Our four islands holiday (2): Singapore
On our first day in Singapore, Tess and I took a walking tour of the city led by Bridgit O’Donovan, an Australian who is married to a Chinese Singaporean and has lived on the island for some 20 years. She recently left Meta – where she worked with my friend Simon Milner who recommended her – and has formed her own guiding company called The Ugly Dumpling. We left the hotel at 9 pm and were back about 3.30 pm.
We began in Singapore’s historic Civic District, exploring the former City Hall and Supreme Court buildings and tracing the city’s political and architectural development. We stopped in one of these buildings to enjoy the air conditioning and have a cold It was already clear that this multicultural state works hard to recognise and celebrate diversity everywhere from representation in the legislature to ethnic allocations of housing,
From the Civic District, we walked towards the Singapore River to explore the role of trade and migration in Singapore’s growth. We finished this part of the walk at Merlion Park, with views across Marina Bay to the distinctive buildings of the ArtsScience Museum (a white, lotus-shaped structure) and the Marina Bay Sands (three 55-storey hotel towers with a 340 metre long Skypark on top of them).
The park contains the Merlion statue, the city’s iconic mascot, with the head of a lion and the body of a fish, standing 8.6 metres (28 feet) high and weighing 70 tons. The sculpture was originally installed in 1972 by the Singapore Tourist Board as a welcome figure to tourists and relocated to its present site in 2002.
From the Merlion, we took a short taxi ride to the Singapore City Gallery at URA Centre. The gallery’s city models and displays provide a fascinating overview of Singapore’s transformation, urban planning, energy provision, and housing and land constraints. The main attractions are a massive model of the city and an electronic representation of the whole island. There are extensive pans to expand the city up (more skyscrapers), down (more underground locations) and out (reclamation of land between islands).
Next we took another cab to Le Shan Cafe, a small heritage café beside Thian Hock Keng Temple, for a relaxed lunch. I had rendang chicken, Tess had singlaksa, and Bridgit organised some colourful desserts.
After our meal, we waked round to the Thian Hock Keng Temple (or Temple of Heavenly Bliss), a wonderfully coloured building with representations of Mazu, the sea goddess who protected travellers making the dangerous journey to Singapore.
The temple was built between 1839 and 1842 by the first Chinese immigrants who dedicated the shrine to Ma Chu Poh, the Goddess of the Sea. It has granite pillars from China, blue tiles from The Netherlands, and case-iron railings from Scotland.
From there, we continued through the historic streets of Chinatown. On our final stop in a cafe for ice cream, Bridgit told us more stories of migration, education, healthcare, work and community and introduced us to some of the women whose contributions are often missing from the usual version of Singapore’s history. She wants to write a book which I suggested be called “Sisters Of Singapore”.