Vietnam the third: day 19, Singapore
Our last full day in Singapore, and, weirdly enough, according to our various step trackers, our most walked day of the trip.
We kicked off with the Gardens by the Bay, that wonderful Singapore landmark with the crazy artistically fake trees that you see in all the tourist videos. Our rideshare driver taking us there was a hoot, had lots of interesting knowledge to share, including apparently Singapore has a bit of a fresh chicken shortage at the moment, due to borders opening and closing with Malaysia, which is affecting the quality of that Singaporean icon, Hainanese chicken rice. Singapore’s main source of chicken now is Indonesia, which is great but they are frozen, fine for frying but Hainanese chicken rice needs fresh chicken to be good. So she told us. She also told us about the various different rideshare companies in Singapore, and good places to visit — she was very entertaining, and I swear next time we’re in town we’ll try to find her and get her to be our tour guide for the day.
Singapore’s airforce were training for the annual National Day parade that takes place in August, so we were treated to several flybys by their F-16s and other assorted aircraft. It’s interesting, even though Singapore is quite a small island, and Changi is one of the worlds busiest airports, it is unusual to hear planes flying overhead. Obviously part of this is the approach to Changi being over the ocean, but we certainly found the sound from the fighter jests a little unusual in the general Singapore soundscape.
L took the lead on where we should check out at the Gardens, as she’s the expert with plants and things. Following a bit of wandering, we took to the Skyway, 130m of walkway 22m above the ground. Neither L nor myself love heights: I channel this into a desire to climb all the tall things to show the fear who is boss, but for L it’s a more internal battle with a solid chance of vertigo. Nevertheless she persisted, so while I held one hand, and she held the rail with her other, eyes closed and me letting her know how far along we’d gone, she made the full arc. L even opened her eyes a couple of times to look up, a little sideways, but definitely not down. As for me, I was too busy focussing on L to even slightly worry about the height. I did enjoy the view, a mix of lush greenery in the foreground, plus some of Singapore’s more unique architecture like the Marina towers in the background.
Our other stop was the Cloud Forest, also a tall thing, but an enclosed dome with escalators and elevators to navigate the otherwise slightly confusingly signposted maze of rainforest greenery. The Cloud Forest is cool, both literally and metaphorically, which was a bit of a relief as the rest of Singapore was building up the humidity for an afternoon thunderstorm. L was less troubled by the heights here, instead feeling relief that she wasn’t one of the teachers having to supervise the school excursion taking place. I was just enjoying checking out their collection of carnivorous plants, several different types of pitcher plants, the essential bunch of Venus fly traps (I still feel a pang of sadness at how small these are in real life), and other bug eaters. Was interested to see that their “secret garden” had a Wollemi pine among its weird and rare specimens.
Exit through the gift shop. An assortment of the usual eclectic merch. Had XL not been more M-L, I would have got a glow-in-the-dark t-shirt that really looked like either aliens or meteors were about to wipe of the Gardens. Other merch included various items with dried flowers in them, nail polish and the like; various crystal blingy things; and nail clippers. Gotta say, I don’t recall ever seeing souvenir nail clippers before.
Lunch was L’s pick, a French creperie across the road from the Raffles delivering the gluten free goods. She went the meal deal: savoury crepe, dessert crepe, and a mug of French cider. I went with the cheese crepe: three types of cheese emmental, roquefort, and St Maure goat cheese. It was delicious and very cheesy. I also helped L finish off the dessert crepe, which was good, but really the whole point was the gorgeous salted butter caramel poured over it, I would have been fine with just a jar of that and a spoon.
The way back to the hotel was via several shops to get more tacky souvenirs, just to make sure all the folks back home who aren’t satisfied to just read our blogs score some loot too. This involved much wandering up and down stairs and escalators, through various malls, checking out a bunch of shops along the way. If nothing else, a wander through Singapore’s malls reinforces that there are so many different pop culture tribes out there that I really have no idea about. But that’s okay, as long as the folks doing this are happy.
The Swan Song bar. Last visit, in Feb 2020, the boys stumbled into a small whisky bar down the road from the Auld Alliance. Inside was a small bar run by a few gents, who turned out to be friends of friends (well, basically a lot of whisky folks know N and his wonderful wife T) so much talk and drinks flowed. It’s been a challenging if not somewhat brutal 2 years for just about everyone, but fortunately The Swan Song is still around, though in a new location by the Quay. Their landlord is currently renovating the building, so they win the prize for the most hipster external decor: scafolding, paint splattered drop sheets, and masking tape abound. Part of the genesis legend of the Swan Song is that one of the gents, K, found that his whisky collection was expanding beyond what he could fit into his home, so his wife “encouraged” him to do something about it. As a result, some pals decided to start a whisky bar. It’s a good story anyway. The lads have also collaborated with other similarly minded Singapore whisky folks to release a number of exclusive distillery bottlings. The upshot is that Swan Song has an incredibly eclectic mix of whisky, essentially from private collections. It might not have expressions from the core range, but instead features gems that are probably impossible to get, and random bottlings from the last 20-30 years.
While L settled with a Singapore Distillery coconut and pandan gin and tonic, A, one fo the owners, pressed a glass into my hand of a wonderfully deep and sweet smelling dram. Lots of fruit on the nose, and in the mouth, this gorgeous dram was one they had bottled themselves, an undisclosed 18 year old Irish whiskey, possibly Cooley. Foe the second dram I asked for something big and bold, and the result was an 8 year old sherry cask from Ben Nevis, distilled in 1990 and bottled in mid-1999. Luscious and thick, A and I discussed how it seems that even a lot of older whiskies currently seem a little thin compared to 15-20 years ago, when a syrupy or oily texture wasn’t uncommon. Finally they offered me a choice of two independent bottlings, either an 8yo Laphroaig or a 13yo Caol Ila. I told them to pick one and not tell me which so I could guess. When wave after wave of pure peat and iodine filled my nostrils, I knew it was the Laphroaig at it’s most classic flavour profile. Smoky, medicinal, and at cask strength of 59.5% for extra goodness, this 2007 single cask bottling for a Japanese distributor had all the good flavours going for it. Sadly we had to call it a night at three drams, but I look forward to paying these fine folk another visit, hopefully sooner than in another 2 years.
We strolled back to the hotel (we caught a bus to Swan Song, where I broke one of the rules by speaking, something big signs discourage) as it was only about 2km, the air was cool, and we could detour for shopping along the way. We stopped in a Lego store, as we’d been eyeing off the Singapore Lego set as a souvenir, and I very nearly picked up the Apollo 11 lander set, very tempting.
Tomorrow is late checkout, and our missions are to get more bling, and find a good laksa. Then it’s back to Changi, and home.