THE IRONY OF COOLING ONE'S HEELS IN SINGAPORE - TOURISM AS PERFORMANCE ART

Day 2 (17 April) in Singapore - Jurong Bird Park

I've developed a ritual for pre-embarkation city stays. Arrive a couple of days before the cruise sails to get over jet lag, allow time for any errant luggage to arrive, and try not to act too much like a tourist. In Singapore the latter is not possible. The locals work hard, males over 25 years old don't wear shorts, and only families go to the Jurong Bird Park. On day two I wore long pants, but we visited Jorang. There are a lot of birds there.

Jurong is built over a ravine. At least we got a nice hike while looking at the birds. 

Short on commentary, the park can be explored without in your face narrations or any sort of background music 

The colored birds were impressive

Jurong is about an hour from downtown via the immaculate MRT subway/elevated train system and a short non-stop shuttle bus. The 50 acre fantastically landscaped park has 5,000 birds of 380 species. The park gets 900,000 visitors a year, mostly Singaporean families. That means on a Tuesday mostly young mom and dads and toddlers. The birds were nice, and the train/bus ride gave us an opportunity to mingle with the locals and practice photo taking skills. 

The pool area at the Fairmont provides a glimpse of Singapore's old colonial area, specifically  the old parade/cricket grounds

After almost three years on small cruise ships, I finally realized that hanging out at the hotel for the afternoon is acceptable, especially if, 1) the hotel has a nice pool without screaming kids, 2) you are exhausted from the high heat and humidity, and 3) you realize that there aren't a lot of other outdoor activities that are pleasant in the high heat and humidity. The Fairmont has a nice pool with both round and rectangular pools. You know you're in a luxury hotel when they provide various geometric bathing possibilities. Best of all most of the lounge chairs don't afford a view of the Marina Bay Hotel. 

"Arab Street" has been rebuilt to look like it used to be

We got the impression that the shopping opportunities on Arab Street were really meant for tourist gawkers

We visited an hawker stand food court for dinner after checking out "Arab Street", the theme park facsimile of what used to be an authentic ethnic neighborhood. We had missed this area during our previous visit to Singapore. I took Barbara to a lady's clothing shop. She found nothing that suited her. Our food court meal cost about $15.

Tomorrow was for hanging out with old people and taking a real hike despite the heat.


Day 3 (18 April) in Singapore - Singapore Botanic Gardens

Singapore Botanic Gardens orchids

Lots of orchids

Between the Botanic Garden and the Orchid Road shopping district

Don't be misled. Singapore is prosperous Asia. Think Hong Kong or Shanghai, not rural Indonesia. Denver's quite nice Botanic Gardens encompases 23 acres. We're members and enjoy visiting a few times a year. Singapore's immense Gardens is miles long and requires a longish MRT ride to find a corner of the island with enough land. This national park encompasses 183 acres and encloses a seven acre rainforest and the best orchid gardens in the world. Eat your heart out, Kew Gardens. The 3.5-acre National Orchid Gardens is built on a huge hillside and shows 60,000 plants made up of 1000 species and 2000 hybrids. Barbara likes orchids. We both like hikes. We walked the entire length of the Gardens on the serpentine pathways, spend hours in the Orchid Gardens. 

The other visitors to the park were Singaporean seniors. Many were doing their Tai Chi exercises or like us were taking leisurely hikes rather than looking at the plants. We did look at the plants for quite a while and then continued our hike outside the park, exploring some of the less recreational parts of town. It was extremely hot and humid, but we walked about 6 miles that day. I wore shorts.

The old cricket ground and colonial buildings are still there, kind of

The 5th ugliest hotel in the world reminds you that Singapore is in prosperous Asia

Singapore has some wonderful museums. No other tourists were in sight

The underground section of the Raffles Center has a huge food court.

After resting up at the hotel and my putting on long pants, we took a one stop MRT ride to the historic downtown and even visited one of the remarkable museums before it closed for the day. Exhausted--mostly from the heat, not the hike--we had a Japanese dinner in the food court below ground under our hotel. It has a very large food court. We did not see any Westerners all day or evening. Nobody stared at us though. Singaporeans are very polite and never look up from their smart phones anyway.


Day 4 (19 April) in Singapore - Singapore observations and Embarking Silver Wind

Singaporeans in their individual electronic worlds. Note they queue very well

Singapore is very hot and humid all year. As with some other modern Asia countries, the population has given up some freedoms for prosperity. Everyone has the latest smartphones and avoids going outdoors at all costs. They prefer to travel even very short distances on the MRT or use the vast network of underground linear shopping centers. No one but the isolated tourist attempts to walk outdoors to actually get somewhere. A matter of fact, the only people we saw outdoors were the seniors in the Botanic Gardens, the young families in the Bird Park, and presumably at the unique Night Zoo or Sentosa. Singapore is safe and has nice hotels, but the otherwise considerate and friendly Singaporeans walk into each other a lot. The government has tried to discourage that, but nobody looks up enough to see the warning signs. 

Only tourists see the warning signs

Mobile data coverage is everywhere including within the bowels of the MRT tunnels. My theory is that Singapore's outdoor environment has little to offer for the locals. The locals much prefer to live in a virtual world. We observed a whole lot of Angry Birds being played on the MRT besides the usual urge to keep in touch with friends. We didn't buy a mobile data package as a protest and as a result saw the warning sign advising people to look up from their phones. 

Unpacking in Suite 625 aboard Silver Wind

Keeping out of the way as Barbara unpacked and observing the strange office buildings in industrial Singapore near the harbor

At long last, we embarked Silver Wind via the huge shopping center/Cruise Port. I did my part unpacking by keeping out of Barbara's way. The nostalgic almost 10,000 mile cruise was about to start.