Finally a city that has garbage cans in public areas!! ;) A stopover in Singapore turned out to be our cheapest option for heading from India to SE Asia (and neither of us have been here before), so… here we are!!.
Singapore is by far one of the cleanest cities we have ever seen! We learned (from the awesome free walking tour by Singapore Footprints, http://singaporefootprints.com/), that Singapore wasn't always like this - a lot of laws had to be put in place to enforce making this cleanliness a local habit (ie. it's illegal to sell gum, litter, spit, etc.). Having laws for some of these things seems quite extreme, but it seems to be working and it definitely makes visiting Singapore more enjoyable!.
One of the most interesting buildings they've built in the recent years is the "Marina Bay Sands" (or as Dom like to call it: "The Boat"). It soars 55-stories above the marina, next to the Art Science Museum that is shaped like a lotus flower. It is sure to impress anyone who sees it for the first time as it's pretty to look at both by night and day. Also, at night. there's a pretty cool "light show" where video images are projected over the marina against a sprayed water medium.
Reality aside, the top of the boat looks like the place to be if the end of the world arrives by tsunami, in a few day ;)
Singapore was a nice break back to 1st world familiarity - we spent a lot of time on the immaculately clean high speed subways, did some window shopping along Orchard Road, enjoyed the Christmas spirit, and watched a bunch of movies including: The Rise of the Guardians, Skyfall, and Argo. We also indulged in some (relatively) overpriced chocolate cheesecake, and sampled dishes from various parts of South East Asia.
While in Singapore, we also visited the Art-Science museum... but the museum didn't have an exposition of dinosaur bones (as it appears in the photo) - the gigantic rex model in the picture is actually made entirely from 80,000 bricks of Lego!!
On our last day in Singapore, we finally got a break from the rain so we made our second attempt at visiting the impressive and well maintained Botanic Gardens. The Botanic Garden is a great place for a quiet stroll through a lucy and scenic park. It also contains a garden where they cultivates and create many types of Orchids. When we say create, we learned that the experts actually cross-breed different types of orchids to create new ones, and once they find a flower that they like, they clone it. It's a bit frankenstein-scary, but we must admit that the orchids there are magnificent and worth the visit… Let's just say we had a blast taking a LOT of pictures.