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Little Red Dot

That's what Singapore is known as, since it doesn't show up as much else on a map. It's a place unlike any other I've seen, and I'm still not sure how to adequately describe Singapore. It is impressive.

I don't see cigarette butts on the ground or trash floating down the river, sidewalk cracks or potholes in the roads, dead ends or unfinished city planning. There are crosswalks that pedestrians use and drivers acknowledge. It's not just clean here, it's pristine. Everything works. Grit? You won't find that here.

For starters, their "street food" isn't your typical Asian fare from grills on wheels parked at any street corner. Food stalls here are equally as good, but housed in "hawker centers." Queue up at one of dozens of stalls, many of which serve just one dish that they have perfected. They have sinks--with soap--toilets, too. Staff are constantly clearing tables and cleaning floors. No dogs, no cats, no rats. Maybe a few pigeons get in, but it's slim pickings for them. And this is some of the cheapest food in town.



The metro (MRT) is pristine and gets to all the hotspots in town. Perfect signage, timely trains, friendly staff, orderly riders.


The national library is a pair of 16 story towers. The 10th floor has a beautiful, peaceful outdoor garden balcony called The Retreat. It's a quiet, green place to sit and take in the metropolis way down below. A groundskeeper was pulling leaves out of a flower bed, one by one, with salad tongs.

Gardens by the Bay is a massive green space with all sorts of exhibits and gardens. When I first arrived, all eyes were pointed high in the sky, at three towers topped with a surfboard. More on that building later.


Lots of real plants abound but the standouts of the Gardens are these huge "supertrees" standing up to 50m tall (complete with a bistro at the top of one). Besides being impressive looking, colorful structures, they mimic the function of real trees. The tree canopies provide solar power to light up the trees, or function as an exhaust system of nearby buildings. The trunk is a concrete core with an outer shell covered with 162,900 real plants from 200 species not naturally found in Singapore.



Each night, crowds gather with picnics and blankets for when the trees come alive to lights and music.


After that, a short stroll brought me out of this green space back into the metropolis on the water. I found myself at the base of that surfboard structure which turned out to be the Marina Bay Sands resort. Seems like a nice place for those with some cash to spare, but I passed on a $400/night room (or up to $6,500 for the nicest). On the roof is the world's largest rooftop infinity pool, 57 stories up.

The first few ground levels, as seems to be the case for a building of any stature around here, are a mall. It's not the biggest, but jam packed with seriously high end brands I've never heard of. The kind where a few handbags fill an entire store that'd I'd have to dress up to feel welcome in. You can take a boat ride in the mall, or shop at the Ferarri store. There's not just a food court, but a collection of celebrity chef restaurants. Free parking (for that new Ferarri) if you spend $100! The resort also rents out Lamborghinis and Ferraris.


And if you still haven't spent it all, you can drop the rest in their casino.

But the reason I was there was another free, state of the art light show put on by Marina Bay Sands, including lasers projected from their rooftop and fountains synchronized to an orchestral soundtrack. This was really cool.


They run the show twice nightly, so for Take 2 I crossed a couple pedestrian bridges, including this cool helix.


That giant red ferris wheel across the bay is the Singapore Flyer; it was built to spin in one direction, but on advice of the feng shui master, it was reversed so that fortune and good luck would flow into the city.


In the years since, it's seen a control room fire, braking system failure, lightning strike, and multiple breakdowns resulting in hundreds of aerial passenger rescues, and the owner went belly-up.

I happened to be visiting in the midst of Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival. The festival has origins rooted in legend of the moon goddess, Chang'e, who levitated to the moon after overdosing on an elixir of life. It's a time for giving thanks for the harvest, gathering with friends and family, and hoping for prosperity, longevity, and well being. Numerous Mid-Autumn festivities were in full swing--storytelling, music, and dancing.




From the other side of the bay I found this awesome view of the towering Marina Bay Sands and its lasers projecting down onto the show.



I got another taste of Mid-Autumn Festival in Chinatown at their big celebration. The signature parts of the festival are moon cakes and lanterns. Lots of lanterns. Lanterns (either paper with candles, or newer plastic with LED lights) are decorated as animals, fruits, or cartoon characters. Hundreds of lantern carriers and Chinese dragons with lively music paraded the street with crowds lined up on either side.




Aside from lanterns, mooncakes are major part of the festival. One Chinese folk tale tells of mooncakes being used to smuggle messages during the overthrow of the Mongolian empire in China during one Mid-Autumn Festival.

These can be found all over, from hotels and fancy restaurant to malls and Starbucks, packaged in elaborate boxes. I just tried a traditional white lotus-it's a dense, sweet, rich cake with a rich filling. The package had a typo though-it read "8 servings" but was actually just one. That's just making up for all the Mid-Autumns I've missed.

A stage in the heart of Chinatown had acts all night, topped off with a solid fireworks show.


In Little India, preparations for Deepavali (Diwali) were also in full swing. The five day Hindu festival of lights celebrates the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair. Preparations go on for weeks, and gifts, fireworks, and colors/lights are central themes. Some side alleys we're absolutely packed with all matter of bright, shiny, colorful objects to be used in the festival.


Singapore may be an urban planner's dream, and the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) opened up a free City Gallery to explain how the city came to be, and what its future may hold. There are displays of successful urban projects to make places more pleasant and pedestrian-friendly; the problems Singapore faces as a small island; and innovative solutions in the works to make them a more sustainable country that can continue to grow. An experimental offshore rig is being repurposed as an automated offshore aquaculture hub where fish are raised, filleted, packaged, and chilled. Sustainable farming projects are trying to grow plants vertically or in public spaces like under overpasses to do more with less space. Singapore is interested in these things by necessity; their island's not getting any bigger, and the population's needs aren't shrinking, either.

Upstairs was one of those cool scale models of the city (country). But this one is constantly upgraded to show nearly every building on the island.


A larger, more detailed model focused on the city center with every detail marked out, down to the last window on each mall Orchard Road, the highest concentration of shopping malls in the world.


There are land reclamation projects to grow the island a bit, skyscrapers that go up, and also an impressive, organized system of underground levels. From top to bottom there are sewers and gas lines; pedestrian underpasses; common services  tunnels for water, electrical and a pneumatic refuse system; underground transit; a coastal expressway on the east side of the island; gravity fed sewage tunnel; and a rock cavern 150m down, 9 stories tall, and 340m long for storing oil.

No doubt about it, Singapore is a place like no other. I could see it being pleasant place to live, with everything being clean, neat, and orderly. But would everything being over the top and just so perfect get old?

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