If you are a traveling guest, I would recommend this tour. If you are a local, I would highly recommend you not to miss the Duck Tour. This is probably the best way to tour around the city landscape of Singapore. For an hour, embark on a land & sea tour on the remodeled WWII amphibious Vietnamese war craft that will bring you up close with some of the iconic and historical landmarks around the Marina Bay.
The girls got their wish to sit in the pink boat.
Every tour has a tour guide that will introduce some of the facts around the area. Our guide is an elderly auntie who speaks pretty good English and is quite humorous too (tho quite dry at times).
If you choose to sit on the front two rows, especially on the side, be prepared to be a bit wet as the vehicle goes into the water, nothing a few tissue paper cannot clean.
Sights of the dragon boat sports are common along the bay.
As we cruise along, it is the best opportunity to bring out your cameras or mobile phones and take some photos of the usual scene we see on land, but now from a different point of view.
Marina Bay Sands which has 2,561 number of rooms.
Our tour guide introduced the ArtScience Museum as the ‘Lotus Museum’.
Marina Bay Financial Centre (MBFC)
DBS Marina Bay Sailing, gliding slowly along the Marina Reservoir. Interesting fact, with the completion of the Marina Barrage in 2008, the reservoir which contained salt water, became freshwater and in 2010. Now the Marina Reservoir provides 10% of the island’s water needs.
We passed by one of the few 6-stars hotel – The Fullerton Hotel – previously known as the General Post Office Building. Another tourist attraction is the Merlion.
The tour makes a u-turn at the Merlion and we get to see the Floating Platform and F1 Pit Building. Do you know that starting this year (2016), we will no longer have our National Day Parade (NDP) at the Floating Platform? This August, we will shift the NDP to the new Singapore National Stadium.
Also this year is the 9th year Singapore is hosting the F1 Night Race, next year 2017 will be the 10th and last year based on contract.
Before we go back to land, the last attraction will be the largest observation wheel in Singapore, opened in 2008.
The Singapore Flyer used to be the largest Ferris Wheel in the world at 165m, until Las Vegas overtook the prestige with High Roller which is 167.6m tall. We lost by a mere 2.6m. Blah!
Back to the land.
We went one round towards some of the Colonial buildings like the Fullerton Hotel, and the Victoria Theatre.
Another building is the former Supreme Court, now part of the National Heritage and converted to National Gallery Singapore.
As a Singaporean, I was quite embarrassed when I realised that I was so ignorant of the history and facts surrounding me. Which is why I highly recommend anyone who is staying in Singapore to join this tour. It will be quite insightful.
