Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands has one of the world’s most iconic and instantly recognisable silhouettes – the mammoth, elevated ship resting atop three 55-storey towers, designed by celebrated architect Moshe Safdie, who also came up with the ‘welcoming hand of Singapore’, the lotus-shaped ArtScience Museum located along the MBS waterfront. The luxury resort tops, or at least features, in almost every list of architectural marvels and places to visit when in Singapore, with every room offering panoramic views of either the South China Sea or Marina Bay and the city skyline.
But beyond all the impressive accolades, what truly makes Marina Bay Sands stand out is something far more experiential.
To me, it functions less like a resort and more like a self-contained city, one where every space has its own soul and earns its sense of place. Step into one of its restaurants, galleries, or lounges, and the property itself seems to dissolve around you. It’s like stepping through a tear in time and space.
Take Wakuda, the Japanese restaurant helmed by celebrated chef Tetsuya Wakuda. Dining there on a recent evening, somewhere between the dreamy Wagyu Yaki Udon and the incredibly fun Sake Colada, I noticed something remarkable, even as I popped a piece of squid tempura into my mouth.
I forgot I was inside a resort entirely.
There was no sense of being within a larger complex, no reminder of the floors above or the casino below. I know it sounds cliché (and as writers, we aim to avoid this cardinal sin in our copy), but it truly felt like being transported to another world. So much so that when I stepped out of the dimly lit, wooden ambience, it was faintly disorienting – not unlike how Kyo Kara Maoh!’s Yuri Shibuya must have felt, returning to his timeline from the Great Demon Kingdom.
The experience was the same at Mott 32, with its colonial-Singapore-meets-gritty-New-York-meets-1930s-Shanghai-atmosphere. It was like being planted into a world we are extremely familiar with through the lens of world cinema, but which we have perhaps not experienced for ourselves. The lush interiors (reminiscent of traditional Singaporean shophouses, botanical artwork, dark wood furniture and ornate wall coverings) instantly ferry you into another world, while specialities like the Apple Wood Roasted Peking Duck or the Signature Crispy Sugar Coated Peking Duck Bun will transport you to another dimension entirely. It is almost surreal that when you step out, you are a stone’s throw away from Roberta’s Pizzeria, Charles & Keith and Arc’teryx.
And that’s just the restaurants – we haven’t even gotten to the ArtScience Museum yet, which, beyond its famed beauty, is truly a homage to the fact that art and science are not distant cousins, but two sides of the same coin. Being inside is like partaking in a philosophical discourse while having the best trip of your life. You enter teamLab Future World and witness a rhinoceros dissolving into the first leaves of spring. When I was there earlier this month, I was also privileged to visit the ‘Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy’ exhibition. It was really a contemplation on the body as a vessel that doesn’t just harbour life, but the entire cosmos in motion.
Even the Sands Collection of rooms and suites feels surprisingly bespoke, almost as if tailored to each guest’s preference. Though of course, that couldn’t have been possible given the astounding variety of people who check in on a daily basis. It’s a personal home-away-from-home inside this city-within-a-city, where the sheer size of the rooms is never at odds with the warmth they convey, perhaps owing to the seamless architectural storytelling. For those seeking an even more elevated experience, The Paiza Collection occupies the highest floors of the landmark property – it’s like having your very own penthouse atop one of the tallest livable buildings in the world.
And then there is the fact that it is connected to Gardens by the Bay. What better after-dinner experience than the Garden Rhapsody show at the Supertree Grove? The communal experience is the closest we’ve come to world peace in a while. If you’re quick, you can slip out midway to catch Spectra – an opera of fountain jets, lasers, lava and visual projections, choreographed to music that will stay with you long after you’ve left for home.
It is a common joke amongst those who stay at Marina Bay Sands that the property is so large, you risk getting lost simply upon entry. But after experiencing the best of what it has to offer, getting lost doesn’t start to feel like a hazard. It feels like the whole point.