It's all about the coffee

Earlier this week and also today we visited the Gardens by the Bay. It’s a massive botanical complex that has a number of different free walks or paid displays, most of them require a seperate ticket. Strolling through the gardens is free, but you will have to pay to :-

Ride on the shuttle

Walk on the skyway between the giant steel trees (OCBC Skyway)

Go up inside one of the steel trees to the observation deck (super tree observatory)

Visit the flower dome

Visit the cloud forest.

Sometimes you can get combined tickets or do them individually. When we visited on the first day the cloud forest was closed for maintenance which is why we came twice. We will likely visit a third time just to see the garden lit up at night. Both times when we came there were not a lot of people, but it can get crowded and when that happens you will only have a few minutes on the OCBC skyway.

The shuttle will take you around the park, in a hop on hoo off style, and three dollars will buy you one round trip. We did the OCBC skyway, then the Sky-tree lookout then the Flower dome.

The Sky-tree gives a better vantage view than the skyway, although you will have to navigate around dozens of people trying to get that Instagram perfect shot. The top of the Sky-tree has a small cafe selling coffee and cold drinks. Nothing spectacular but ok. It seems a little hidden but the lift only takes you to the second floor, to get to the roof is one more small flight of steps. Do this, the view is worth it as you can get pics without any obstructions.

I loved the flower gardens, it’s split into different zones from different geographic areas of the world. Both the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest are air conditioned which is a welcome respite from Singapores humidity. I specifically loved the Dahlia display in the flower dome since I’ve been growing some at home.

Today we did the Cloud Forest which has a spectacular indoor waterfall and towering tropical style cloud garden. Every hour the mist spray comes on creating this amazing indoor cloud / mist everywhere. Whilst we were here there was an Avatar movie tie in with all these fake plants and animals about. Personally I thought it was a distraction and the garden would be better off without it.

Overall the gardens are excellent. Don’t miss them if you come to Singapore

Tonight for dinner we headed over to the Lau Pa Sat hawker centre in the downtown area to get some Satay on “Satay St”. If you are looking for it, it’s on the corner of Boon Tat St and Boon Tat Link lane. It’s about halfway between the Downtown and Telok Ayer MTR stations.

Satay St is pretty much everything that Singapore isn’t, it’s absolute chaos and Smokey, however just like everywhere else in Singapore the food is excellent. We decide to get our Satay from the “Satay 8” stall vendor. A bit of googling indicates this is one of the best Satay places on the island, and the queue for this place was massive. All the other vendors were touting for business, but not the blokes at Satay 8.

Took us ages to get a table on the street. We had given up and grabbed a table inside the centre when I was just standing on the street just waiting for our Satay and then this table of 4 just magically vacated in front of me. The Satay gods must be smiling in my general direction.

Just sitting here, we noticed a few other people eating some naan bread and said to each other, wow could do with some of that bread right now, and somehow the Satay gods must have heard us and this random Indian guy appeared with a menu selling Satay. Five dollars later we had this massive plate of delicious naan in front of us.

A few minutes later our Satay was ready are we were in peanut flavour heaven. I also had a sugar cane lemon drink made directly from the juice of a raw sugarcane stick. This was lovely and refreshing.

Highly highly recommend this place when you are in Singapore.

Today we were off to Universal Studios. Not sure why but the park doesn’t open till 11am, so we had a very quiet morning and just took a cab over to the park. Singapore being small, we weren’t really that for from the park so a cab there was only $14 (cabs seem much cheaper here than at home).

Before entering the park we found the Lego store so had a good cruise around there before park time. As soon as we got in the park my inner 13 year old was “Let go on all the rides!! Roller coasters yeah!!”.

The first ride we picked was the “transformers”. Not exactly a roller coaster but a great 3D type ride with hydraulics that moved you up/down,

Left/right etc. My inner 13 year old might have been “rides – yeah! Let’s do them all” but my 50+ year old stomach was saying “umm, no – I don’t think so…”.

The stomach won that battle, from then on we pretty much just stuck to the kiddy/nana rides. We did make one exception for the water log ride in the Jurassic world section, fantastic, but you will get very wet. Luckily I packed a second pair of shoes.

The Shrek 4D experience and the Steven Spielberg “Lights/Camera/Action” where you experience a hurricane were both excellent.

If you do visit the park, get a “skip the line / fast pass” it will save you hours of queuing. Some rides had a 60 minute wait, the fast pass cut that down to 10 minutes.

On Sunday evening before dinner we took a “bumboat” river cruise here in Singapore. The name of the boat comes from a Dutch word for canoe “boomschuit” or tree boat. We had planned to do this on Saturday evening, it was one of the only things I hadn’t booked in advance (it’s a small boat cruise with dozens of boats – shouldn’t need to prebook that!).

Well I was wrong, it was packed and completely sold out on Saturday evening. Sunday was vastly different, we could get tickets easily and sit wherever we wanted on the boat.

The cruise only takes about 40 minutes and doesn’t go all the far, just around Clarke Quay and into Singapore harbour and back, but you do get a nice little history lesson on this part of Singapore plus some fantastic views of the iconic Marina Bay Sands hotel. I would do this later around sunset to get some pictures of all the lights.

Dinner was some great Cuban/Mexican fusion in Clarke Quay

Found a cafe hiding right across the road from our apartment here in Singapore. Coffee was a little stronger than the others I’ve had here in Singapore. Was also slightly cheaper, most coffees here are now over $8, which is double most places at home. This one here was $5.50

Cafes are no where near as busy as cafes at home in the early morning. 7:30am and there are only a handful of people in here