Singapore

I like Singapore and I fly there a couple of times a year on business.  I know, I’m supposed to be retired, but I’m finding I’m not very good at it.  And I don’t need much of an excuse to fly to Singapore.  The flight is a bruiser (it’s 16 1/2 hours from LAX to Singapore on a nonstop, and it usually goes over 24 hours if you can’t get a nonstop), but I don’t mind doing it.  Singapore is worth the trek.  I say I go there on business, but my visits are more like vacations than work.  I like the place.

Orchard Road:  Singapore’s Rodeo Drive

Orchard Road is Singapore’s upscale shopping area, and the architecture, the night scenes, and feel of the place is amazing.  These are scenes from a walk along Orchard Road with an 8mm fisheye lens on my Nikon.  It had just rained the evening I took these, and it made for dramatic photography.

You see two kinds of buildings in this area, and I captured both in the photos above. Old Singapore consists primarily of shop houses…two-story structures where folks have a business on the first floor and live on the second floor. And there are the modern skyscrapers. The mix of both makes for interesting scenes.

See those trees along the sidewalks?  They’re quiet during the day, but at night, the zillions of birds roosting in those trees are deafening. You literally have to shout to carry on a conversation because the birds drown everything out. It gets interesting when there’s a thunderstorm (very common in this part of the world).  When the skies thunder, the birds all fall silent for a second. Then, after a brief pause, they start chirping again. It’s all very cool.

Little India in Singapore

On another visit, I poked around Singapore’s Little India section. There are four major ethnic groups in Singapore, and folks from India comprise one of them.

Singapore Industries

Singapore has a rich maritime heritage (the four major industries in Singapore are shipping, oil refining, finance, and tourism). The shipping industry came about as a result of Singapore’s central location between India and China (the Chinese are another major ethnic group here).  There are all kinds of interesting things to see in Singapore, and it’s a walker’s paradise if you like to explore on foot.

You can see all kinds of things in Singapore you won’t see anywhere else in the world.   Check this out:

The structure you see above is a shopping, apartment, office, and entertainment complex comprised of three huge buildings capped by a roof styled like a ship (complete with gardens and a swimming pool).  The buildings are supposed to be waves, with the ship riding along top.  I’ve never seen anything like this.  You might have seen it on television when President Trump was in Singapore meeting with the North Korean guy.  But that’s Singapore. It has a lot of things you won’t see anywhere else.

Singapore Museums

To me, all of Singapore is a museum with architecture, dining, street sculpture, automobiles, and more that makes getting out and walking around a hell of an experience.  There are many museums, including one focused on Singapore’s World War II history I found particularly interesting.   Here are a few photos I grabbed in it.

Exploring Singapore on a Motorcycle?

Nope, I haven’t done that (not yet, anyway).  But I’m tempted to spend an extra day or two over there on the next trip and see if I can find somebody to rent me a motorcycle.  I’ve seen RX3s in Singapore.   That would be fun, and I think the RX3 would be a perfect bike to poke around on in this tropical urban paradise.  The entire country is only about 24 miles long, and most (maybe all) of it is city.  It seems to be very safe, too, so I don’t think I could find myself in any dangerous areas.  The only problem is they drive on the wrong side of the road over there, and that would take some getting used to.

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