Island in the Stream (kinda)

Welcome, country-loving reader, as today we talk about the amazing country of Singapore.

Through a couple of twists and turns which I won't bore you with, we ended up with more time than Singapore than we expected. That was welcome, as I've been wanting to visit this place for years. It certainly lived up to those expectations!

Having come here after Malaysia, it's tempting to see Singapore as a polished up, more glamorous version of Singapore. Of course in truth it's more like the other way around: the Malaysians are trying hard to emulate their Singaporean neighbours' success. One word which comes to mind when thinking about Singapore is "planned": from Raffles laying out the initial town plan for the place when he was here in the 1820s, to the engineered beauty of the Gardens by the Bay (which I couldn't say without thinking of Dolly and Kenny, thus the title) park, there has long been a vision for what Singapore is all about, and they've executed quite ruthlessly on that vision. Scruffy and unfinished don't seem to be a thing here: things are integrated, and clean, and working on the whole.

On our first day in Singapore, we visited the biggest Chinese Buddhist temple in these parts. We'd seen and visited temples up in Georgetown, which were relatively chaotic places. Not so in Singapore: the temple is beautiful inside and out, it's air conditioned, and it has lifts. On the roof is a wonderful roof garden, and a decorated steel barrel which rings a bell every time you rotate it; this apparently is equivalent to one repeat of the mantras. The temple is in the midst of Singapore's Chinatown, which is pretty tame compared to Kuala Lumpur, and also something of misnomer given that the majority population in Singapore is Chinese.

After this we went down to the Singapore River, and into the Museum of Asian Civilizations. We had 2 or 3 hours here before it closed, but it could have easily taken a day. What you have here is beautifully presented artefacts telling the story of the civilizations of not just Singapore or the Malay peninsula, but the broader South East Asian area. Starring in this museum is the collection from the Tang shipwreck, a ship which sank in around 830AD just off Indonesia, with a large amount of Chinese porcelain onboard. It was extraordinary to see the level of craftsmanship in the porcelain here, which was in contrast to the kind of things you see from Europe around the same time.

One of the awesome things about Singapore is just how easy it is to get around. Just about everything is walkable, and if you don't want to walk, Singapore has easily the best metro system I've seen anywhere in the world. The metro is all automated, the signage is tremendous (there's very little advertising to confuse, lots of maps of local info, and of next stops), and it's very well air conditioned. Oh, and it takes Apple Pay. There's not much to dislike here; OK, the Singaporeans do not know the rule about letting people off the train first (but there are markings on the platforms to tell them to stand to the side of the doors as the train arrives, letting folks off in the middle), and I kept getting confused about which side of the escalator to stand on (you're supposed to stand on the left here; too many years of commuting in London meant I couldn't resist my instincts to stand on the right), and some of the stations have very long runs of underground passageways (in particular, the Raffles Place station has tunnels leading all over the place, mostly because it's in the middle of the junction of most of the major roads in the city which are very difficult to cross), but like a lot of things in Singapore, this is a metro system done properly and well.

Our second day took in some of the more colonial sites of Singapore, including the Arts House, in the old Parliament building, and the incredible National Gallery, which is in a building created by joining the old City Hall and Courts of Justice. There, we saw some awesome artwork by a Chinese ink artist, Liu Kuo-Sung, as well as photography from the region, and history of the building and of Singapore itself. St Andrew's Cathedral appeared to be closed, so instead we had to do the next thing - which was to get a Singapore Sling at the Long Bar at Raffles. This is no longer in the original place, and is something between a huge tourist trap and a money printing machine: there's always a queue to get in (although we only queued for about 15 minutes), everyone is drinking Singapore Slings, and no-one's asking the price ($37 Singapore, or $25 US, as it happens). The place is nice enough, as is the drink, and bizarrely there are peanuts everywhere and you're allowed (and maybe even encouraged) to shuck the husks on the floor. Odd.

After that we walked back through the town to Gardens by the Bay, the garden built on reclaimed land down behind the marina, which includes the iconic supertrees. An over-enthusiastic guide at the National Gallery had told us that we should go and see the light show there at 19:45, which we duly did. It's a sight to behold!

Our final day was spent in Singapore's Botanic Gardens, a large green space in what can otherwise feel like a pretty built-up place. As well as plant life, this place is full of lazy monitor lizards sunning themselves on the pavements, occasionally agreeing to get out of the way of the tourists. I'm afraid, however, that this day in particular exhibited what I'd have to say is Singapore's one big flaw: the climate. Throughout our time there, the temperature wavered around between 30 and 32 degrees C, with high humidity making it feel even warmer. As our over-enthusiastic guide put it, "Singapore has three seasons: hot, hotter and hottest!", and the proximity to the equator means the temperature is pretty much the same here all year round.

And with that, we were done. Singapore had easily lived up to my hopes; now if they could just make it a bit cooler...