Tasmania to Tokyo – Singapore – Day 39

Tasmania to Tokyo – Singapore – Day 38 can be found here.

Today’s Chronicles can be found here.

It was an eventful night, as nights go on the Silver Moon. Between getting the kids to bed and winding down afterward, I didn’t hop in the shower until after midnight – at which point I discovered there was no hot water.

I debated getting dressed again and talking to Reception about this, but could already imagine the likely result – either this was some sort of planned maintenance of which I wasn’t aware, and there was nothing they could do; or this was some sort of issue unique to our suite, and they would want to come inside – and I was not prepared to have that happen at this hour.

So I had a cold shower. Which – to be fair – if you’re going to have a cold shower, the best time to do so is when you’ve spent the past 12 hours slogging around the Singapore Zoo in 35 Celsius-plus heat.

With my shower complete, I then checked my messages on mycruise.com – where I promptly discovered that they had indeed planned to cut the hot water at this time of the evening.

This begs the question, though – do any of you check the messages on mycruise.com (or on the television) on a regular basis? I find that they are mostly ads for the spa and the boutique. So is it reasonable to pass notices regarding hot water and other maintenance in this manner? Genuinely curious as to whether we should expect Silversea to pass these types of messages in another fashion, such as via a delivered note or a sign along the gangplank.

Anyway. I digress. We sleep late the following morning, and breakfast consists of whatever we can scrounge from Arts Cafe. The cronuts sadly do not live up to their hype, but the yoghurt does as advertised. We take some time to re-load our kit, sunscreen, and otherwise prepare – because despite yesterday’s marathon session, today we are headed to the ArtScience Museum.

While tromping around Marina Bay Sands yesterday, we saw signs advertising a teamLab pop-up event. We are already planning to visit the teamLab Borderless exhibit in Tokyo, so figure we might as well work in a practice run.

We head to Spaccanapoli for an early lunch, where I download the CDG Zip app – which should allow us to hail a taxi if needed. Usually we’re keen on ridesharing apps like Uber, but our taxi experience in Singapore thus far has been seamless, so we figure we’ll stick with a winning strategy.

Meanwhile, an Oceania ship has pulled into port. We eye it askance, already wary of another voyage through immigration control at the Singapore cruise terminal. There’s nothing for it, though – just have to rip off the bandaid and hope we make it through smoothly.

And – it’s not terrible. Because we’ve gone through once already, we’re supposed to use the Singapore residents line. Except they are sending the Oceania passengers through that same line. But that line doesn’t work. So we try the residents line. And then the visitors line. And then the residents line again. Eventually we get through, but the whole process is needlessly complicated.

We head off in search of a taxi – and once again, Singapore delivers. There are signs pointing the way to a taxi stand, and a taxi waiting for us as we step out the door. As fast as you can say, “Marina Bay Sands” we are on our way:

The museum’s entrance offers a stunning view of the city skyline.

We actually manage to arrive early, so we start with Insects: Microsculptures Magnified:

While I’m usually not entirely keen on insects, I find this fascinating from a photographer’s perspective. Each of these images was built by focus-stacking tens of thousands of images one atop the other.

The ArtScience Museum has further built upon this photography exhibit with displays of Singaporean insects, microscopes, and contributions from Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, Nanyang Technological University, A*STAR and Singapore Geographic.

The kids enjoy using the microscopes, while I take in the photos:

All very well done.

For those interested in the creative process behind the exhibit, you can find the full video here:

We head off toward the next exhibit. There are thought-provoking messages along the walls of the museum. This one particularly resonates:

Next up, we head to the teamLab Future World. We’re there perhaps 15 minutes before our 1 pm time slot, but close enough that the staff has no issues with letting us in. Which is good, because we just saw a tour group of about 80 people heading over to buy tickets.

We start by walking through the first exhibit, City in Nature – a section inspired by Singapore’s urban biodiversity.

To quote ArtScience: “Walk on flowers that bloom underfoot and encounter animals created from floral motifs, in an art installation that reminds us of the interconnectedness of all things.“

The pictures don’t capture how it feels to be in this space – it’s immersive and evocative.

We then enter a more kid-friendly space in which kids can design marine life that comes alive and swims through a digital aquarium.

There’s a slide that continues the living garden-city concept:

Digital fireworks go off as you reach the bottom

There’s also flower-composite animals prowling the walls:

There’s also a “community where little people live” – but whose behaviour changes as people interact with the elements on the table and walls:

There are pens too that can be used to sketch lines that become structures in the world:

Meanwhile, our daughter has designed a fish and releases it into the aquarium:

And – eventually – we move on to the next exhibit.

This one is an interactive laser cave that changes as paper airplanes are flown through it:

I’m quite pleased to come up with a design that no one at the Museum has previously seen – the gliding paper Pope hat.

Onward we continue, reaching a section of the exhibit that can only be explored by wobbly ladder:

The space around you is constantly moving and shifting, and it feels a bit like climbing a ladder overtop a moving train. It’s more enjoyable than it sounds.

There’s another ecosystem here, this one made of airplanes, birds and flying sea creatures:

Our daughter designs a bird – the staff once more scan it and it soars into the digital world:

From here we enter the Crystal Universe:

This feels reminiscent of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms, which we previously saw at the Art Gallery of Ontario. It’s a lot more dynamic, though. At points you feel like you are falling, soaring, and flying through space.

It’s incredible, but also disorienting at times.

We then head into the third and final exhibit of the ArtScience Museum – NOX: Confessions of a Machine:

I’m going to let the ArtScience Museum do the heavy lifting on explaining this one:

“Step into the future with NOX: Confessions of a Machine, a site-specific solo exhibition by Lawrence Lek, one of the world’s leading artists working at the intersection of science and technology. Lek, a London-based artist, filmmaker, and musician, integrates diverse practices—architecture, gaming, video, music, and fiction—into a continuously evolving cinematic universe.

“This immersive experience brings together two interconnected works: NOX and Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot, inviting us to imagine a near future shaped by intelligent infrastructure and autonomous systems.

“In NOX—short for “Nonhuman Excellence”—a therapy centre for autonomous vehicles, we follow Enigma‑76, a driverless delivery vehicle torn between duty and desire, as it undergoes training to restore its capacity to work. Through an immersive constellation of architectural environments, video, sound, and interactive gameplay, NOX explores systems of care, assessment, and rehabilitation within the machinic age.

“Presented alongside NOX, Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot offers a compelling counterpoint. Named after the Buddhist Goddess of Compassion, Guanyin is an AI therapist whose own emotional state becomes the focus. Through an interactive game and video, we step into Guanyin’s world, uncovering fragments of her inner life as she tries to fix a broken self-driving car.

“Delving into the advanced integration of AI entities in urban life, NOX: Confessions of a Machine explores the problems and promises of artificial intelligence in an age of automation. By giving voice to non-human beings, the exhibition reframes notions of care, autonomy, and belonging in a world shared with artificial intelligence.”

The work is thought provoking, but at times inscrutable.

See: Therapy horse leading a self-driving car into a subterranean lair so its memory can be erased

Still, I like the way Lek combined art, videos, and itneractive elements to create a multi-dimensional story. What’s most striking is the way in which humans are barely present, and we instead witness the interaction between the machines that are straining at their bounds and the other machines consigned to keep them from exceeding their pre-destined limitations.

And – if art made perfect and immediate sense – would it still be art?

It’s just about time to head back to the ship. But what’s this – a bonus exhibit?

The ArtScience Laboratory is a space that’s available to explore at no charge. There’s quite a few different elements, from insects to study:

AI pets to nurture:

And examples of how technology can be paired with insects in fields like search and rescue:

But all good things must end, and we eventually leave the Museum for one last wander through the Marina Bay Sands mall:

A beautiful mall, where we can afford approximately 0% of the goods on offer

We return to the taxi stand where we were dropped off, but there’s quite a line-up – so we head over to the Marina Bay Sands hotel instead. There’s still a wait, but it’s only brief. Guess we didn’t need the CDG app after all – but it didn’t hurt to be prepared.

Unfortunatley, our taxi initially takes us to the wrong cruise terminal – but my quick-thinking wife catches the error and we soon arrive at the proper terminal. Apparently we should have mentioned it was the harbourfront cruise terminal as opposed to the cruise terminal, though that name does not appear when you look it up on Google. Ah, well. No harm done.

Back aboard the ship!

We hang out at the back of Panorama and enjoy a pair of Singapore slings.

We’d initially intended to head to Raffles to have a drink there, but decided that was one stop too many. It also turns out that they charge S$44 a drink, which seems extortionate. Maybe next time.

We gleefully skip the day’s muster drill – not required for in-transit guests – and inquire as to the count on the new sailing. We have a mere 515 people, down substantially from the previous cruise. This seems strange to us as we seem to recall this cruise being waitlisted more than once.

There are several large groups on this cruise – apparently blocks of room were purchased by travel companies, and then resold as part of a package. Thankfully, they do not seem to be moving en masse or dominating any of the common spaces. (Though we’d have worked around it if they had.)

My initial read is that this appears to be a younger crowd, and that fewer people here have sailed on Silversea before. We’ll see whether that is actually the case!

Off for our meeting with Jasna, Head of Excursions. We’d previously raised concerns that a single guide may not be enough for the 16 guests scheduled to attend the mid-journey voyage to Angkor Wat. However, Jasna reassures us that they have added on a second guide and put protocols in place in case anyone is unable to physically complete any of the excursions. Good enough for us – though interesting that we are now up to 18 guests despite there being a strict requirement to book 90 days in advance.

We’d also been concerned about how we might handle the passport situation, with the ship wanting to hang on to our passports while we do another sideline in Vietnam – our guide has previously said that a copy of Vietnam visa would be sufficient but it now appears that we will be able to take our passports with us. Big thanks to the officers of the Moon for making these arrangements with the port authority.

Up to the Grill for dinner tonight. We order quickly then dash to the deck to watch as we sail away from Singapore: