On the tail end of my trip to Indonesia we decided (since our flight back was from Singapore) that we would spend a few days in Singapore taking in the sights and sounds and seeing as much cool stuff as we had time for.
We had been without air-conditioning for two weeks so arriving at the hotel was nothing short of orgasmic! Of course, now that I am back home I am freezing again and complaining about the cold daily.. typical.
After checking in at the hotel it was already late afternoon so we decided it was a good time to look for somewhere to eat and have a bit of an explore of the area.
So this was our path. We left our hotel near Clarke Quay (to the left of the map) and wandered into Clarke Quay, which was full of restaurants. We had some dinner and decided to follow the river towards the bay area. It was my mission to get a cool long exposure image of the merlion with the marina bay sands hotel in the background.
It was pissing rain for most of the way until we got to the Fullerton hotel, which is a very expensive, posh hotel from the colonial times though back then it was a post office. We crossed the bridge at the hotel and made our way across the street to the small park where the merlion is not situated (it used to be nearby but has been moved).
When I saw the Merlion I was so disspointed. You will not see a picture of it here.. because the damn thing was covered in scaffolding and tarps! It was undergoing renovation so you couldn't see it at all and my first planned shot went up in smoke.
Luckily for me the Singapore skyline is a buffet of delights for the eye to devour and there were plenty of alternative shots to get. Most of which involved the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.
They also refer to this area as Downtown Core for obvious reasons.. you are in the middle of it next to all the major commercial high rise buildings.. Most of them of course are banks. Many of my old high school class mates ended up working here for at least a few years after college. Most graduate programmes being in banking or finance in some way.
There's a laser light show in front of the Marina Bay Sands in the bay every night. You get these cool beams of light coming from the hotel as well as some sweet fountain action. And if you are willing to pay more for your Singapore boat tour, you can take a boat in the evening right up to the fountains in the bay and watch the show up close.
The lights on the building are constantly changing as well which is pretty cool.. It gives you the impression that the whole place is just one big party all the time.
It doesn't look like it but on our walk it was about 31 degrees celcius and we were starting to get really hot and sweaty and my girlfriend (a born and bred Scot) was getting cranky. There have not been many times in her life where she needed to deal with this kind of heat. Thought to me it was glorious. Anyway, we started on our way back to our hotel and passed this badass building, which is the Victoria Theatre. They were projecting all kinds of cool images on to the front of the building.
Turns out it was part of some festival of light and there were other open air exhibits/shows/projections like this in the area. Pretty cool and I resolved to come back and perhaps even check out the museums and the national gallery next door later on in our visit. Spoiler alert: We didn't. We ran out of time.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped by this luscious gem of a building. Look at the amazing colours and stuff. This was one of the shots on my list of 'shots I need to get before leaving Singapore or I'm not going home'. It is without a doubt the most unique building in the city, and this city is drowning in unique buildings!
After spending some time getting these shots and noticing the battery on my camera was starting to get low it was time to finish the walk and head back to the hotel.
On the way I got one last shot, this cool lit up tree is in Clarke Quay where we started our walk. They were all over the place and I didn't get it at first, but then I realised, we are here during Chinese new year.. and these trees are part of the decor.
I love Singapore.
!steemitworldmap 1.286500 lat 103.854851 long Singapore Day 1 - A walk through downtown Singapore D3SCR
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