National Geographic Store in Singapore

Last night my wife and I were at Vivocity mall at Harbourfront and we noticed that there was a new store, a National Geographic Store. In Singapore, there seems to be a specialty store for everything. I guess National Geographic is no exception.

We went ahead and went inside to check it out and we wound up having a lot of fun! Looking through the store was like looking through a museum where everything is for sale. I took photos of a few of the more interesting attractions/products:

This thing greets you as you first come into the store. It’s pretty visible and is actually what caught our eye in the first place. When I saw it, the first thing that went through my head is stuff about pale horses and death. It’s a horse made of pieces of some type of old wood. I didn’t check the details on it but my wife said it’s selling for the low low price of only 9k SGD. I think I could build one myself for cheaper than that, but maybe it has some historical value?

Next up was this bookcase that was apparently made in Sweden in the 1880s. I thought it was particularly interesting because one of the blogs I follow is written by a Swedish girl in China, Jonna Wibelius. Besides, I love books, and it would be nice to have a fancy bookcase to put them on. I don’t think I’d go this far though. The bookcase is selling for about 25k SGD.

Next I saw this really neat jewelry case. It’s 7k SGD. How’s that for a high end Valentine’s gift?

Though not the most expensive, this one was probably the oldest. It was the oldest one I saw anyways. The tag says it was made in the 900s in England, and it was selling for 21k SGD.

What I want to know is how anyone can afford to buy any of these things, especially with the current financial troubles. Maybe these items are just there for show, and are meant to amuse and attract customers more than anything. The store also carried framed prints and a large selection of wearable clothing (as opposed to costume type clothing as pictured below) and bags as well. Plus, there were some interesting notepads. I should’ve checked the price tags on the clothes and bags, but I’m sure it was all very expensive. I did look at the price of a little 3×5 inch “Expedition Notebook” and was disappointed to see it was 17.50 SGD. I would’ve bought it if it had been 6 to 7 dollars, but I can’t see paying more for an empty notepad than I would pay for an actual novel.

Also, the store of course had issues of National Geographic set up on displays everywhere. I used to have a huge collection of those magazines. They were old ones that my dad had in storage. I don’t even remember what happened to them now. I should’ve kept a closer eye on them. They might have been worth money some day.

Besides old furniture and clothes the store also featured two other unusual and interesting attractions. One was so interesting that I don’t even remember what was on the stands around it. An area of the floor was lit up by a projected image of sand. It had some sort of motion sensing technology built in that would display footprints when you walked across it. Also, seeminly at random, scorpions would pop up out of the sand, or out of your footprints, and skitter around. My wife and I weren’t the only ones that found it incredibly amusing. There was a little girl, maybe 6 or 7, that was going nuts trying to squash the scorpions. I recorded some of it. Sadly, I turned off the camera just before the little girl screamed, “Nasty! Nasty! These things are so nasty! GRRRRR!” It was hilarious!

The other attraction is a “cold chamber.” It wasn’t open when we went into the store, but for 1 SGD you can stand inside the chamber and experience -25 C (about -13 F) temperatures. The chamber has glass windows so everyone can watch, and, if you want to pay 5 SGD and submit a valid e-mail address, you can have your picture taken and sent to you as well. For some people in Singapore this might be a thrill because they’ve never experienced temperatures anywhere near that cold before. This is a tropical climate after all. For me, it would be a welcome relief to finally feel some real cold air. Even in the malls here the temperature is average, rather than the cool I’m used to. -13 F is a little extreme, but it would still be great!

So, even though we didn’t buy anything, we still got to have a lot of fun just browsing the store. Even if you don’t have 25k extra to spend on old furniture, I still recommend you at least poke your head in to look around.