The Australian Way: Singapore on Song

The Australian Way: September 2010

Visitors returning to Singapore after a couple of years away may struggle to recognise the place. A transformation of its waterfront, years in the making, is nearing completion and the city state abounds with new attractions.

At the heart of Singapore’s makeover is the Marina Bay Sands – one of two new so-called Integrated Resorts, or IRs. They are underpinned by Singapore’s first casinos but also bring together a host of hotel, shopping, entertainment and conference facilities in iconic new buildings.

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Designed by architect Moshe Safdie, Marina Bay Sands is likely to become one of Asia’s most recognisable and photogenic structures. Its hotel is made of three 55-storey towers topped by the SkyPark, a vast, sweeping, streamlined rooftop linking the three in a silver arc. An engineering feat as much as an artistic one, including a daring cantilever built with strand-jack construction methods more commonly applied to bridges, this roof section is 12,400 square metres in size. That, the developers are fond of pointing out, is longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall, and big enough to park four and a half Qantas A380s, and it is proving the most talked about section of the entire development.

The SkyPark is open to the public (S$20 adults, $14 kids, $17 over-55s, buy tickets from hotel lobby of tower three) and affords wonderful views over Singapore’s business and historic districts as well as the hundreds of ships constantly moored to the south of the island. But the real highlight of the roof, a 150-metre infinity pool overlooking the city, is only open to hotel guests.

The casino, which one would expect to be the centrepiece of anything backed by the Las Vegas Sands gaming group, is actually a fairly modest chunk of the site, but nevertheless brings to Singapore four floors of gaming machines, tables, high roller facilities and a clutch of celebrity chef restaurants (see box).

With the opening of the Sands and a new bridge, Singaporeans are able to walk the whole way around the circuit of the city’s waterfront promenade for the first time. Ducking around a few building sites along the way, the walk – hot, but flat – takes in some of the city’s most striking features: the Fullerton hotel, a grand and stocky building of columns and porticos in the classical style, completed in 1928; the Merlion, a statue of Singapore’s water-gushing mascot; the Esplanade, two spiky concert and theatre halls known locally as the durians and designed as Singapore’s answer to the Sydney Opera House; the Singapore Flyer (S$29.50/S$20.65/S$23.60, when booked online), at 165 metres tall the world’s largest observation wheel until Beijing pinches the title in the next year or so; and a stunning new footbridge to the casino development, a twirl of helix beams reminiscent of DNA.

It will get better, too: from the SkyPark, if you look towards the sea, you can see the development of a new botanical garden, the centrepiece of a green redevelopment of other areas of waterfront. At the mouth where the river used to meet the sea, another recent attraction is in place: the barrage, part of an initiative to turn Singapore’s bay and inland waterways into fresh water, partly as a reservoir, partly for flood control and partly for recreation.

The other focus of Singapore’s rejuvenation is Sentosa Island, which lies to the city’s south and has long been used as a recreational hub of beaches and attractions. The second integrated resort, called Resorts World, is being developed here and much of it is now open.

While it too is anchored by a casino, this resort has much more of a family feel than Sands, and its signature attraction is Universal Studios (S$66/48/32 weekdays, S$72/52/36 weekends). Like its counterparts in California, Florida and Osaka, the park combines movie-themed rides with live shows, such as a special effects showcase based on the movie Waterworld.

It has its share of impressive white-knuckle rides, but what sets Universal Studios apart is the little things, the extraordinary attention to detail: the stubby waggling tail of a baby stegosaurus in the outstanding Jurassic Park rapids ride; the airport-themed posters and signboards while queuing for a Shrek rollercoaster (“Destinations: Duloc. Dragon’s Lair. Worcestershire.”) The queuing lanes for the Revenge of the Mummy rollercoaster, set up as an Egyptian tomb, are a sight in themselves; when you wait for the Shrek 4D show inside a huge castle building every bit as grand as a Disney one, there is a clever multimedia show to alleviate the wait (and if you’re wondering what the 4^th dimension of 4D is, it involves being sneezed on by an on-screen donkey, among other things. Young kids tend to rate this the highlight of the whole park.)

Book your tickets online as it frequently sells out on weekends, and be aware that although new, Universal is far from unattended: queues for key attractions can top an hour and the food hall can get particularly jammed. You can pay an extra $30 ($68 on weekends) for a ticket that allows you to jump the queue; you will see a lot more, but everyone will hate you.

Something else that sets Sentosa apart is the choice of accommodation available. Marina Bay is dominated by one, huge hotel, with 2,561 rooms and suites, from ordinary and functional business traveller room with balconies barely wide enough to stand on, to the extraordinary 629 square metre chairman’s suite (gym, pool table, media room, baby grand piano in the living room – you name it). Resorts World in Sentosa, in contrast, already has four hotels open with two more to come. Ordinary folk can only peer into the lobby of the Crockfords Tower, an all-suite hotel that is by invitation only for celebrities, royalty, and casino high-rollers; they must instead choose between the business-focused Hotel Michael, the funky and gym-to-the-fore Hard Rock Hotel Singapore (which has the best pools), and the Festive Hotel. The last of these is family themed with a number of good ideas: separate loft beds for kids, accessed by agreeably vertiginous ladders; a free book-reading service; and a separate check-in area for kids.

Add all of this to the Formula One road race, which zips around the business and colonial districts of the city and starts just metres from the Singapore Flyer, and it’s clear the effort Singapore has made to attract tourism with its revamp. It deserves to succeed. But still, there are a couple of issues that give pause for thought. For one thing, Singapore does seem to have developed a habit of opening things before they are entirely ready. Both resorts are phased openings, and will not be absolutely complete until next year: by then, a new theatre (hosting a Lion King show), two offshore Crystal Pavilion islands (Louis Vuitton has taken one in its entirety and the other will host nightclubs) and a fabulous, lotus flower-shaped museum will have opened in Marina Bay Sands, and in Sentosa, two more hotels, a maritime museum and an oceanarium will complete the picture.

That’s not really a problem, but in the supposedly completed areas there was still much to do at the time of writing. Visitors to the SkyPark should be warned that the restaurant up there is still being built, as is the rooftop restaurant of the hotel. And Universal Studios is still in what it calls a soft opening phase while it streamlines its processes; you get some food and merchandise vouchers as compensation for this, but in the meantime two of the key rides in the complex – a Madagascar-themed log flume ride and the signature attraction, a weaving, interlocking rollercoaster called Battlestar Galactica – are still closed.

It’s also worth noting that the casinos have not been without some local controversy. Concerned about the impact on the local population, Singapore lobbies a S$100 levy per day on any of its citizens who hope to use the casino: an active attempt to discourage them from doing so. Apart from raising some questions about the business model of trying to block your immediate audience, there is a vexing moral issue of why it is OK to encourage foreigners to gamble while trying to keep out your own people for fear they will be damaged by the experience.

Nevertheless, that’s unlikely to trouble visitors, who will have a multitude to occupy them even if they never set foot in the casinos. Singapore has spent big to coax former visitors back and, particularly for those considering breaking an Australia to Europe trip for a few days, it is well worth seeing what’s been put together to divert you.

BOX: Celebrity chefs hit Singapore

One of the knock-on effects of the new integrated resorts is an influx of new restaurants helmed by some big international names.

Resorts World Sentosa’s roster includes Joël Robuchon, the world’s most Michelin-star decorated chef, who is opening three separate French haute cuisine restaurants in Singapore; four-star Kunio Tokuoka, whose new Kunio restaurant is, we have heard, Singapore’s most expensive; Scott Webster, who has launched a version of his London restaurant Osia; and Susur Lee, with Chinois by Susur Lee.

Marina Bay Sands weighs in with 50 dining choices from cafes to the heavyweights. At the top end are restaurants from New York’s Mario Batali and Daniel Boulud, Los Angeles’s Wolfgang Puck, Barcelona’s Santi Santamaria, Paris’s Guy Savoy, Sydney’s Tetsuya Wakuda and Singapore’s own Justin Quek.

With so many bounteous choices on offer it seems tough to focus on one, but Tetsuya’s Waku Ghin – his first outside Australia – gives an indication of how high these places are reaching. It offers a 10-course degustation menu and, despite being more than 8,000 square feet in size, seats only 25 people in one sitting – a function of the fact that each part of the meal is seated in a different room. Marinated botan shrimp with sea urchin and caviar, anyone?

At the time of writing, at Sands, Santamaria, Savoy and Tetsuya’s restaurants were open; Quek’s, on the roof, was apparently within weeks of opening; and Puck, Batali and Boulud should open by the end of the year.