A City-Country

Jessica and I left Denver on Monday afternoon and had a six hour lay-over in the San Francisco airport. Thankfully, our friends and family helped to entertain us by giving us a scavenger-hunt for a plethora of items, clothing and peculiar people doing peculiar things. We met a few people along the way that had been to places we were about to travel to and all of them made us even more excited for our arrival. 

The flight was long. There are no two ways around that. It was 16 hours long, and of course, being teachers, we were not in the comfortable seats that recline to full beds, but rather the typical, run-of-the-mill airplane seats. While it was not a lot of fun, it was not that bad. It was nothing that would deter me from visiting remarkable new places. 

We arrived in Singapore at 6am on Wednesday, fully expecting to arrive with the sunrise, but being close to the equator, Singapore has days that are very close to 12 hour days, and the sun did not rise until close to 7, the time we arrived at our hotel. As it was so early, we were unable to check in, but we dropped off our luggage, refreshed and headed out to explore a whole new country.

Everyone who told us about Singapore mentioned the cleanliness of the city. Is it clean? Yes, but we were expecting, based on what we had heard, for it to be pristine. There is still trash on the road, but more so the further you are away from the top tourist destinations. The city is hot. Granted, the highs are in the upper 80s which would not scare an Alabama gal, like me, but the humidity level is even higher than what I am used to with a heat index well into the 100s. The city is incredibly modern. It seems technologically advanced with automatic doors that open with the push of the button, buildings created out of interesting architecture and even push buttons in our hotel room to indicate if we want the room to be cleaned or on do not disturb.

As we were in the city before it even seemed to be waking up, we decided just to walk and see where we ended up. We headed toward the tourist section of town, in particular, the bay and garden section of downtown. Being modern, The Gardens by the Bay is a feat of creation by mankind. While Jessica and I typically love finding natural beauty around the world, we thoroughly enjoyed the man-made creations of the gardens. The main attractions at the gardens are two enormous green houses and some man-made trees. We both expected to walk in to green houses more  oppressive than the humid outdooors but were pleasantly mistaken to find well-air-conditioned places with soothing classical music playing throughout. The first one we entered was full of spring around the world, flowers and fauna from Australia, California, South America and succulents from desert dry lands.

 

 

  

The second one was designed as a cloud forest, complete with a six-story waterfall and plants grown in nearby jungles. Magical walks at the level of the clouds completed the illusions.

 

 

The outdoor gardens had great places for children to play and explore, as well as large lizards, otters, and ponds full of lily pads.

 

 

The supertrees were man-made trees about four-stories tall, covered in flowers and vines. The trees were connected with walkways that would have made the Swiss Family Robinsons  proud. 

 

We wandered a bit more around the beautiful, intriguing city and came across a tourist office where our tired feet convinced us to book a Duck tour which included a road and water tour around some busy streets and into the bay. Our tour guide was informative and funny, sharing personal stories of the country she knows and loves. Singapore became a country in 1965 and is only 21km at its tallest by 42km at its widest. Its largest money-maker is in the shipping industry. It boosts and encourages racial harmony and diversity, something I can certainly get behind.

 

After sitting for a while, our bodies, which had not seen real sleep in days, but had walked over 23,000 steps in blistering heat were giving up on us, and we decided to give in and  call it an early night. We enjoyed our first, full day in this modern city are looking forward to getting to know it better!