waterfall – silverfox175
The mall was HUGE – with waterfalls, ice ring, aquarium, its own souk, and 1200 hundred shops that made us feel over whelmed (well they overwhelm me!).
Electric baby chairs – place the child in the seat, switch it on, and it rocks back and forth with a very similar movement as it would have felt before it was born.
Water down a waterfall – the water fell for two or three floors.
A lone diver
This attempts to show the size of this indoor waterfall.
Of course if the waterfall gives you cold feet go ice skating in the Olympic size ice rink. . . .
In addition to 1200 shops you can walk around the Souk.
Souk corridors lead to a centre . . .
I didn’t know that dinosaurs were blue. . . . . .
More Souk
A rather large fish tank – so large that you can walk through it via a tunnel, and watch the fish from within one of the largest aquariums in the world.
The coloured lights in the picture above, are lights from various shops, reflected in the glass.
Only the chips are missing.
We had a drink across from the aquarium wall.
Walk outside the mall and you will find it very difficult to get the next building in the one frame – the tallest building in the world (at the moment, as there is another being built in Jeddah, so of course Dubai is planning a larger one again.)
We saw an advert for a trip to the 124 th floor, the observation deck, at a rate of $140 for the two of us, so we thought we’d bite the bullet and experience the trip.
On showing up at the counter we were asked for $400 for two tickets, apparently they have different prices for different times. The $140 was the most unsocial time so we gave it a miss and I downloaded the view via Google . . . $400 to look out of a window was a bit steep (excuse the pun).
The lake was impressive, but the fountain was not working during our visit.
Another old style (but very new) Souk, with views of the man made lake.
Inside this Souk we found a small supermarket and the food was inexpensive considering the very up market position. This building also housed an hotel.
A shot of the old style building come hotel & Souk, from across the lake.
On our first day it had to be China Town. Still the same feeling as our visit in 2012, but the prices are higher.
In 2012, AUD $0.80 bought one Singapore dollar, today AUD $1.03 buys one Singapore dollar, a huge difference in buying power.
We found the same corner bar that we used last time and I parked myself with a book and a 650 ml bottle of Tiger (SGD $7.95, + 10% service charge, + VAT). A few cents short of AUD$10.00, but for me it was worth it, because Maureen loves shops and I hate them, so we are both happy.
Lunch in a local Chinese restaurant, which was full of Chinese customer -we were the only westerners, so we figured if the locals filled the place the food must be OK.
Next day it was the new Gardens by the Bay – a must for any visitor. It wasn’t open during our last visit – SGD $25 each, but the visit can be all day, or what ever you wish – we stayed just short of three hours.
Is that our cruise ship?
The main hotel at the mariner – all on reclaimed land.
Mariner Bay Sands Hotel ahead with our cruise ship on the top!
Two domes – the Cloud Forest and the Flower Dome. The mushroom ‘things’ are man made structures for plants to climb.
Just walking around the gardens is free – the $25 is to enter the two domes.
Dragon flies.
Waterfalls inside the Cloud Forest.
Skywalk inside the dome – use the lifts . . .
Not until I got close did I realise that some of the ‘plants’ were made of Lego.
These two were a bit more obvious.
All the plants, not just the flowering plants held our attention.
Carnivorous plants.
Just because I liked it . . .
Man made ‘mushrooms’ to allow the plants to grow up and around. Perhaps the future of city farming . . .
Waterfalls of green plants
Drift wood with carved fish using the drift wood.
From the Cloud Forrest we moved on to the Flower Dome, which consists of plants from various areas of the world such as Mediterranean, South America, Australia, South Africa, Malaysia etc but during our visit there was a huge display of tulips. The mass of colour was just begging for a camera.
The above is a view as we entered the Dome.
Closer view of the tulips.
Black tulips
More close up of tulips.
and I couldn’t go past a beautiful rose.
Farming in the future ??