Singapore Art Week 2017

Singapore Art Week

Singapore is a city that has been standing out with its art scene for decades. We’ve talked about a lot of art events, festivals, and other locations here, but the simple fact of the matter is that it’s impossible to count them all.

Still, what are we to do but try, and this time we’ll tell you about one of the definite must-sees in Singapore’s art scene – the Singapore Art Week.

Usually celebrated in the middle of January, in 2017 the Singapore Art Week fell on January 11-22. An astonishing visual feast, the Singapore Art Week presented the lucky visitors with over 100 events in the span of those 11 days, including everything from art fairs and gallery openings, to guided art walks around the city. No matter whether you are a devoted art lover or just a casual gallery browser, no matter whether you live in Singapore or are just a tourist, both in 2017, as well as in all previous years, the Singapore Art Week successfully satisfied all artsy tastes and promises to keep doing so in the future.

With so many highlights during Singapore Art Week, it’s really hard to pinpoint one or two events, but if we have to, we’d go with the Art Stage Singapore – the region’s flagship international art fair returned to the Singapore Art Week for its seventh edition. This year the Art Stage paid attention and tribute to the importance of developing a cohesive Southeast Asian art market in Singapore. Presented with a lot of in-depth discussions by global leaders and artists, it brought Asian art to the forefront.

The Singapore Art Week had a lot of other highlights to offer as well, of course – Singapore Biennale, for example, also took place this year. Happening only once every two years, the next Singapore Biennale will be in 2019. One of Southeast Asia’s most prominent contemporary art exhibitions, the Singapore Biennale this year was titled “An Atlas of Mirrors” and featured contemporary artworks from over 60 artists.

Including a lot of others amazing artists and organizations such as the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, ARTWALK Little India, the Art After Dark and Aliwal Urban Art Festival held at the Gillman Barracks and Aliwal Arts Centre, and much, much more.

If you live in Singapore, or you happen to visit the city in next January, try not to miss the next Singapore Art Week – we are certain that it will have a lot to offer once again.

5 Best Escape Room Games in Singapore

Singapore is a city that offers an innumerable amount of great entertainment, whether it’s outdoors, indoors, whether we’re talking about food, festivals, parks, or anything else.

As always, we are trying our best to keep you informed about all the amazing possibilities the city has to offer, but one thing we seem to have missed so far is a worldwide trend that is part of Singapore as well – Escape rooms.

There are a lot of great escape games and escape rooms in Singapore, which can feel overwhelming for people that are new to this sort of entertainment. That’s why we’re going to list the 5 best escape games in Singapore.

In no particular order, here they are:

• Forever Young. Finding yourself abducted, you wake up in a strange playroom. You have to use the clues left by previous victims to find a way out of your kidnapper’s grasp, as well as to uncover his or her identity. Rated as one of the hardest escape rooms in Singapore, Forever Young is definitely a place to check out.
• The Ouija. Recreating a horrifying incident from 1985, when a student, Judy Lim, was found hanging in one of the school’s toilet cubicles. Suicide was ruled out by investigators and the main homicide suspect was the school cleaner who disappeared after the body was found.
  In the Ouija escape game, visitors try to find out the truth via connecting with the spirit realm through an Ouija board.
• The Hospital. Another great escape room, The Hospital is the “sequel room” of the famed “Apartment”. As such, it requires you to have played the Apartment in order to get the full experience, but it is well worth it. The Hospital tasks you with the challenge of uncovering the mystery of Mrs Fong and her daughters and their disappearance from their HDB flat.
• Killer’s Game. You aim to help an investigator catch the Zodiac Killer – a serial killer that’s already left five victims behind him. You go the house of the investigator, Corporal Lee, but as you enter, the door slams and locks behind you and you’re see a timer and a sign that says “You Are Next”, signed by the “Zodiac Killer”. Pressed by time, you need to use all the clues you can find to escape!
• Pandora the Haunted. Trapped in an abandoned attic with a jammed door, visitors are tasked to find a way out. They here an eerie child’s voice in the dark – “Are you here to play with me?”, but there’s no one there. And so, the game begins! If you are a fan of mysterious, horror scenarios that ask you to keep your cool and try to think rationally in the face of “true” terrors – Pandora the Haunted can be a great place for you to visit.

Think you’ve run out of things to do in Singapore ? Escape the boredom with these rooms!

City Square Mall Singapore

This article has been moved over to our original article on City Square Mall

 

River Hongbao 2017

A key part of Singapore’s festival calendar since 1987, River Hongbao 2017 is an event that you do not want to miss when visiting Singapore.

Held every year as a part of the New Lunar Year celebrations, River Hongbao takes place at the Floating Platform at Marina Bay and enchants both tourists and locals every time it is held.

A festival that offers the full spectrum of the special Chinese cultural experience. Traditional music, beautiful art, giant lanterns, mouth-watering cuisine – River Hongbao has it all.

Not just mere lanterns, the amazing hand-crafted by Chinese masters, the lanterns you can see at River Hongbao depict figures of Chinese myth and legend in a mind-boggling celebration of color and light. Among the crowd-favorite lanterns are the God of Fortune, and of course, the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac.

Are you a fan of fireworks as well? The opening night and the Chinese New Year Eve Countdown Party of River Hongbao will give you exactly what you want – astonishing fireworks displays that dwarf practically anything else in the field of pyrotechnics.

Opera, carnival games, amusement rides, street performances, and a ton of other traditional Chinese activities will make sure that the visitors of River Hongbao leave breathless.

And as for the culinary aficionados, River Hongbao has a lot to offer as well – an endless extravaganza of exotic delicacies and food masterpieces, served at one of the biggest and longest outdoor food streets in the city.

Organized by Singapore Federation of Chinese Clan Associations, Singapore Press Holdings, Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Singapore Tourism Board and People’s Association, River Hongbao is a 10-day festival of epic proportions and has been an integral part of Singapore’s New Lunar Year celebrations for 3 whole decades. Marrying the traditional Chinese culture with modern, futuristic elements and technology, River Hongbao is an event every tourists should witness.

Too see some of the other great outdoor activities in Singapore, check our list here.

UFC Singapore 2017

UFC  2017 Fight Night in Singapore

Singapore is one of those very few cities around the world that marry the old and the new, the West and the East, in such an amazing way that often leaves us speechless. With a great variety of both outdoors and indoors activities and events to visit, tourists can spend countless days in Singapore and still not manage to see everything the city has to offer.

This alone makes our attempts at listing the best activities and events in Singapore almost futile. However, that doesn’t mean that we won’t keep trying.

And as if to accent the contrast between the eastern cultures that flow through Singapore and the western ones that have also come to stay in the city, one indoors annual event that also attracts an awful lot fans and visitors is the UFC Fight Night.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is the world’s leading MMA (mixed martial arts) organization. It has visited Singapore before with UFC Fight Night: Saffiedine vs. Lim in 2014. In 2017, however, Singapore will be the first live UFC event in Asia. On June 2017 the Singapore Indoor Stadium will witness some of the most iconic and renowned world mixed martial arts athletes.

In the days leading up to the UFC Fight Night, many of the rising stars of the various Asian MMA organizations will compete against each other – Japan, Korea, China, Indonesia, the Philippines and others – this promises to be a heck of a show as well!

Devout fans will also have the chance to witness the “UFC Experience” – fitness challenges, interviews, meet-and-greets, open training sessions, and other great opportunities for meeting your favourite mixed martial arts star in Singapore. The UFC Experience also allows you to go head-to-head with other fans in a ton of games and activities in the UFC fan village, purchase original UFC merchandise, and much more.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship is one of the most famous modern worldwide fighting sports, and for a lot of fan, having the opportunity to witness it live in Singapore is almost a once-in-a-live-time occasion. Regardless of that, however, it’s one of the most spectacular sporting events out there and it is sure keep the city talking!

 

Singapore Grand Prix 2017

There are countless of great things you can do in Singapore – sightseeing and cuisine aside, the outdoor activities as a whole are innumerable. And while we tried to list the top ones here, it’s virtually impossible to do so.

This becomes especially true when you consider some of the many annual worldwide events that visit Singapore like the Formula 1 Grand Prix.

Conducted in Singapore every year since 2008, the Grand Prix of Singapore has quickly become a fan-favourite among Formula 1 fans and is often referred to as the “crown jewel” of the Formula 1 calendar. With a circuit length of 5.065 kilometres and 61 laps, the total distance of the Marina Bay Street Circuit in Singapore is 308.828 kilometres. The fastest lap record belongs to Daniel Ricciardo who managed a time of 1:47.187 in 2016. The Red Bull racer finished second that year, after Nico Rosberg in first place, and in front of Lewis Hamilton in third.

Taking place from September 8 to September 17 in 2017, it’s definitely not a cheap entertainment – tickets vary between ~100€ and ~6000€, depending on the day or days you choose and the zone you would like to be in.

And while the moto show rages on and the fastest cars on the planet fly by the ecstatic viewers, the rest of the city is caught in the Grand Prix craze as well. During the Grand Prix Season in Singapore you can also witness and visit a ton of special shop offers, new dining options, various cultural and party experiences that surround the buzzing hive that is the Marina Bay Street Circuit at the time of the Grand Prix.

Famous events such as Amber Lounge, Podium Lounge, Hotel Vagabond’s dinner theatre experience, or 1-Altitude’s Johnnie Walker Circuit Party, and many others, all easily manage to keep fans and tourists excited and entertained even when the racers are off for the day.

All in all, the Grand Prix Season in Singapore is not only one of the most beloved – if not the most beloved – Formula 1 Grand Prix in the modern history of the race, but it’s also one of the most prestige and amazing outdoor events that happen annually in the city.

World Gourmet Summit Singapore 2017

As a city of countless attractions, events, festivities, and fascinating places, it’s quite normal for us to have trouble mentioning them all – they are happening almost faster than we can talk about them and you’ll never run out of things to do in Singapore.

One event that we can’t miss, however, is the World Gourmet Summit. Our earlier post covered the Singapore Food Festival, and the World Gourmet Summit is another even that food-enthusiasts simply don’t want to miss!

First organized in 1997, the World Gourmet Summit is having its 20^th anniversary this year. Ever since its inception, the WGS,s prime purpose has been to showcase and promote the local dining scene, as well as the Michelin-starred chefs and vintners both from Singapore and from around the globe.

It is organized annually by the A La Carte Productions, which is a division of Peter Knipp Holdings Pte Ltd (PKH). WGS is also actively supported by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB).

Whether you are interested in dining, wine, or whiskey, the World Gourmet Summit will present you the best of the best dining professionals and restaurants in Singapore from around the world. During the summit you can witness a great variety of programmes and highlights of the best Michelin-awarded chefs. You can also get close and take part in wine and dine tastings and degustations.

Previous years of the World Gourmet Summit have seen amazing professionals such as:

• Jean-François Piège (France – 2 Michelin Stars), hosted by Chef Chris Millar at Stellar@1-Altitude
• The famed pastry chef Christian Escriba
• Matt Moran (Australia – 3 The Age Good Food Guide Hats), hosted by Chef Dallas Cuddy at The Prime Society
• Gabriele Ferron (Italy), hosted by Chef Kentaro Torii at Forlino
• The Roca brothers, Jordi and Josep, from three-Michelin-starred El Celler de Can Roca in Spain
• Modern-Indonesian cuisine pioneer Petty Elliott
• William Ledeuil (France, 1 Michelin Star), hosted by Chef Ken Ling at My Humble House
• Yannick Alléno (France, 3 Michelin Stars), hosted by Chef Bruno Ménard at La Cantine by Bruno Ménard
• Sanjeev Kapoor (India), hosted by Chef Manjunath Mural at The Song of India

And many, many others!

On WGS’s website – http://www.worldgourmetsummit.com/wgs2017/main.php – you can keep up with the latest from the World Gourmet Summit, as well as with the culinary event itself – it is being held right now – from 20 March to 16 April!

If you’re interested in taking a detailed look at the finest dining offers that Singapore has to offer, the World Gourmet Summit is something that you simply don’t want to miss!