After breakfast at the hotel, we left on our city tour ( RMG Tours Pte. Ltd., S$21 each).  A surprise was our first destination – the bustling Serangoon Central Wet Market along Serangoon Rd. (Little India’s main thoroughfare), well stocked with the freshest vegetables, meat, fish, spices, etc.  and surprisingly fly-free.

Merlion Park

From Serangoon Rd. we made a short photo-op stopover at Merlion Park which houses the 8.6 m. high, 70-ton statue of the merlion, a mythical creature with the body of a fish and the head of a lion. The statue, made from November 1971 to August 1972 by the late Singapore sculptor Lim Nag Seng, was installed on September 15, 1972 at the mouth of the Singapore River, with the Anderson Bridge as its background.

In 1997, the completion of the Esplanade Bridge blocked the views of the Merlion from the Marina Bay waterfront.By then, its original location was also no longer the entrance of Singapore River. In 2002, the statue and its cub were relocated, from April 23-25, 2002, 120 m., to the current Merlion Park, fronting Marina Bay, where it stands on a newly reclaimed promontory in front of the Fullerton Hotel.