What can you do on a free day in Singapore, provided you’ve been here before and done the basics? Here’s what I did.
The free day started Thursday night, with about half our group signing up for the “night safari.” While I recall some of my students had gone to it, I had been skeptical. To paraphrase Reagan’s secretary of the interior, “If you’ve seen one animal, you’ve seen them all.” I wouldn’t go to a natural history museum overseas, for example, since we have a great one in Chicago.
As one of the other faculty said, though, it was 120 times better than I thought it would be. We got on a tram in the park and rode around looking at wild animals in their environment–elephants, water buffalo, giraffes, etc. Since many are active at night, they sleep all day in the zoo. Plus, the food was out, so they were up and scarfing. We got out at one stop and walked through the jungle, viewing (happily there was some barrier) lions (Singapore’s namesake) and leopards. As is typical in Singapore, it was very well done.
Yesterday for me began with an early morning swim. While I wanted to do some pilates/yoga, it’s hard to resist swimming outside in January. Try that at home!
One of the museums I hadn’t been to was the Asian Civilizations museum. What sold me on it were the building itself (a former government building in the area of the former British government when Singapore was capital of the Straits Settlements [together with Malacca and Penang]), and the blurb in the Lonely Planet that the museum housed an outstanding Muslim exhibit. Since we’re leaving later this a.m. for Malaysia, a Muslim country, I thought I’d better “be prepared.” What I was unprepared for were the excellent explanations, so good that I bought the collection catalogue, something I’m loathe to do, because they’re heavy!
Next stop was Chinatown, for lunch (I think I need to take one of the food courts home!), including dumplings and red bean pancakes, and for wandering aimlessly. It’s a neat old colonial area with pastel buildings and overhangs to keep out the rain/sun, and a wonderful assortment of Chinese New Year trinkets. I looked for a calendar, and they must be almost as obsolete as letters, but I did find one in a department store.
The evening? I learned the Singapore Symphony was playing at the Esplanade, a new venue on the harbor that looks like a durian fruit (the one that smells like hell, but tastes like heaven–fortunately, the Esplanade smelled pretty good) that’s relatively new and reputedly had great characteristics. The program was two Tchaikovsky pieces I had never heard of (does anyone not in a music appreciation class know that he wrote 3 piano concerti? We heard the second). The second piece was the Manfred Symphony–toward the end the organ entered. Aside from Saint Saen’s famous organ symphony, I’d not known of any similar combination before.
All that would have been needed to top off the evening was a visit to the Long Bar at the Raffles hotel for a Singapore Sling, but as one of my Scouts used to say, “I’ve already done that.” Two days ago.
Got to pack for the trip to Kuala Lumpur via Malacca. I understand that we will change buses at the border.
Talk to you soon.