visiting singapore
During our epic summer holiday of 2018, we swung via Singapore for a few days on our way back to the UK to break up our journey. Apart from absolutely bankrupting us, this island city-state charmed the heck out of us and had Ryan wanting to move there. (Side note: we will not be moving there because I would officially melt into a puddle on the floor after prolonged exposure to that degree of humidity!)
Our top 6 things to do in Singapore:
1. The Hawkers Food Markets. Dotted around Singapore there are a number of cheap food markets. In a city in which you are forced to live life expensively - finding a place to eat a couple of meals on a budget each day was a very welcome feature of the city. Our hotel ‘The Scarlet’ was situated two minutes walk from the ‘Maxwell Hawker Centre’. These Hawker food markets are essentially warehouses filled with independent sellers who offer all kinds of delicious dishes (kind of resembling a giant food court). Although we didn’t try it some of them even have Michelin stars!
2. Visiting the magnificent ‘Gardens by the Bay’. This was my favourite thing to do in Singapore, and I wish we could have spent longer wandering around these GIANT structurally iconic greenhouses! They literally light up the skyline in Singapore, so make sure to visit as we did a few hours before the sun sets so you can see them both during the day and at night. We visited both the ‘Cloud Forest’ and ‘Flower Dome’ and I would highly recommend both. We visited so many gardens and parks during our trip that Ryan put a ban on future holidays, and is now limiting me to one museum or garden per place!
3. Chinatown. We were situated in Chinatown and I’d highly recommend this as a base (but I may be slightly bias as I used to live in China). Situated right next to the Marina Bay, there are plenty of great places to eat, fantastic night life and good transport links. We bought some trusty chopsticks from here which we now use at least once a week back home, to remind us of Singapore and how much we’d like to go back.
4. Discovering Ryan’s secret love for Karaoke. Who knew?! Note to self: never try to sing the Spanish version of ‘Despacito’ again.
5. Searching out statues and fountains around the Marina Bay. I took us on a tour of a number of famous spots around the bay: we started in the Civic District to visit St. Andrew’s Cathedral, visited Chijmes (formerly a girls’ school renovated into a bar and restaurant complex), Esplanade and Merlion Park, before finally ending up in the Marina Bay Sands complex where we gleefully enjoyed air conditioning and cocktails. Unfortunately Raffles Hotel was being renovated so we didn’t get to taste the original ‘Singapore Sling’ cocktail, but that’s just all the more reason to return!
6. Just wander around and soak up the wonderful energy and vibe of the city. Visit as many of the neighbourhoods as you can, each one brings a totally new element to Singapore. We made it around most of them in a few days and loved how multicultural the whole place was - with Muslin mosques right next door to Buddhist temples. Such an amazing mish-mash of cultures. As our final destination of the whole trip, I forced myself to stay awake for a night out, and it ended up being Ryan’s favourite thing we did in Singapore.
Things not to do in Singapore…
The island of Sentosa. If you had small children I imagine this would be the perfect island… filled with theme parks, an aquarium, giant indoor wind tunnels, beaches and bars. Having climbed Mount Faber on the mainland and taken the cable car across however, we saw dolphins in a swimming pool, and when we arrived we were astounded at how over-priced and commercialised the whole island was. We spent the day on Siloso beach staring out at the oil tankers just off shore, having paid around £50 for an ice bucket filled with Heineken.
Tanglin Village in the Dempsey Cluster. My trusty guide book failed me on this one. We walked all the way to this “hip and quaint neighbourhood” from the Botanic Gardens and instead of finding a hustling, bustling, “dining, entertainment and shopping destination” we were met with a deserted zombie town, filled with empty restaurants. Not one to waste a day trip, we did make up for the disappointment by finding an ice cream parlour where we ate more than our weight in ice cream.
