2662a In this picture you can see the almost vertical side of the Flower Dome on the right and the gently sloping roof that extends to the left. The gold coins are part of the Chinese New Year decorations. In the background you can see the tree portion of the dome. It has mostly plants from the more humid warmer parts of the climate reproduced here so it's higher and closer to the glass roof.
2671 This is the whining Bottle Tree from Argentina.
2687 This picture shows you most of the levels of the Flower Dome. The Flower Fields are at the lowest, coolest level, the tropical trees at a higher level on the right and the desert plants are at the level we're standing on. It's the highest.
2728 Just a sample of the gorgeous flowers in the Flower Fields.
2830 This is the Gardens by the Sea from the Sands Sky Park. The flatter Flower Dome is the closest on the right. The Cloud Forrest is just above it. On the right you can see the Supertree grove. The largest Supertree in the center of the grove has the restaurant on top.
Feb 17 – Singapore. We've been to Singapore more times than any other city in the Far East. This is our 5th visit. We decided to see some things that we have always said we should visit but never have, the Sky Park on the Marina Bay Sands Hotel and the Gardens by the Bay.
Our first stop was at the Gardens by the Bay. The entire project is over 250 acres and has more than 250,000 rare plants housed in one of two domed conservatories suitable for their habitat or in the park itself if they are tropical plants. Singapore is only a few degrees off the Equator and always has 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. Their temperatures do not vary much during the year but they do have wet and dry seasons. Unlike most botanical gardens where you visit the orchids in a very warm humid orchid house, here they grow extremely well outdoors. It's fairly new, it only opened in 2012.
Walking in we passed several 'Supertrees'. These tall constructions are of several types. A few are disguised chimneys, one is a restaurant, and the rest act as funnels to collect rain water to store for use in the gardens. The chimneys are from the incinerators they use to burn all the plant cuttings. It provides electricity to the garden. They have a system of tubes on the outside of the Supertrees that supports climbing vines to give them a green look. Of the three we passed one was a chimney and two were water collectors. The restaurant tree is in a larger grove of Supertrees in the middle of the open air part of the garden.
The shorter of the two domes, the Flower Dome, looks a bit like half a clam shell. On the east it is pretty vertical to catch the morning sun and it slopes off to the west like a clam shell. Inside the climate is cool and dry like the Mediterranean. It was certainly cooler than the air outside by at least 15-20 degrees F. Here you find plants from all over the world where they have that sort of weather. There are sections from California, Mediterranean, South America, South Africa, and Australia. Each of these sections holds plants indigenous only to those regions. The San Diego area near the coast has the only true Mediterranean Climate in North America but much of the California Coast will support the type of plants we saw here.
The center are of the dome is called the Flower Fields because here is where the action is. It's Chinese New Year soon and it marks the beginning of the year of the goat. The gardens have created some floral goats that they scattered about the building, like miniature Rose Parade floats. The plants in this building would be very familiar to most people in the USA. All varieties of daisy's, chrysanthemums, daffodils, marigolds, zinnias, birds-of-paradise, geraniums, begonias, foxglove, lilies, azaleas, rhododendron, hibiscus, flowering trees (peach, cherry and plum), and some hearty orchids are grown in this dome. It has a desert section in an area where the air is dryer due to the shape of the building. Succulents have a section between there and the flower section. Some of the areas are arranged geographically.
In the taller part of the dome they have a tree section. The most unusual tree there is the Bottle Tree from Argentina. It also grows wild in Bolivia and Paraguay. It looks like a bottle. It has a very large trunk that slowly tapers to a more normal looking trunk and from there the short limbs spread out. The length of the limbs barely reaches out beyond the diameter of the trunk at its widest. The people of Argentina have a story about why it's so oddly shaped. They say this was the first tree and it was shaped like most other trees. But then god created the palm tree and these trees started whining about how graceful and beautiful the palm trees were. God got so tired of their whining he pulled them up out of the ground and stuck them back in upside down. So the branches we see today are actually the roots.
Unlike many gardens, whenever you visit here things are blooming. Every so often they lower the evening temperatures to simulate winter and when they raise them again the plants think it's spring and bloom.
Next stop, the Cloud Forrest the taller of the two domes. This dome is steeply sloped on both the east and west sides. It looks like a half buried clam with the edge that opens pointing up. It has to be fairly tall because inside there's a 115-foot mountain that is covered with flowers. The climate is like a tropical mountain at the 6,500 foot level. Water tumbles off the top and sides of the mountain in what is the world's tallest indoor waterfall. All this falling water keeps it very humid while at the same time very cool. Several times a day misters built into the dome come on and you get a gentle rain inside the dome. They post the times so that if you don't want to get wet you can retreat to the display rooms. You ride an elevator up to the top of the mountain and then walk down gently sloping walkways that are about 5 feet wide. The center three feet is covered with non-slip concrete. T outer foot on each side of that is covered with that diamond pattern metal that you see on the top of freeway dividers in SoCal. It has a springy feel when you step on it and quite a few people would not walk on it. Most of this walkway is suspended outside the mountain so you can look at the flowers growing there. Sometimes the walkway loops quite a way out from the mountain. There were a few folks that wouldn't go out on those but chose to go down stairs to the next level where the walkway was closer to the mountain.
In the Rain Forrest Dome there are lots of orchids, most of the meat eating plants, like pitcher plant, and the types of flowers you see when you get into the higher elevations in the South Pacific. Diana can name them but I can't. Unless you are very careful you are going to get a little wet inside this dome. But Singapore is so warm that being wet feels good when you get outside.
We didn't have time to visit the Supertree Grove or the huge outside area of the Gardens by the Sea. Maybe next time.
Our next stop is the Sands Entertainment Complex. They call it that because the Singaporean government doesn't like the word casino. It used to be the Sands Hotel & Casino. It's important to bring your passport if you want to get in the casino because, to discourage locals from gambling, they charge a $100US entry fee to get into the hotel without a foreign passport. With the foreign passport it's free. Singapore may not like the word casino but they do have two of them and the gambling take between the two is almost as large as Las Vegas. That places Singapore third in the world. The ex-Portuguese Colony of Macau doesn't have many casinos either but the total gambling take is almost twice as much as Vegas.
The hotel has 2,500 rooms in three towers, the casino attached between towers 1 & 2, the convention center attached between towers 2 & 3. We left the bus in the underground parking and walked up to the ground floor between towers 2 & 3, walked past tower three to the end, out the door and around to the left to go down an escalator to find the elevator to the Sky Park. The Sky Park is located above the hotel and stretches across all three towers with a bit of hangover at each end. The structure is shaped like a curved boat. It's 650 feet above the ground which is a bit taller than the Singapore Flyer located almost next door. The Flyer is the tallest Ferris wheel in the world, just a few feet taller than the London Eye. We rode it last time we were here.
They used to let visitors roam the entire Sky Park but one of the attractions there is the world's longest infinity pool. Imagine swimming 650 feet up with nothing but water between you and the drop to the ground. Cool. Anyway, apparently some amateur photographers started setting up tripods to photograph the people at the pool and that caused problems so now non-guests only have access to one end of the park. The views are great. You can look down on the Gardens by the Sea, the Flyer, the bay and the Merlion fountain, the financial district and the British colonial buildings of the old part of town.
It wasn't a long day of touring but we'll be here again in 14 days. (More about that later and it isn't pretty.)
Our entertainer was Mario D'Andrea. He's kind of a throwback variety entertainer like Sammy Davis Jr. He tap dances, he sings and he plays a mean rock guitar. I'd never seen him before and I would gladly see him again. He was a true entertainer in the old sense of the word.
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