The Trees Are For The Birds!

Me and my Jenny caught a boat today to the Marina Bay so we could complete our tour of the Gardens on the Bay and watch the light show.

Every city you go to always looks very different from the water.

Our destination.

The little white building on the left is the Art and Science Museum building which has been built in the shape of a lotus flower.

And here's the famous Merlion.

The Merlion is the most famous image in the country.  It is an imaginary creature that represents Singapore's humble origins as a fishing village. "Mer" refers to the sea and lion translates as "singa" in sanskrit, while the fish tale symbolises the old city of Temasek.

There seems to be a bit of a theme going on here in Singas... They build things to look like other things.

The Merlion, the lotus flower building, the building that looks like a ship, and now the Helix bridge has been designed to look like DNA!  It's quite cool.

So, back in the garden and wandering around the bits we missed the other day and we came across this piece of art (?).  It seems to be a large, floating, white baby.  We couldn't get closer to see what the hell it was as they were doing a bit of maintenance on that exact spot, so it shall remain a mystery.

Another art instalment do you think?  Except this person was real and was really asleep.  It's the heat - it wipes you out.  And this just goes to show how low the crime rate is here.  The man's shoes are still there and he was holding his mobile phone in his hand as if handing it to someone to steal..... but nobody did.  Well done people.

 Again, we were taken in by the beautiful flowers and plants.

And funny little installations along the way.  I do so love a mushroom! 

After the wandering in the heat had taken its toll, we headed up to the roof top bar atop one of the super trees for a 360° view of Singapore.  There were about 50 cargo ships all bobbing away just off the island.  It just goes to show how big  and how important the port is here.

The plan was to have dinner up the tree, but their restaurant was booked out and anyway, after one drink up there, we were lucky to have enough for a taxi home!  Instead, we chose the Peach Garden Noodle House, which is part of the Supertree Dining area and let me tell you what a mistake that turned out to be.

We wanted to order dumplings, which were on the menu, but they were apparently only for the lunch menu. We ordered some white bait, which turned out to be a plate of hollow, deep fried bits of fish shaped batter which surprisingly still had the eyes.  They were promptly sent back and struck from the bill.  Then I ordered a chicken dish that they had run out of (this was at 6pm) and they suggested another dish that didn't look as good.... and it wasn't nearly as good... in fact, I'm going to go as far as to say that it was the worst tasting meal I've eaten in the 2 months we've been away.  Again - uneaten, taken away and struck from the bill.  We ordered a plate of broccoli, and from the pictures in the menu, it was meant to be Chinese broccoli, but a plate of normal "English" broccoli came out.  When we queried it and showed her what we wanted from the menu, so just pointed to the dish that looked nothing like the menu and nodded.  We ended up eating that though - we were starving!  Jenny did have a nice wanton soup and I had a lovely coconut juice straight from a coconut, so that was nice.

My recommendation on dining at the Gardens would be to go anywhere else but here.  They did take things off the bill without question though which was appreciated, but the lack of hesitation or want of more feedback did make me wonder if they have things sent back so often that they know it's terrible and don't need to ask?

Anyway..... as we walked out of the restaurant - this started to happen.

The trees started to light up and dinner, or the lack of was a distant memory.

It was quite magical and alien at the same time.

The people up on the skywalk got a great view of the lights and of the beautiful sunset.

There is so much to do and see in Singapore at night.  The tree light show being only one of them.  Another is the laser water show which is in the Marina bay on the other side of the Marina Bay hotel.  So we hightailed it back over the dragonfly bridge towards the lasers and as we got to the top of the walk over bridge, we turned and got to see the spectacular light show in the trees.

All set to beautiful music, the trees change colours as if they are dancing.

Then on the other side of the bay, we had to wait until the next show started so we took the time to sit and look at the city through the palms and watch the world go by... or jog by, as it were - there were A LOT of joggers!  Of course I was starving by then - due to the distant memory of having no dinner, so we ordered beers and nachos whilst we watched the people exercising.

Then we sat down with all the peeps while the next lot of laser/light magic happened.  It was crazy, there was water and fire and lasers and images and video projected up onto the spray of water and there were bubbles and there was music..... Apparently it took 100 experts 3 years to perfect this show.  It only goes for 15 minutes, but it's quite mesmerising.

Thank you for a great day/night Singapore.  You really know how to turn it on!