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Ha Long Bay Shore Excursion that Avoids the Crowds

Cathy Laurenzi — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 08:57:26 +0000

The Travel Sage

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Ha Long Bay Shore Excursion that Avoids the Crowds

Ha Long Bay has been on my bucket list for quite some time. This was the first tour I booked after making the cruise reservations, and my primary objective was to appreciate the unique rock formations in the bay. From the photos, Ha Long Bay seemed like a magical place that could be peaceful under the right circumstances. Unfortunately, the bay has become a popular tourist destination so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to see it without crowds of people. In order to increase my chances, instead of getting on a group tour boat, I opted to book a private tour through Tours by Locals. I couldn’t have been happier with my choice; I was able to enjoy the bay in all its glory! But allow me to start at the beginning of the shore excursion.

The plan was for our tour guide to pick up Me, Mark, and our nephew, Will, at the port gate. Unfortunately Mark had a bad head cold and decided not to join us. I felt very bad for him; I wouldn’t have missed seeing Ha Long Bay even if I had to be carried on a stretcher! Anyway, our guide, “Steve”, arranged our tour so that we wouldn’t get to our boat until the afternoon. He said that the mornings were the busiest times on the bay. A typical tour included a tour of Ha Long city, but I opted to see more of the countryside instead. Our first stop was to Yen Duc village. Steve (his name was really Hoang) said it was a typical newer Vietnamese village.

Our first stop in the village was to walk along a narrow road that ran through rice fields. We stopped to watch the women working in the mud. The woman in the photo below is planting young rice plants. This is clearly dirty, back-breaking work.

The woman in this photo is pulling up plants that were damaged by the cold weather.

Scooters are the primary mode of transportation here. It appears to be how all of the workers get to the rice fields.

After the rice fields we walked across the street to a neighborhood. The homes here seemed rather large and nice with a front gate and a paved or tiled front “yard”. We noticed that most of the homes we passed had glass shards stuck on top of their courtyard walls. I asked Steve about this and he said it was to keep the children from climbing up the walls and picking the fruit. But I am a little skeptical of that explanation given many of the homes didn’t have fruit trees in their front yard. I’m not sure where the more modest homes were hidden.

We continued to walk through the streets until we came to the village’s temple. The complex of buildings and gardens were very pretty and peaceful.

On our way to the village we had passed by a cemetery and I asked our guide if we could stop there on the way back; he kindly obliged. I always try to visit a cemetery when traveling to a new country. I think it’s very interesting how different countries honor their dead in different ways. The section of the cemetery we visited was fairly new. The tombstones were mostly made out of marble, and I found it odd that the ground in between the tombs was concrete instead of grass. But the most interesting part of the stop was Steve’s telling of a Vietnamese tradition. Apparently, they bury their dead in a regular coffin and then after the appropriate time has passed for the body to decompose, the family holds a midnight ceremony where they raise the coffin. He said that they remove the bones, wash them and then put them in a smaller coffin and bury them in their final resting place.

We made one more stop before heading to our boat in Ha Long Bay. We visited a place where saltwater pearls are farmed and processed. It was quite interesting. They use a Japanese technique to get perfectly round pearls. It involves taking imperfect pearls and grinding them down to make tiny round pearls, they then implant those pearls into other oysters to create a larger round pearl. I didn’t completely understand the process involved with preparing the tiny pearl to be implanted, but it involved the use of other parts of the donor oyster (first photo). Once the tiny pearl is implanted into a particular part of the live oyster (second photo), it is put back onto a rack (third photo) and placed back into the bay. We were told there is only about a 30% success rate in getting a round pearl from this tedious process.

After the tour we were ushered into a huge jewelry showroom. I had no intention of buying anything, but I caved and bought myself a necklace. It caught my eye and the idea of having pearls harvested from Ha Long Bay really appealed to me. After spending too much money, we headed to the main event of the day – our cruise of Ha Long Bay!

I knew we were going to have a private boat and a seafood lunch, but both Will and I imagined a small motor boat and a picnic style lunch. So we were a little taken aback when we were shown to our tour boat that was large enough for 48 passengers and had a full kitchen onboard!

Around 10 minutes after we boarded they started bringing out the food. And it kept coming and coming until there were 10 different dishes. I had a difficult time eating because I couldn’t stop looking at (and photographing) the scenery.

As we were traveling through the bay, our guide pointed out some of the more famous rock formations. One of them is found on the back of their 200,000 bill. (That equals about $9US.)

Another famous rock formation is called the Rooster and the Hen, but our guide liked to call it the “kissing chickens”. I just don’t see it.

It didn’t take long for us to arrive at our first destination – a floating village. Well, that is what our guide called it. At one time it was quite large and many fisherman lived there. But when tourism became very prevalent in the bay, the government relocated the fisherman. The “floating village” is now just a base from which to get into a kayak or row boat, along with a store. Will and I opted to take the easy route and had a very friendly Vietnamese women row us around.

She rowed us into an opening in the rocks and that lead to a pool of water completely surrounded by tall rock formations. We were told that this is where the fisherman go with their boats to get protection from the wind during a typhoon.

We felt so fortunate that we had this beautiful, peaceful place to ourselves. It wasn’t until we were leaving that other row boats started coming in.

After leaving that protected area we were rowed a little ways into the opening of another rock formation. This entrance was shaped like the bat cave and the area on the other side wasn’t enclosed.

Can you see the cat in the photo below?

Again we were fortunate to be able to enjoy the quiet and solitude. Next we headed back to the floating village to rejoin our boat.

Back on our boat, we sailed past more beautiful, peaceful scenery as we headed to our next destination – caves.

I knew that our tour included caves, but I really didn’t know what to expect. For some reason I had the idea that we’d be taking the rowboat through some small caves. So, both Will and I were surprised, and in awe, when we docked and were walked into a cave that rivals the magnificence of Carlsbad Caverns in the U.S. It’s name is Heavenly Palace Cave (Hang Thien Cung in Vietnamese). It was really hard to capture the essence of it in a photograph. Some of the stalactites and stalagmites were incredibly massive. Our guide said that they were estimated to be as old as the rock formations in the bay which are approximately 500 million years old. I thought the ceilings were very cool with their white, circular indentations that looked like puffy clouds in the sky. In the photo below, can you spot the “window” into the next room?

After we exited the first cave we could see the boats docked below. At that point there were quite a few tour boats there, but still we saw very few people. I think we managed to stay just a few minutes ahead of them.

From there we walked a short distance into another cave called Ba Hang. This one was also very impressive but smaller than the first one and it had a much larger entrance which let in a lot of natural light.

The second cave was the last stop on our cruise tour. We enjoyed the ride back to the harbor from the top deck of our boat. Then from the harbor we were driven back to our cruise ship, the m.s. Westerdam.

That night onboard our cruise ship we had a nice view from our balcony. I’m so happy to have had the opportunity to visit this magical place and check it off my bucket list!

My Impressions of the Ha Long Bay Area and our Excursion

Despite dreary weather, the visit to Ha Long Bay was one of the highlights of my 28-night cruise. The two biggest pleasant surprises of the day were 1) being able to enjoy the bay without crowds of people, and 2) the magnificent caves! And despite spending too much money, I’ll also glad we went to the pearl farm; it was really interesting. The visit to Yen Duc village was okay, but I would have been happy to skip it. I realized after-the-fact that a lot of tours visit this particular village. So even though there isn’t much there, it’s almost like this village is maintained to be what the Vietnamese want us to think is a typical village. This might explain why the locals were overly friendly. Everyone, including workers in the street, were sure to smile, wave and say “hello” to us. One other thing I found amusing was that a lot of the Vietnamese people, especially the tour guides waiting to pick up people at the port in the morning, were bundled up in heavy winter coats. Will and I were wearing shorts – the temperature was in the upper 60’s and low 70’s!

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The Best Da Nang Shore Excursion

Cathy Laurenzi — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 08:24:11 +0000

The Travel Sage

The Best Da Nang Shore Excursion

Out of all the shore excursions we took on our 28-night Holland America cruise, the consensus of our group (me, Mark and our nephew, Will) is that our tour in Da Nang was the best! We booked our guide, Hoa, through Tours by Locals. The first stop on our 12 hour tour was to see “Lady Buddha“. The 67 meter tall statue is in a beautiful setting in the complex of the Linh Ung Pagoda which offers magnificent views of Da Nang.

In the photo below, our guide explains to us that this mythical creature is called a “unicorn” because there is no actual word for it in English.

Hoa also pointed out to us that all of the statutes of dragons include a ball. This is due to the legend that every 100 years, a koi fish leaps over heaven’s gate and bites a ball off of a dragon which causes the fish to turn into a dragon. We all pointed out dragon balls for the rest of our trip through Asia! Can you spot the dragon balls below?

Next, as we drove through Da Nang toward our second destination, I asked if we could stop and take a photo of the harbor and Hoa kindly obliged. The round boats on the sand are dinghies that the fisherman use to get to and from their boats anchored in the harbor. Most of these dinghies are made out of bamboo.

We then headed south out of Da Nang to the Marble Mountains which is a cluster of five marble and limestone hills. Apparently they were once much larger in size before much of the marble was extracted. It’s my understanding that in order to preserve what remains as a tourist attraction, marble is no longer allowed to be taken from here. Before exploring the largest of the hills, we were taken to a place where marble was supposedly being carved. But what we saw appeared to be mostly just a huge store. We were told that we were going to be shown how the marble was carved, but that just entailed a woman walking us behind the stores and showing us a man crouching in front of a large piece of marble and presumably carving it by hand. That was a bit disappointing. After that we were ushered into the store. The prices were quite high so Mark and I didn’t buy anything, but it was nice to admire some of the larger marble pieces, like the bench in the next photo.

Next we explored Thuy Son Mountain, the largest of the five hills that make up the Marble Mountains. I was surprised how much there was to see there.

We were a good portion of the way up the mountain as we were seeing these sites but our guide gave us the option of “conquering the mountain”. By this he meant climb to the top. Out of the three of us, only Will conquered it!

I felt that the best part of visiting Thuy Son Mountain, was going inside the caves. There was a large network of caves and many of the rooms had natural openings in the cave ceilings that let in light. Over several hundred years, shrines and temples were built in the caves. I believe the structure in the first photo below is one of the oldest.

Below is a photo of Mark and Will having a friendly game of chess with the locals.

This buddha statue was carved into the marble in a location where the sun would hit it during a particular time of day and time of year. We were there at almost the right time as the sunlight was hitting the nearby cave wall.

After the mountain was conquered and the caves were explored, we headed out. But first I had to make a pit stop. Forgive the bathroom photo but I just had to share the fact that they made me take my shoes off to use the toilet… ewww! And while I’m talking about the bathroom, I’ll continue with a little more crudeness. Our guide, Hoa, referred to the bathroom as the “happy room”. When we asked why he said it was because sometimes you fart when you are in there and that makes you happy. At this point we really started to have fun with him!

Our next destination was the Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary which is an area of several Hindu temples that were built between the 4th and 13th centuries. This massive Unesco site consists of 350 acres plus a natural buffer area of an additional 2,273 acres. The site is so large that we had to be shuttled from the parking lot in an electric vehicle and then walked quite far along a paved path. It was a real treat coming here and getting away from the crowds. The grounds was very pretty and included mountains in the distance, streams, and lots of ponds with water lilies which were just starting to bloom.

We encountered several lizards like this one. When I first approached him he curved his very long tail all the way over his head.

But the highlight of the Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary was the ancient brick temples.

Below is a photo of our guide discussing the many phallic symbols we saw like the one in the background.

Tragically, quite a bit of damage was done on this site by bombs during the Vietnam War. The first photo below is of a bomb site where the remainder of the temple is being stabilized. You can see bomb craters in the foreground. The second photo shows bomb casings that were recovered from the area. and a wall that was bombed and partially reconstructed.

Before leaving Mỹ Sơn Sanctuary, we watched a traditional Hindu dance performance.

Our last destination for the day was the ancient town of Hội An. This well preserved town was a trading hub from the 15th to the 19th century. We arrived here at around 4pm after already having been on our tour for nearly 8 hours without a break. So, the first order of business was lunch in a local restaurant, and the meal that Hoa had arranged for us did not disappoint! We enjoyed all of the courses but the three of us agreed that our favorite was the Hoi An Crispy Pancakes, which our waitress kindly assembled for us. I’m not sure exactly what it was but it appeared to be some sort of crispy egg patty with baby shrimp in it. Our waitress put shredded vegetables on each patty and then rolled it in edible rice paper. It came with a yummy peanut sauce for dipping. Mark has never been a big fan of Vietnamese food, but after this meal he declared he might be changing his mind about it.

After the lunch break, our tour continued with a stop at one of the ancient homes that was open for touring. The first photo below is of the interior of the home with its beautiful original woodwork made from a type of iron wood. We learned that even though the town floods somewhat regularly, the dense iron wood does not get damaged. The second photo below shows the height of the water level during various floods, and the third photo is of pictures from previous floods in the town.

After leaving the house we continued our tour walking through the town. There were many shops and artisans. The first photo below shows a man carving sculptures out of bamboo roots. We have bamboo in our yard, so I might give it a try sometime. 😉

We arrived at our next destination in Hoi An which was a 300 year old assembly hall built by the Chinese where businessmen met to trade.

At this point in the day the sun was setting and the boat operators were getting ready to take the tourists out on the river. Hoi An is known for its colorful lanterns that make the town truly special, so taking a ride on the river at night is a popular way to appreciate all of the lights. In fact, as it started to get dark the streets became more and more crowded.

But we still had one more stop to make on our tour – a silk weaving demonstration. We were shown all of the stages in the process from the worms, to the cocoons, to creating the threads and weaving.

Of course, after the demonstration there was the requisite shopping. There was a shop with clothing and other textiles, but I focused on a showroom where finely detailed needlepoint artwork was hung. The larger pieces (16X20 inch or more) were so detailed they looked like paintings. But we opted to purchase a small one.

By the time we left the textile shop it was completely dark. The agreement we had with the tour operator was for them to leave us in Hoi An so we could experience it at night and then we’d take a cab back to our ship in Da Nang. But I never imagined that our tour that started at 8:30am wouldn’t finish until after 7pm! Since we were exhausted, we asked Hoa if we could just snap a few photos of the lights and then have them take us back to the ship. Hoa and our driver were kind enough to agree. So that ended our whirlwind tour of the Da Nang, Vietnam area. This excursion and the one we took two days later in Ha Long Bay were my two favorite stops on the entire 4 week cruise!

FYI, if you are traveling to other parts of Vietnam, Hoa recommends checking out Culture Pham Travel company for some of the best Vietnam tours.

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Bangkok and Ayutthaya, Thailand

Cathy Laurenzi — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 13:44:16 +0000

The Travel Sage

Bangkok and Ayutthaya, Thailand

Heads Up: This page includes a couple affiliate links, which are marked by “*’s”. If you click and purchase, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. But rest assured – my opinions are my own, I would never recommend something I haven’t or wouldn’t purchase for myself.

It was an exhausting, but incredible fun, series of tours that we took while our ship was docked in Laem Chabang, Thailand for one and a half days. This port is about two hours from Bangkok and we had to be back on board by 2:30pm on the second day, so in order to make the most of our time there, we stayed overnight in Bangkok. Our excursion started with a private, personalized tour for me, Mark, and our nephew, Will through the company Thai Tour Guide. We were assigned our tour guide when we booked the tour; her name was Ms. Pookie. The name made me imagine a much older woman than she was. Lol

Ms. Pookie escorted us to a nice, comfortable van with plenty of room to stretch out. She gave us a bit of Thailand (formerly known as Siam) history as the driver drove the 2 1/2 hours north to Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya was founded in 1350 and was the capital of Siam until it was attacked and burned by the Burmese in 1767. We toured several of the archeological sites there.

Despite knowing that I would need to have my shoulders covered when going into temples, I wore a sleeveless top since it was going to be hot and we were only visiting ruins that day. Well, it turns out the ruins of temples are still temples, hence the need to turn my blue jacket into a cape.

This area was once covered by a portico that surrounded the grand temple. You can see the remnants of the pillars that once held up the roof. All of the buddha statues are lining the walkway to guard the temple. I was standing on a walkway on the grand temple when I took the first photo below.

We visited several archeological sites within Ayutthaya but currently only one of those areas is a Unesco World Heritage site. Once declared a World Heritage property, the site must be kept as it is found, it cannot be restored, only maintained as is. So it wasn’t until we went to the Unesco property that we saw the damage that Western treasures hunters, with the cooperation of Thai thieves, had done to the ruins. Sadly, the buddha statues were very popular “souvenirs”, and since the statues were generally too big to easily steal, people stole just the heads.

Can you spot the buddha face below?

Can you spot the stray dog below?

Many of the structures were leaning quite a lot. You can see how much the base is compressed on one side.

Each of the three temples below was erected for a member of the royal family.

Silly tourists…

After touring several archeological sites around Ayutthaya, we stopped at a local restaurant for lunch. We were in shock at how inexpensive the food was. We got four meals, a salad and four drinks for less than $13US.

We had one more adventure before leaving Ayutthaya – a canal boat ride. On our way to the boat we passed a few elephants.

Along the canals, we saw shacks mixed in with a few nicer, newer homes. And of course we passed by many temples, some new and some old.

After the boat ride, we headed to our hotel in Bangkok, which should have taken an hour, but took 2 hours because we were caught in rush hour traffic. I had hoped to get there in time for a short nap before our night tuk tuk food tour started, but we barely had time to check into our hotel before we were headed out to meet up with our tour. Thankfully, I had the foresight to pick a hotel very close to the food tour meeting point. This food tour* was the highlight of our trip to Bangkok! Our tour guide was a very perky, animated young woman who was quite entertaining. We had 6 stops. At five of the stops we were given different traditional Thai food and at one of the stops (rooftop bar) we were given a drink and a spectacular view.

Riding in the tuk tuk’s was a little scary but a lot of fun! The video below shows a tame part of the ride – I couldn’t video during the scarier parts because I was hanging on for dear life! The tuk tuks are really only designed for 2 people, so the 3rd person sits sideways on a tiny bench with nothing behind them to keep them from falling backward into the street.

Our first stop was in a modest-looking restaurant where a spread of several different dishes awaited us to share. There was a delicious lemongrass & ginger soup (my favorite dish of the stop), a Thai papaya salad, duck, chicken, pork and sticky rice. The food was arranged by the level of spice with the spiciest at one end of the table and the least spicy at the other end. I sat on the wimpy end! I was already starting to get full by the time we left this first stop.

As we were leaving the restaurant, I noticed that a man was cooking alongside the road on top of charcoal filled pots. Some of the meat looked like what we ate. I don’t know if that was our restaurant’s grill, but a later stop made me think it was likely.

Our second stop included two dishes. One was something I didn’t quite understand – it had shrimp on top, but I didn’t catch what else was in there. Mark liked it. The other dish was coconut sticky rice sprinkled with mung beans and sliced mango. I don’t know how such a simple dish tasted so amazing! We also got a sliced rose apple that I thought was quite bland.

And then we were back on the road toward the next stop, China Town.

China Town was bustling. We sampled some street food as we walked, but I don’t really remember it – I was just focused on keeping up with the group.

Our next stop was to a restaurant (Ann Guay Tiew Kua Gai) that was awarded a Michelin star multiple times. Their signature dish is guay tiew kua gai, which is fried rice noodles with chicken, and an egg on top. It might not sound very interesting but the flavor is in the way it is cooked. We were treated to a special tour of the back alley “kitchen”, which was quite an eye-opener!

This was another no-frills eatery where we sat on benches and ate on metal tables. I’m sure there are lots of nice, tourist-class restaurants in Bangkok but that isn’t what this tour was about.

By the time I got to the bottom of my noodle bowl, I was stuffed and couldn’t quite finish it. Thankfully, our next stop (The Eagle’s Nest) was just for a drink, not more food! The five flights of stairs we had to climb was well worth the view.

It was 10:30pm when we left the bar. Our final stop was going to be at a flower market, which I thought was pretty strange for a night-time food tour. I was so exhausted I toyed with the idea of skipping the end of the tour and heading back to the hotel. But I’m glad I didn’t skip it because it was quite the experience. We were taken to an area where flower vendors lined the street. Everyone was very busy, you would have never thought that it was nearly 11pm.

After a lesson in flower folding, we walked into what seemed like a storefront, but it was actually an entrance into a huge wholesale market/warehouse that runs 24/7. For the life of me, I can’t imagine who buys all of these flowers, especially since the majority of flowers we’ve seen around town have been artificial.

Past all of the flowers, there was a section of vegetables and then some sweets. We got to try a traditional dessert on a stick made with sticky rice and coconut. I was full but I made room for dessert. But then, we went back outside and were given some meat skewers. I just had to say “no”!

That was the end of the food tour, so our tuk tuk driver dropped us off at our hotel. By the time we got to our room it was 11:30pm. And by the time we showered and got to bed, we only had about 6 1/2 hours until it was time to get up and get ready for the next tour. Our hotel* was very upscale in a central downtown Bangkok location, but the price was only $75 per night. This is less than half of what we paid for our hotel in Singapore, and breakfast was included. And the breakfast buffet was something to behold. This photo only shows part of it, but each of those chafing dishes holds something different. There were some breakfast items but more than half of the buffet was food that you would expect to find on a dinner buffet.

Ms. Pookie arrived at 8:00am to take us on a canal boat tour of Bangkok. This time we didn’t have a driver so she took us on the subway to get to our destination. The subways were very nice inside, and we were amused by the priority seating signs. Can you guess why?

Monk Fun Facts

1) In Thailand men can sign up to be a monk on a temporary basis for as few as 3 months. Our guide said that many families have their sons sign up as soon as they finish school. In Vietnam, I asked if they did the same thing and I was told no, it was a Thai thing.

2) While Thai Buddhists only have 5 rules of conduct to live by, monks have a whopping 227!

Getting on the canal boat was rather challenging. The boat was tied up to a floating dock that was along a major waterway. The dock and the boat both rocked but not in unison.

From the canal boat we saw a lot of shacks. It was amazing that most of them were actually inhabited.

However, just like in Ayutthaya, amongst the mostly poor homes, there were some very nice new homes and many temples.

We also saw a little bit of wildlife, including quite a few monitor lizards.

We stopped in a neighborhood along the way and got off the boat for a bit. There were some shops and an artist studio along the water.

Back on the boat, we passed a giant golden buddha in the distance. The shacks along the canal were quite a contrast.

We headed back toward the dock. I didn’t get a good photo of it, but these boats are powered by massive truck engines.

Our final stop on our Bangkok tour was Wat Pho Temple. We were getting kind of templed-out, but this royal temple complex was pretty darn impressive. The biggest attraction here was a massive gold reclining buddha statue. The statue is 50 feet high, 150 feet long and covered in gold leaf.

The buddha’s toes came complete with prints made out of inlaid mother of pearl.

The Wat Pho temple complex had a lot more to it than just the giant buddha. There were many shrines (like the three shown in the first photo below) that hold the ashes of members of the royal family. I was most impressed by the detailed mosaics, that were covering some of the very large structures.

After Wat Pho we practically ran back to our hotel to catch the taxi that I had arranged to take us back to the ship. After seeing how the Bangkok traffic could get gridlocked, I was pretty stressed thinking that I might have cut the timing too close getting back to the ship. But, thankfully the ride went smoothly and we were back with an hour to spare. This was our last stop in Thailand. We were off to Cambodia next.

My Impressions of the Thai People

First of all, it was pretty clear that Thai’s love food. They generally eat small meals 5 to 6 times a day and food is everywhere all the time. Ms. Pookie was telling us about their major holiday (the Thai new year in April) which is very family oriented. When I asked her if stores closed for the holiday she looked confused and said “no”. When I told her that even grocery stores close in the U.S. on Thanksgiving and Christmas, she was shocked! Her response was “how do people eat?” We told her that we just shop ahead of time, but she was still dismayed because the food wouldn’t be fresh!

The other impression of the Thai people that I got from talking to Ms. Pookie was that Thai’s are not rule followers; they are independent and like to do things their own way. When discussing religion, Ms. Pookie said that although Thai’s are Buddhist, they don’t necessarily follow all of the rules. For example, she said that since Buddhists don’t believe in god as an single entity, the Thai people pray to the gods of other religions for what they want. She giggled as she told me this. There were many times after that when I asked Ms. Pookie why they did things a certain way, she would smile and say “because we are Thai!”

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A Day in Singapore

Cathy Laurenzi — Sat, 20 Jan 2024 02:15:03 +0000

The Travel Sage

A Day in Singapore

We were supposed to have two days in Singapore, but Mark and I slept through the first one! Well, our excuse is that it was raining – a lot! Our nephew, Will, met up with us on day 2 and we headed out pretty early trying to beat the rain. When researching Singapore, it was the futuristic part of the city (Marina Bay) that really appealed to me, and that’s where most of the tourist attractions are. Singapore also has several highly rated museums, but since we were limited on time we opted to skip those (although that would have been the perfect rainy day thing to do). We arrived at Gardens by the Bay (part of Marina Bay) fairly early and walked around the grounds while waiting for some of the attractions to open. The gardens are approximately 250 acres and are filled with lush landscaping, sculptures, waterways, and some attractions that you have to pay for. The giant floating baby was pretty cool. The crane in the photo above gives you an idea of the size of this sculpture. I’d like to know how they keep it so clean and white. The next photo shows the back side. This is clearly a baby BOY.

We continued exploring by walking along the river, and then just took different paths throughout the park.

The photo below with the elephant leading a line of animals is the beginning of a sculpture which is apparently the longest in the world. Each of the animals is connected in some way. The sculpture actually wraps around the corner of a walkway. When I visited the artists’ website, I noticed that the sculpture has dates of being in Singapore from May 2023 to May 2024. So, I wonder if it will be moved after May of 2024. But moving it doesn’t seem very practical.

Our first attraction of the day was a visit to the Skypark Observation Deck on the roof of the Marina Bay Sands hotel, which is the building in the background of the previous photo. On our walk there we passed more cool sculptures and nice landscapes. There were panoramic views from the observation deck and of course Mark and Will were very happy they sold beer there.

After the observation deck, we took another scenic walk to our next destination, which was the Flower Dome.

I didn’t know exactly what to expect at the Flower Dome, other than flowers, but as it turns out, the sculptures were even more impressive. This attraction is said to the be largest glass greenhouse in the world. Some of the coolest sculptures inside were ones made out of small pieces of wood. There was a massive dragon with smoke coming out of his nose, as well as a lot of different animals.

But I think the coolest sculpture in the Flower Dome wasn’t one of the wood ones but rather the bronze sculpture pictured below. It’s called La Famille de Voyageurs (the Traveling Family). It’s not an optical illusion; the people’s midsections are missing.

After leaving the Flower Dome, we headed next door to our final attraction for the day – the Cloud Forest. Like the Flower Dome, the Cloud Forest was enclosed in glass panels, but unlike the Flower Dome, the focus was more on the overall atmosphere than on the individual sights.

After the Cloud Forest we headed back to the hotel to rest before dinner. Will needed some essentials, and I decided to do a little shopping with him. So we asked the person at the hotel desk where to go and they told us about a nearby underground shopping area. The desk clerk’s directions took us to what appeared to be a designer shopping mall – not the kind of place to find what Will was looking for. But then we noticed some stairs going down and took those. We arrived in a whole different place, one that felt a little like a basement with its low ceilings. But we were delighted that there was food everywhere we walked! And Will noticed that the exact same pastries he saw upstairs were downstairs for a quarter of the price. We felt like we had found the secret place where the locals shop! We pulled ourselves away from looking at the food long enough to find a tiny shop that just happened to have both of the things that Will needed, and he paid less than half of what he would have paid in the U.S. Of course, we didn’t make it out of the underground shopping mall without buying something to eat/drink. One thing that amused me was seeing multiple food stalls advertising “air flown” sweet potatoes from Japan.

It rained on and off all afternoon and it was predicted to rain even more in the evening. I really hoped that the forecast was wrong because Marina Bay is supposed to be beautiful at night. Well, the forecasters weren’t wrong – it poured. But below is a photo of what I would have seen if it wasn’t pouring.

Photo courtesy of Kosublog.com

Although we weren’t willing to go back to Gardens by the Bay in the rain, we did brave the rain to get some dinner. The cab driver that drove Will from the airport told him to eat at Lau Pa Sat, which the driver said was where the locals go. Well it just so happened that was where Mark and I had dinner the night before. But we were happy to go back so that Will could experience it. And it was quite an experience. It’s essentially a giant, covered open-air food court with around 70 stalls serving almost exclusively Asian food. The following photos were taken the first night we went, which was a Thursday. On the second night (Friday) it was too packed to even take photos. I must say that the experience was somewhat stressful. It was a bit of a sensory overload with so many different choices that somehow all seemed the same. But once we got our food and sat down it was kind of amusing watching other tourists walk by with their mouths hanging open looking lost and confused just like we were moments before.

In addition to the stalls within the building, when it isn’t raining they close off part of the street and have outdoor grills and additional seating.

The next morning, Will and I explored the 17th floor of the building that our hotel is in. It’s was a unique open-air park in the middle of a high-rise.

When it was time to check out of the hotel, we had the desk clerk in the lobby call a cab to take us to our cruise ship. Since there were three of us and quite a lot of luggage, we required a rather large vehicle. What arrived was an overpriced party bus. The vehicle came complete with neon lights, a refrigerator, a smoke machine, and what appeared to be dance pole for a little person. Well I guess that was a fitting send off to our next adventure – a 28 night cruise with the first stops in Thailand and ending in Tokyo. More trip reports coming soon.

My Impressions of Singapore

Singapore is a very new and clean city. The more touristy parts felt a little bit Disney-ish and were quite expensive, especially compared to neighboring countries. But I enjoyed my time there and wish that I had another day or two to explore other parts of the island.

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