gardenspiderbay

Hello again! While we’re still celebrating Chinese New Year (celebrations last 15 days), we spent my long weekend doing more things. Not terribly exciting things, but why should we do more exciting things than you have in the last two weeks, and where is your blog about those, huh? *cough* That escalated quickly… sorry. Apologies by way of photos, perhaps?

 

 

So. Chinese New Year. There are lots of celebrations all through the city. Fireworks every night for 15 days in the Marina Bay, for example. What better way to kick off the lunar new year than finding a good spot across the bay and snap pictures? I teamed up with my colleague Mike from Toronto, and we spent a while getting to a spot where we thought we’d have a good view. If it weren’t quite so late in the day, I might find a way to build up your anticipation to the amazing fireworks we imagined we’d see. But it ended up being a bit underwhelming.

 

 

 

The lack of excitement made us want to at least drink a cocktail before heading back to the apartment (Mike lives in the same building), so while I was still googling Singapore’s best cocktail bars, Mike had already found one and we were there 20 minutes later. We wanted to sit in a quiet bar, have a chat, sip a drink and go to sleep. The 25$ ‘cover charge’ we paid at the counter in the lobby seemed to indicate a good establishment. Again… build-up of anticipation: a long long hallway with expensive carpets, an elevator with only one destination (‘Bar’), a few other excited patrons in impossibly short dresses and very chic silk shirts, a long ride upwards. And then… not the high-class bar, alas. Instead, we walked into a very loud and not very subtle night club that played bad mash-ups of worse hits from the 1990s and  sported an audience that was about our age, dressed about half our age and danced four to five times our age.

 

 

 

 

 

We had a drink that was at least not a total waste of time. And on the ride back home, our Uber driver gave us a very comprehensive list of recommended cocktail bars that, incidentally, was almost the same as the one I had found on Google earlier. But I’m not one to gloat.

The next day, we decided to visit the Gardens by the Bay (Albert calls them “gardenspiderbay”, one word) and see the Supertrees. Luckily, Singapore is pretty empty at Chinese New Year. Because all of Singapore had the same idea and was there with us. There’s a nice playground and water park for the kids (accessible, again, only for people with children), there are a few indoor gardens that we didn’t visit because MONEY (and we were quite late), and a maybe 10-minute light show around the Supertrees. They are big and look impressive enough. We might go again at a day that is NOT New Year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the light show was done and we had wandered around the ‘tree trunks’ for a little while, we thought we’d take a taxi home because it was really late. But half of Singapore had the same idea, so instead of standing in the queue for an hour, we decided to take the MRT, after all. The station is at the other end of the park, so we walked there. Yes, if we had paid as much attention as you probably have, we should have known that the other half of Singapore had THAT same idea. So we walked back again (because if we’re gonna wait, anyway, at least we’ll wait for the faster, more comfortable means of transportation) and later, eventually, got home.

That was quite late, so the next two days we relaxed in close vicinity of the apartment and spend a fair amount of time at the bigger one of our two pools. (Two pools are a lie, by the way, and I’m sorry for telling it so consistently. There are a staggering total of 19 pools at the site, including a fitness pool with treadmills and bikes in it, several bubbly spa pools, a kids pool etc. etc. We haven’t counted them, but the advertisement for the complex says 19, so we’ll believe it.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Monday, we teamed up with Mike again who became Uncle Mike very quickly, and made a first attempt at visiting the aquarium. With mixed results.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The entrance to the aquarium is aaaall the way on the other side of the building. It seems we can’t get into any tourist attraction without standing in line for hours first. We asked an employee if maybe we should come back later, and she said yeah, well, after 3pm maybe. Once more, we were not amused. Bloody tourists, right? We walked around in the area aimlessly until it was time for lunch. All of Singapore (yes I know, it’s getting old) had the same idea and there were queues in front of every desirable restaurant, so we walked back across the bridge and found something yummy at the Vivo center.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With a belly full of lunch we made our way across the bridge one more time (Albert bravely tagging along the whole time). The aquarium queue had vanished, thank God, although the guy at the entrance told us that it was still rather packed inside. How bad can it be, we thought. And the answer is: worse than we thought. As it turns out, people don’t go to the aquarium to watch fish. They go to shoot selfies with fish. Once that’s done, they’ll sit down in front of the fish and engage it a bit of social networking. Gather some likes, giggle over some comments. Maybe take a nap while they’re already sitting down. People with selfie-sticks, the bane of modern society. There was even one older gentleman who took videos of the fish, but with his phone mounted on his selfie stick so he could keep a safe distance away from the glass. In case it breaks, maybe? At least he consistently had one-and-a-half meters of empty space around him. So, in a nutshell, we constantly had to fight for the boys to be able to actually see anything, and we all tired of it pretty quickly. Mike was ready to punch the guy with the selfie-stick. Exhaustion finally caught up with Albert. We were over that day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be fair, it’s a great aquarium. It’s the people who make it insufferable, not the fish. The fish are alright.

That’s all there is to tell for now, I think. We had New Year celebrations at work, complete with a gift, dragon dancers, drummers, a buffet and pastry. Another celebration here in the Oasia, with another buffet and an adorable choreography by the staff. We’re making plans. We’ll let you know about them later. 🙂

Here are a few pictures from lunch the other day. Buildings. Rooftops. Day-to-day life. Now tell us about yours!

Take care!