Sightseeing in Singapore

As I already wrote, my father visited me here in Singapore in the beginning of December. To be able to accomplish our ambitious sightseeing program I was staying with him for 3 nights in a hotel down town. So we had in total a bit more than two days (being on our feet from 8am to 12 midnight) - below you can see which places we managed to visit. This time I have some really gorgeous pictures for you because my father had his Nikon D70 with him - including some nice lenses.



The first evening we've been around Marina Bay and Singapore river. We walked around quite a bit and we started sweating even at night wearing shorts and T-Shirt. Especially my father was overwhelmed by the Singaporean climate... In the pictures you can see (from top left to bottom right): The skyline of the business district with the Fullerton Hotel in the foreground - the Singapore Flyer (which had to be evacuated recently because of a technical failure) - Marina Bay area with Esplanade (Opera), floating platform and again the Singapore Flyer - the Merlion (the landmark of Singapore) in front of the skyline.

In the next morning we took the MRT all the way East to Jurong to visit the Jurong Bird Park. Having spent more then four month in this area I have never managed to visit this park before. So it was a good opportunity to go there together. The park was really amazing! We even got in for free, because some very friendly Singaporeans hat some spare free tickets. We could see a lot of birds we both haven't seen in our life yet. The bird shows were really great: There were really big vultures and eagles flying just centimeters above your had, a bird which could sing in English, Malay and Chinese and parrots playing basket ball to name just a few highlights. Since you could get really close to the birds we could try out the newly acquired 70mm macro lens and could take some great pictures.

In the evening we have first been to the New Asia Bar (the skybar in 82nd floor of the Swissôtel). You definitely have an awesome view on the city up there. We had some cocktails and enjoyed the sunset over the city. In the first picture you can see the bunch of big cargo ships that are always floating somewhere in the Strait of Singapore. The next pictures are the business district respectively Clarke Quay by night. After having had dinner in the food street of China Town we concluded the evening on the roof of the Screening Room (a very nice bar in Club Street, China Town).

On the second day we visited the famous Singapore Zoo. The zoo is situated on a big peninsula within a big lake rather in the center of the Singaporean island. The area is quite big and we had to walk a lot again to see everything. A very interesting thing about the layout of the zoo is that the animals are mostly kept in their enclosures by natural barriers (eg. a water trench). So most of the times you can't see any apparent barriers like fences or windows. Other quite unique sights were the elephant show (the showed how elephants are actually used for moving around big logs), the comodo dragons, white tigers and really big bats. Even though December is supposed to be rainy season here we were quite lucky about the weather. It just started raining when we were on the way back to the city center.

Because the rain was quite stubborn and lasted for more than just a short shower we concluded our Singapore sightseeing program with a Singapore Sling in the famous Long Bar in the Raffles Hotel. The whole program was quite exhausting but I think we really saw as much as possible in those two days.