Singapore Flyer and Marina Bay Sands sight seeing

Our body clocks are all out so we seem to have been making it out the door around lunch time each day and are still going at 10pm at night but everything is still open then! Today we stopped at our local Kopitan which apparently means coffee shop, though it has a lot more than the coffee shops we are used to. After our usual $2.50 breakfast with a plate of mixed fruit we headed back towards the Marina Bay Sands area for some sight seeing.

First stop was the Fountain of Wealth which is apparently the biggest fountain in the world. Pretty impressive. Adam had read about the Hindu tradition of walking around the fountain 3 times for wealth and luck so we thought we would have a go. We very quickly found though that walking around the top in the wrong direction doesn't cut the mustard!! We then discovered that you can walk around and touch the lucky waters at the centre of the fountain at certain times of the day and that there is also a light show at night so decided to come back a little later for this.

Next stop on the tour was the Singapore flyer which is a big wheel similar to the London Eye. We were in a capsule with 4 others and the view was fantastic. Would recommend this to anyone visiting Singapore. It took 45 minutes to do a full revolution and if you so desire you can hire the champagne capsule and drink your way around or do 2 revolutions while you eat dinner!

We then visited the Marina Bay Sands hotel itself which is an engineering feat. We had seen on the National Geographic channel on the TV a programme about the building of this hotel. It is pretty impressive, huge and is known for it's leisure facilities up on the roof looking down on Singapore. This was also certainly a view though a little disappointing not to be able to see the swimming horizon pools up there, though if I was a guest I wouldn't want to be one of the attractions on view in Singapore so suppose that is only fair.

Here are some shots from thr Flyer and the Hotel observation deck.





Feeling a little weary after this we found the TWG tea shop back down in the plaza. Much of this newly developed area of Singapore is still being working on so it is currently a bit of a walk from the Promenade MRT stop to the hotel and the feet needed a rest! The plaza itself is also a place to get lost in. Anyway we had a very delicious but expensive afternoon high tea and I swear it took me half an hour to choose which tea to have from the several hundered on offer.

Feeling refreshed we then visited the Art Science Museum which is in the lotus flower shaped building. The museum is currently hosting Salvadore Dali and Vincent Van Gogh. Dali was of course weird but many of his quotes made me laugh. The only thing I could understand of his was his "soft clocks" which are distorted clocks and to me this meant distorted time. Well I never can seem to arrive anywhere when I'm meant to and there are never enough hours in my day to achieve all I set out to! The Van Gogh exhibition was an amazing digital multimedia display with constantly changing projections of his paintings onto canvases in a 360 degree view. It was hard to know where to look and I could have stayed in there all day but there was so much else to see.

We ended the day with a pub meal at an Irish pub in Singapore complete with Asian Irish band, Guiness on tap and a Guiness beef pie, Bangers and Mash. Lovely!

Here is the Fountain of Wealth.