roads as seen in other Asian cities, and for a big city, it is remarkably quiet.

All of this would make Singapore quite the Stepford Wives experience if it wasn’t for the neighborhoods, which are really the most interesting and visually fascinating part of the city, and merit a separate blog post of their own.