A Little About Singapore

 Our second day in Singapore we decided to go to see where it all began, as a British settlement at the mouth of the Singapore river. That is where in 1819 a British guy named Raffles set up a colony and trading post on this little island off the southern tip of Malaysia, a convenient place, considering that the Malay peninsula (hanging down from Thailand) bisects the sea-route between China and India. This trading post became what is now the core of a gleaming downtown, a city dedicated to business, trade and banking. Aside from being one of the busiest shipping ports of the world, Singapore is also ranked by the World Bank as the world's easiest place to do business.

To get there we took the MRT (metro rapid transit) which is spotless, trains arrive every 5 minutes and stations are two minutes apart. This station happened to be decorated up and down its length with hundreds of blooming orchids!

The Singapore river is only a few dozen meters across and we walked over on this iron pedestrian bridge called the Cavenagh Bridge. Back in the day, the river was highly polluted and clogged with 'bumboats' which moved people and goods (or tried to, you should see the old photos, they look like a total logjam of flotsam). In 1977 they launched the Clean River Project which resulted in what is now a lovely river park promenade but to honor the past, there are bronze sculptures of the people and activities that took place along the river centuries ago. Here is a tableau of an Indian and a Chinese coolie loading an oxcart.

Here are the kids playing and jumping into the river from back in the day.

So our main destination, aside from viewing the river, its colonial past and futuristic present, was to visit the Asian Civilizations Museum, a truly amazing place where we spent most of the day learning so much about Asia, stretching from western Asia (Turkey and Arabia), south Asia (India), Southeast Asia (Thailand, Cambodia, etc.), and China. What was missing, and thank goodness, we were wiped, were the 'Stans' of the former Soviet Union, Asian parts of Russia and East Asia (Japan, Korea). 

Caligraphy, religions, hill tribes, processions, ancestor worship, rice cultivation, textiles, carvings, metals, art... Lex writes about some of these in her blog: www.alexishamburger.blogspot.com

Ooops, I almost forgot we ended the excursion with a lovely ice coffee sitting by the shore of Marina Bay overlooking both the Merlion statue -a symbol of Singapore that is half lion, half fish- and the incredible Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Truly a spot so scenic that brides come here to pose for their wedding photos.

The Marina Bay Sands is a luxury hotel with a 'ship' sitting on top of a trio of 55 storey towers. The ship is a 2.4 acre park with an infinity pool.