My life and other things: Marina Bay Sands

Overview of Marina Bay Sands

After the Singapore Flyer I went in the direction of Marina Bay Sands, the exclusive hotel (plus additions located) at Marina Bay. The flower like building on the picture to your left is the ArtScience museum, which I visited. In this museum, so they say, art and science is combined to show history. The current expositions were about a sunken ship found just somewhat offshore of Singapore, the silk route, Genghis Khan and about the museum itself. According to the girl who provided me with some information about the museum, you could spend at least 4 hours in this museum. Well...

Chinese porcelain imitations

The first exhibition I entered was about the shipwreck. The idea of this gallery was to show what kind of people were on the ship, during the shipwreck, what they were shipping and why they were shipping this kind of load. It was kind of interesting; a big part of the exhibition went about the crew, after which they talked about Chinese porcelain and finally about the items found on the ship which also included items which resembled Chinese porcelain but was European make.

The next exhibition was about the silk route. This gallery has a very nice setup, as all rooms were decorated as the big cities which lay on the silk route. You started the exhibition in a room which resembles Xi'an after which you walked through the cities of Turfan, Samarkand and Baghdad. I was a bit a pity that I just watched a documentary about the silk route and almost all information was already known to me. But in this way I could really experience the silk route, or so to say.

Typical Mongolian ger

The exhibition about Genghis Khan was the only exhibition which occupied one full floor, although the other were also quite big. The gallery followed exactly the same story as in the movie "Mongol". Great movie by the way! Either a lot of the history is known, or the movie is just being copied. I prefer to think the first, also based on the fact that some historian from outside Singapore (Oxford I believe) made the exhibition.

The last exhibition was about the building itself, as how they came up with the lotus form. The idea was that first one sees something in nature, then gets an idea and last tries to imitate it. The movie created for this gallery was really nice, unfortunately not buyable on DVD or such.

Overall it was a really nice museum, although 4 hours is a bit long to be in this museum. I can believe that if you read and watch everything you can spend a LOT of time in a museum, but still... The price was also a bit high, as 30 dollars is a lot in Singapore. But, it is Marina Bay Sands!