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Flying pigs! Glowing trees! Swimming crayons!

Today was a well designed day. It was a beautiful day.

It was an exhausting day.

I start the day with a long swim in the hotel pool while the clothes are in the washing machine. It’s a great thing putting the machines next to the pool.

Breakfast is nasi padang at the Muslim eatery in the Fortune Centre again. Then we catch the MRT to Marina Bay. I have tickets to two exhibitions at the ArtScience Centre, but first we walk down past the spectacular view of the Singapore skyline, the Merlion in the distance, to the Red Dot Design Museum.

Red Dot gives awards for good industrial design and the museum houses a collection of awarded products. Not all are housed in the museum, many are available as just printed descriptions. There is a gift shop below with a range of toys, bags and household decorations for sale.

I love good minimalist design, but I don’t find the museum particularly inspiring or interesting.

Next stop, the ArtScience Museum. The building, an open white flower, houses changing exhibitions. I have pre booked tickets to TeamLabs Future Worlds. You may remember visits to TeamLabs Planets and Borderless during previous trips to Japan, so we were excited to find an exhibition in Singapore.

TeamLabs uses interactive projections combined with ambient music and sound effects to illustrate concepts. Many of Future Worlds’ rooms were somewhat familiar from the other TeamLabs exhibitions, but there were some unique concepts like using wooden blocks to trigger actions in the projections, or allowing visitors to colour in fish, birds and aeroplane shapes with pastel crayon and scanning and incorporating them into the animations.

We wouldn’t rank Future Worlds as highly as the other two we visited, but we still have a lot of fun. Colouring in those creations was strangely therapeutic.

Our other exhibition also came from Japan with links back to our last trip. The Studio Ghibli exhibition features a series of three-dimensional recreations of scenes from their animated movies, including Laputa, Porco Rosso, Totoro and Spirited Away.

It’s always a delight to return to Studio Ghibli’s beautiful worlds, though we had to forego a couple of photo ops with hour long queues.

Afterwards we spend time just sitting by the beautiful lotus flower pool the museum, watching the different species of fish swim beneath the lillies.

We explore the adjacent Marina Bay Sands Shoppes, a big, mainly underground, mall full of luxury brands. It’s difficult to believe that anyone can afford the overblown luxury goods, but there are queues for a number of them.

In the basement is a food court with upmarket hawker food stalls. We only mean to get some afternoon snacks, but the popiah, the curry, the Michelin ranked fried chicken, all look and taste so good that it’s hard to resist.

Further along the basement is the entry to the Apple Store. Pass up the escalator and you emerge into a bubble in the bay. The Apple Store is worth visiting for the design and views even if you aren’t interested in their products. While Alex and B explore Apple watches, I watch the end of a workshop on photographing architecture. Quite appropriate, even if none of my phones is an Apple.

The next destination is Gardens By The Bay. We cross over the massive bridge through the centre of the Marina Bay Sands luxury hotel. It is truly another world to the accommodation we can afford. Just the buffet far below looked incredible.

Along with the famous artificial Skytrees, there are also a couple of huge glass greenhouses. We pay for entry into the Cloud Forest.

Greeted by a huge waterfall from the central artificial “mountain” we try to beat the Indian tour group to the lift to the top.

The artificially cooled Cloud Forest houses plants usually found above 2,000 metres above sea level and in cooler, damp environments. At the top are carnivorous pitcher plants around a pond, then an elevated walkway takes you down and around the mountain, giving views of the plant life inside and the skyline and gardens outside.

It’s otherworldly, especially when the misting starts. I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the plant life and the threats that many of the species face due to climate change and human activities. It’s not hard to imagine this as some ark surrounded by devastation on the outside.

Alex was promised a dinner at Shake Shack, but the queues inside are horrendous. Even greater are those outside for Lunar New Year access to the Skytree Grove.

We give up on both and watch the light show from the outside. Then we join the crowds heading back through the Marina Bay Sands, the shopping centre and the MRT.

There is a fountain and light projection show on the harbour. I’m not certain if it relates to a Chinese wukang show, but it was pretty. Then back to the MRT headed crowds.

Instead of Shake Shack Alex just wants McDonald’s. Google Maps finds one in a small shopping centre behind the hotel. It’s a rundown place next to a night club that blasts out loud beats that just annoy us. Some of the burgers are different to Australia and I quite enjoy the buttermilk chicken one I have. It’s actually nice to have a small western food change.

On the way there we spotted a tall, thin, building with a single sporty car on display at each floor’s  window. According to Alex, it is a real car vending machine and very dodgy.

There are brightly lit bars and karaoke clubs on the way back, then we enter our room to the sound of a very loud argument in Mandarin between a man and a woman. No violence, just a lot of shouting.

A noisy end to a crowded, but beautiful, day.

Xīnnián kuàilè!