If you asked me to choose my one favourite thing about Singapore, I’d probably say the light shows.
And not the light shows that took place in our hotel room because why so many goddamn light switches?
I actually came down with a cold and cough whilst we were away and spent a couple of days feeling pretty rough. But on this evening, I’d finally got my hands on some flu capsules and cough syrup and I had a new zest for Singapore.
In the early evening, we headed to Satay by the Bay, a hawker centre in the Gardens by the Bay. I wasn’t a massive fan of the hawker centres, but I did really like Satay by the Bay. It felt a little less manic and a little more airy than others and that made all the difference. Plus it’s in the middle of all the greenery and near the water; a great setting for some dinner.
This is where we fell in love with Roti Prata – a signature dish of Singapore and Malaysia. It’s fried stretched dough, flavoured with ghee (Indian butter). A bit like a combination of a naan bread and a crepe? You can have it sweet or savoury either served with a curry or on its own with different flavours. I actually preferred it plain with an Indian-style salsa dip because it was so tasty, but I tried the cheesy one as well and that was also pretty good.
I also had the best satay chicken I’ve ever tasted here. The peanut sauce was delicious; thick, spicy and creamy and I honestly think I could have eaten just the sauce alone. Who needs the chicken?!
We met Alice’s friend Ruby, who is currently living in Singapore, and spent a couple of hours eating and chatting before heading back into the gardens to catch the Garden Rhapsody Supertree light show for the second time.
The theme that night was ‘Sounds of Asia’ and we sat on the ground surrounded by many doing the same, some flat on their backs, and watched those supertrees glow in time to the music. Personally, that light show would never get old for me. But I wasn’t quite expecting to find something even better.
After the show was finished, we walked under Marina Bay Sands and into the bay area. There were a lot of people hanging about on the promenade just underneath the hotel, looking out across the water. Ruby thought she’d heard of another kind of light show that took place on the water, so we decided to sit on the steps and hang around.
We’d seen laser lights being projected from the top of Marina Bay Sands from a distance a couple of times during our stay so I assumed we were just going to see that in all its glory. Reader, my expectations were so off the mark. Lasers did beam out from the top of the hotel across the water for sure, and then fireworks started going off… and then shit really got going.
This was Spectra and the supertree light show that I loved so much paled in comparison. It was a light and water show; the water was shooting about in every direction and if you stood right on the front, you were guaranteed to get wet because the spray. But the spray was the point; colours and images were projected onto the spray and the result was just spectacular. This was all in time to some banging tunes (as the kids would say), and combined with the fireworks going off at the start – it was all pretty epic.
(We ended up going back on our final night and I can confirm it didn’t get any less epic the second time round.)
This is one of those rare case where the pictures and describing it in the written word doesn’t do it justice at all. I’ve included a video of our trip below which includes a lot of footage of these light shows, so you can see for yourself.
We spent the rest of the evening wandering around the bay, checking out the mini carnival that had been set up for Chinese New Year. This was basically more epic lights!
I’m convinced the reason why my overwhelming memories of Singapore are simply colour is because of all these light shows.
Garden Rhapsody takes place at 7:45pm and 8:45pm every evening and Spectra takes place 8pm and 9pm Sunday – Thursday and 8pm, 9pm and 10pm Friday – Saturday.
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