After completing our travels to Indonesia and Malaysia, we spent a few days in Singapore. We’ve been intrigued by Singapore’s opportunities for night photography of their modern skyline. We were fortunate that we met John Fong in Malacca when photographing the sunset at the Floating Mosque. He offered to share his secret photo spots in Singapore, which allowed us to find locations we would otherwise have missed.
Singapore is known for their Supertree Grove at Marina Gardens. You can admire these giant metal trees which provide shade by day (middle row), and an exhilarating light and musical show at night. During the day, you can also check out the trees close up on the sky walk (top). The Supertrees are vertical gardens, with more than 162,900 plants and over 200 species growing on their trunks. The tallest structure is more than 16-stories high.
John took us to a special spot away from the tourists to catch the light and music show (all images except bottom were shot from that location).
Every night there is a light show at 7:45PM and 8:45PM. Hundreds of tourists come to see each show, though we were able to see it from an optimum position away from everyone else, thanks to John Fong’s guidance. This is a show you really need to see live to fully appreciate, but the 80 second sample above can help to entice you to go yourself someday.
A second light and music show is at the Marina Sands Hotel, on the man made lake (top and 2nd row-left). On the skyline is also the ferris wheel known as the Singapore Flyer, which opened in 2008 (2nd row-right). The iconic Merlion statue, spouting water from its mouth (bottom), stands at 8.6 meters and weights 70 tons. The Apple Computer Store is built on its own island (3rd row right).
We saw two different light shows. These were easily on the caliber of shows we’ve seen at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. In fact, the owners of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel hail from Las Vegas. This show occurs every night at 8PM and 9PM. Thus, with good timing, it is possible to see both the SuperTree light show (first part of this post) and this one on the same night. This 80 second video helps show the life of the show, being only an except from the 15 minute full show.
One of our favorite experiences of the day was the Gardens by the Bay, where we saw the Flower Dome and Supertree Observatory. At the Flower Dome, we enjoyed a creative display of indoor and outdoor art sculptures, in wood, stone and other materials created by artists worldwide. Due to ongoing maintenance, we were not able to see the Cloud Forest display, which we have heard is also worth a visit.
We spent a couple days and evenings just walking around Singapore, mostly in the vicinity of our hotel. On our first night, we came across a colorful large building (bottom), which was identified as the police station. We also wandered along the Singapore River, watching colorful canal boats pass (top and 2nd-row-right).
The temple in Chinatown is huge, and as such, it is difficult to isolate at street level. With John Fong to lead us, that was no problem though. John just took us up an elevator to a nearby public housing apartments (with no security to restrict access), and we were able to capture the photo (2nd row left) where the bicycle is parked in front of the balcony (3rd row center). The temple apparently also lights up during special ceremonies, so this was a strategic spot to be able to capture the festivities, though none were scheduled during our stay.
Hawker Chan (3rd row left) is the only street hawker restaurant in the world with a Michelin Star. The chicken was absolutely the best roasted chicken we have had in many months.
The Marina Bay Sands Hotel (background on bottom image) is a standard icon of Singapore, housing the world’s largest infinity pool on the roof, and is shaped like a boat at the top of the structure.