What Exactly is a Merlion?
Life is full of small pleasures and one of the smallest yet one of our most pleasurable was the ijooz vending machines scattered across Singapore. Singapore is a city state located just off the tip of the Malaysian Peninsula about 100 kilometres north of the equator. Temperatures year round are in the low 30s but more importantly it is one humid country and we would often return to our hotel drenched, even when it wasn’t raining. Putting our money into a machine filled with chilled Australian oranges and watching the production which turned perfect orbs into a glass of the best orange juice I have ever tasted was worth triple the price of $2.50.
Don’t get me wrong, Singapore has so much more to recommend it. We absolutely loved Singapore, one of the friendliest cities we encountered. It was our stopping off point between Dubai and New Zealand. It is a city state a little smaller than the size of Calgary but with a population of 6 million and is considered one of the most expensive cities in the world. Like most things in life it is not quite that simple. It is a city of contrasts. It is a mix of the old and the new, a cultural mosaic with 4 official languages, $15 for a litre of strawberries, $40 for a bottle of Yellow Tail wine ( that costs about $15. At the LCBO) but only $7 for a satisfying meal at a hawker centre. It is a city of high tech and high finance but also one of the greenest cities in the world, and one of the cleanest and safest although often at the cost of some civil liberties. Very free enterprise but also very much a welfare state with affordable housing, health care and education available to all. A clean, affordable and efficient public transit system because you don’t want to own a car in Singapore, you couldn’t afford to. There are a fixed number of automobile permits that you have to bid on in order to own a car and and they cost about $140,000. ( Cdn) and are good for 10 years. And that’s before you purchase the car! An entry level Toyota Corolla will set you back over $100,000.
The name Singapore translates as Lion City dating back some 700 years when legend has it that Prince Sang Nila Utama, taking sanctuary on the island, saw a lion and named it Singapore. Except there are no lions indigenous to that part of the world, never have been. There are however tigers so the betting is maybe that’s what he saw. Too late now. Although ironically Singapore’s major beer is called Tiger.
Our absolute favourite meal from our entire journey was in Singapore at Cote: A Korean Steakhouse ( a restaurant I saw featured on CBS Saturday Morning on their Dish segment) featuring 5 cuts of beef grilled at your table served with Korean accompaniments and finished off with vanilla soft serve ice cream with soy caramel sauce served in a paper cup with a wooden spoon, and of course for the adults wine. Sophie has written in more detail about our culinary adventures in her blog but let me just say for me any memorable meal is as much about the service and the ambience and the joy it brings as it is about the food. An extended trip with a family of five to seven continents is not always rainbows and unicorns, moments like these are treasured.
To offset that little culinary extravagance we took several of our meals at Lau Pa Sat, one of Singapore’s justly famous Hawker centres. Hawker culture developed in the late 1800s when migrant Chinese, Malay , Indians and Indonesians sold affordable meals on the street. Fast forward to the 1960s when the government, concerned with food safety and traffic congestion consolidated vendors in complexes with running water, electricity and sanitation and they became giant community dining rooms. Today there are approximately 110 centres with 13,000 food stalls each specializing in just a few dishes reflecting Singapore’s ethnic mosaic. Some even have a Michelin star. UNESCO has put these Hawker centres on their list of “ Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”. Best of all a meal can be had for under $10. The biggest problem is deciding what to have.
We stayed in a local hotel in the older Paranakan region of Singapore. Relatively modest but with air-conditioning, comfortable beds and a complimentary breakfast allowing me to indulge in my taste for congee - rice porridge with available toppings of ginger, garlic, meat, seafood, pickled vegetables, eggs, hot sauce. The worst thing about congee is I think the name. The Paranakan people are a fusion of southern Chinese settlers with the local cultures of Malay peninsula dating back hundreds of years. A wonderful walking community with restaurants and shops and the Paranakan architecture of colourful long narrow houses decorated with majolica tiles, intricately carved wooden swing doors ( to let the breezes in and peering eyes out) and often adorned with Chinese couplets of good fortune, health and happiness.
We signed up for a city tour, by bicycle and as it turns out, in the rain. I was a little leery not having ridden a bike in I think 10 years but as the old lady on this journey the last thing I want my family to think of me is that I’m an old lady so I say yes to ( just about) everything. I did say no to ghyll scrambling and bungee jumping. If you read Mia’s blogs about these activities and you’ll understand why.
The bike tour was a private tour and our guide was fantastic. We started out riding on the Formula 1 track and then heading around Marina Bay, now considered the central downtown of Singapore as well as through the different ethnic enclaves, past the Buddha Tooth Relic, the Masad Jamar Mosque and the Sri Mariamman Temple, graced with a 5 tier tower of sculpted Hindi deities. We posed for a picture with the statue of Sir Stamford Raffles the “ father” of modern Singapore who landed on that spot in 1819. Today he is probably best known for the hotel that bears his name and the cocktail created in its Long Bar, the Singapore Sling. The Sling, created in 1932 so the story goes, was meant to resemble a glass of fruit punch as women were not then allowed to drink so no one would know that the drink was actually full of gin, cointreau, cherry brandy and Benedictine. For only $50 Cdn you too can enjoy a Singapore Sling in the Long Bar, with free peanuts. While on my to do list, and has been for 50 years, I ran out of time and didn’t make it. ( Note to self: must get the granddaughters interested in drinking so I can visit more bars on my travels, lol.)
For a city that through its tax structure doesn’t exactly encourage drinking Singapore has four bars listed in the World’s Top 50 Bars. My fave, although we didn’t actually order a drink - we were riding our bikes - was the Atlas Bar at the Parkview Square, a sumptuous art deco inspired skyscraper often call the Batman building. The bar itself has a three storey gin tower boasting 1300 gins and the plaza in front of the building is filled with sculptures and statues by the likes of Botero and Dali.
The Merlion is a mythical creature with the head of a lion and the body of a fish ( mer meaning sea) Singapore’s mascot symbolizing the city, its people, its sport’s teams and its culture. It was created in the 1960s as the logo for the tourism board and conceptualized as a statue in the 1970s and now sits in Merlion Park on Marina Bay.
We spent a great deal of our time in and around Marina Bay and and the Marina Bay Sands complex designed by Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. It is an integrated resort featuring three towers topped by a boat-shaped sky park , the longest occupied cantilevered structure in the world. The skypark covers about 3 acres and includes a swimming pool, gardens, a jogging track, an observation deck and bars and restaurants. You can pay about $45 to take the elevator up 57 stories to the observation deck or for the same price you can make a reservation and have lunch overlooking a wonderful skyscape. Guess what we chose. Lunch at Lavo, an excellent Italian restaurant.
We went to the ( lotus shaped) ArtScience museum an interactive environment blending art, science, culture and technology mostly in a digital format. We liked the digital room-sized aquarium where they upload your own drawings of sea creatures and you see them swim around.you. We stopped to watch a video called the 100 Year Sea combining the beauty of Japanese art with the rising sea levels over one hundred years. We couldn’t stay until it finished, it lasts one hundred years and will end in 2109.
At night we watched the stunning sound and light show on the waters of Marina Bay took a stroll into the Apple Store, a geodesic dome surrounded entirely by water.
The next day we visited The Gardens by the Bay, combining over 500,000 species of plants and flowers with modern architecture including an indoor cloud forest with a 35 metre waterfall, a treetop walk and the Flower Dome, the world’s largest glass greenhouse. Outside, amid the pathways and sculptures we encountered a free range Malayan water monitor ( a cousin of the Komodo dragon) ambling lazily through the landscape. Just a teeny bit scary.
And now for some fun facts. You can be fined $150 for not flushing in a public toilet. Singapore founded the World Toilet Organization and November 19 is world Toilet Day. They are obsessed with cleanliness and global sanitation.
For some wonderful footage of Singapore I would recommend the movie Crazy Rich Asians a rom-com from 2018 focussing on one aspect of Singapore society ( spoiler alert: the rich) shot on location and offering spectacular vistas of the Lion City.
There is lots more to do in Singapore but we ran out of time. Though it is worth a return visit its distant location means that I will have to be content with my memories of our 2024 visit. And as you leave Singapore leave time to view the Jewel Rain Vortex at the Changi Airport ( also designed by Moshe Safdie) the world’s tallest indoor waterfall surrounded by a terraced forest setting.
