After a short night of sleep for Omar and Christi, we began our official Singapore sightseeing. This is Omar’s sixth trip to Singapore, so he took on the role of tour guide.

We took a taxi from the marina to the Raffles Hotel, named after the founding father of Singapore. It was built in 1887 and is quite opulent. It is classic colonial architecture, with high ceilings, crown moldings and fancy chandeliers. We walked through the court yard and had lunch in their bakery. The food was good and surprisingly inexpensive, served on china with high quality silverware. Omar introduced us to curry puffs, chicken curry wrapped in a puff pastry, which is now a new favorite of Christi’s. Most of the hotel is blocked off to non-guests, so we didn’t get to see the lobby or any of the inside beyond the restaurant.

From the hotel, we walked a few blocks over to the esplanade. While most of the buildings are high rises, not all are. There are a few old colonial buildings, and some newer looking lower structures. Between the park areas and the low rise buildings, the environment feels open and you can see plenty of sky, so you don’t get the claustrophobic feeling that you get in places like New York where there are too may really tall buildings crammed into a small area.

We walked through the Theaters on the Bay, an architecturally unique building situated on the northeast corner where the river meets the bay. Next to the theater there is a huge construction site, where they are building a stadium, a huge Ferris wheel, like the London Eye, and a casino. The ferris wheel and stadium look to be done, and the casino is still in the excavation stages.

We crossed the bridge that goes over the river to the southeast corner, which has a small park that houses the new and old Merlions. The Merlion is Singapore’s mascot, a statue with the top half lion, bottom half mermaid that has water spouting out of its mouth. The old one was built in the 60’s and is maybe 4 1/2 feet tall. The new one has been built very recently only a few feet away from the old one and is more like 20 feet tall. The first shot is of the old Merlion, and you can see the new Merlion behind it, as well as the casino construction site on the other side of the bay.

After posing for photos, we followed the river west a couple of blocks to the Central Business District (CBD). On one side of the river is the Asian Civilization Museum, housed in an old colonial building. The other side of the river is lined with three story row houses, also left over from the turn of the century. Surrounding the enclave of historic buildings along the water are huge sky scrapers. We walked along both sides of the river. The row houses are now all restaurants on the ground level with apartments above.

We walked through the business district, and, much to our shock, saw a piece of saran wrap on the ground and a jay walker. It’s the first “criminal” activity we have seen yet.
We made our way south towards Chinatown. What is interesting is that there are blocks upon blocks of these preserved old row houses, all surrounded by newer skyscrapers. All the buildings are well maintained. Even the alley ways are immaculately clean. There are statues and street art decorating the streets. There are Starbucks, 7-11’s and shopping malls absolutely everywhere.

We stopped in at Temple Thian Hock Keng Temple, a Buddhist temple completed in 1842 that is now a national monument. The roof of the entrance has four big dragons on it, which is pretty cool. The interior layout is interesting. You walk into a courtyard with a huge altar housing several deities. There is a walkway that goes from the sides around to the back, and the walkway is lined with smaller alters containing other deities. All the altars and pillars are intricately carved, painted in red and gold.

We passed several more historic houses of worship — a couple of mosques, another Buddhist temple and a Hindu temple, but we didn’t go into any of them. From the exterior, the Hindu temple looks a lot like the one we had seen in Nadi, Fiji. Its facade is intricately carved and the carvings are painted over with bright colors. The paint has clearly faded some, but you still get the idea of how bright the colors probably once were. We find it interesting that the Hindu temples in Bali look much more like the Buddhist temples of Singapore than the Hindu temples of Singapore.

We eventually came to the heart of Chinatown. Chinatown is more lively and colorful than the other areas we have visited so far. It is made up almost exclusively of the two story row houses, with very few taller buildings. There is one street of all food vendors under a big canopy. The rest of the streets are lined with mom and pop retail stores on its first floor. The vendors all set up displays beyond the boundaries of their store, so the street is full of merchandise and people browsing the displays as they walk down the street. Vendors call out to you to buy from their shop, but it is not to the point of harassment like we had sometimes experienced in Bali.

We wandered through the stalls and got dinner at a real Chinese restaurant. Since we had gotten so little sleep and were on our feet all day, we headed back to Kosmos and called it an early night.