Page 6 of 11
Singapore
A gardener told me some plants move but I can not believe it
The Star Alliance Round the World trip is a tremendous benefit but also comes chock full of restrictions. The first one is that they divide the world into three sections. North America/South America, Asia/Australia and Europe/Africa. You can take up to four stops in any section with a total of six stops in total, not counting your origin/final destination. Plus once you leave one of those three sections you can not go back, so you can not fly Newark - Shanghai - Seattle but you can fly Newark - Seattle - Shanghai. They allow one stop to be open jaw (more about that later), all flights must qualify for the business class saver fare and layovers are allowed and (quite honestly) expected. Star Alliance defines a layover as a stop less than 24 hours, so if you had a flight that lands in Singapore at midnight and another flight that leaves Singapore at 3pm the next day, you can get a quick 15 hours in Singapore without burning up a precious, precious stop.
Of course 15 hours sounds like a lot of time until you start doing the math. Once you take away an overnight stay at the airport hotel, the long subway ride into the CBD and all the time that you need to kill later at Changi Airport, there's not all that much actual time left to spend in Singapore. Knowing these constraints, I headed first to the Singapore Flyer for a quick overview of the city. Something which I had all to myself early on a Thursday morning.
The view from the top of the Singapore Flyer, 500 feet above the sea and 80 miles north of the Equator.
Normally if given a choice between a hard way to do things and an easy way to do things, I'll pick the hard way. I'm far happier to figure out a subway system and walk than to take a taxi. That said and knowing that I had limited time in Singapore, I decided to go against my judgment and pick the easy way out. Singapore Airlines offers a free, two hour bus tour of Singapore from the airport for transfer passengers that swings by all of the sights and gets you back safe and sound for your early afternoon flight. Unfortunately there was a problem. In order to sign up for the tour, I would need to be in the transfer area before clearing Singapore customs. My airport hotel was outside customs and Singapore does not allow you to clear customs more than once a day. So instead of a comfortable and easy tour bus ride, I found myself crammed into a rush hour subway train, checking offline maps on my phone, trying to figure out where the hell I was trying to go. And honestly, I was absolutely fine with that.
With my limited time in Singapore, I was still able to take a ride on the Singapore Flyer and walk over to the spectacular Gardens by the Bay, where the real trees take a backseat to the fake ones.
William Gibson famously called Singapore "Disneyland with the Death Penalty.” If Shanghai is "The Matrix" (and I have every reason to believe that it is), then Singapore is "Elysium" but without Matt Damon around to screw everything up. And the death penalty part is also a real thing- stamped on the landing card, in red and all in capital letters is a warning: Death for drug traffickers under Singapore law. This is not the place to break or bend the law. It's the kind of place that forbids jaywalking and doesn't allow people to drink water or even suck on a breath mint in the subway. For a few hours that's not a problem, but I'm not sure it's sustainable in the long run.
And while the (city) state may be authoritarian and unforgiving, at least it's really pretty to look at. This is the approach to the Gardens by the Bay with the giant, fake mega trees towering over all and marching off into the distance.
None of these pictures from the Gardens by the Bay look real, but even by those standards, this picture really, really doesn't look real. Possibly because it's kind of not. This is another constructed panorama, six landscape photos smooshed together and then straightened out, ending up with something that feels a little more like a rendering than like reality, but, somewhat coincidentally, the Gardens of the Bay also feels a little more like a rendering than like reality in person.
The building in the background with the crazy flying surfboard thing is the Sands Casino, which would have been my next stop if time allowed. When I was originally researching potential stops for my trip, I dismissed Singapore because I really didn't think there was all that much to do there besides getting arrested for jaywalking. But now, after my all too short layover, I am anxious to find my way back there to finish what I started.
