#139 Singapore

Singapore is a very interesting little place. It's both a city and country in one, incredibly multicultural, vibrant and modern, and best of all everyone speaks English and it is very clean and safe. However it is also one of the most expensive places to visit in Asia, so best for a short trip or as part of a long stop-over. Overall I really enjoyed my short visit, and honestly it looks like a cool place to live.

The highlights of the city are the gardens, in particular the Botanical Gardens (which are free) and the Gardens by The Bay (paid attraction). When I visited it was in the summer holidays and the height of the Pokemon Go craze, so there were lots of young people crowded around the Botanical Gardens on their phones. I appreciate nature and getting out  for a nice walk but I'm not hugely interested in types of flowers etc so in hindsight visiting just the free Botanical Gardens would have been more than enough for me, and probably for most people too.

Cloud Forest

The Gardens by the Bay were quite expensive but since it's one of very few attractions there I splashed out to pay for it. The Cloud Forest was really cool, but you have to be careful as the misting only happens for a few minutes every few hours and unless you're there for that it's a bit pointless, so plan in advance. I was lucky and happened to be walking in just as misting started, so I ran around the different levels taking as many photos as I could while it lasted, then when it was over I finally relaxed and went back around again taking my time. I had an enjoyable time and since the domes are temperature controlled it was really nice taking a break from the heat, but overall unless you really like flowers it's not amazing and probably isn't worth the money.

The Gardens by the Bay area is also where you will find the Super Trees and also for a good view of the Marina Bay Sands hotel with the Infinity Pool on top. The only way to get to the pool is to stay at the hotel which is obviously very expensive so I didn't do this. The absolute highlight of my visit was the SuperTrees light show in the evening. They change the music and theme every few months, and when I went it was a 70's disco theme which I absolutely loved beyond words. You can pay to walk around the trees but it's only a small walkway between two of them so it didn't look like it was worth the money.

Shopping

There are tons of shopping malls and high class boutiques around the city, which for commoners like me aren't exactly budget friendly. Despite this I liked my visit to The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands, it had a little Venetian boat ride going through the mall which is a first for me. It also had a deck out the front with a great view of the water and city skyline, I came here in the evening at sunset and waited around until it got dark.


The good places for eating, shopping and souvenirs would be Chinatown and Bugis Street which both had lots of stalls. There were also two malls beside Bugis which had familiar high street brand names and restaurants.

The Shoppes

Chinatown

Bugis Street

Transport

The best and only way to get around Singapore is the MRT (underground trains) which is very easy to use, very clean and safe and quite cheap too.

For getting to the country itself, I incorporated a visit to Singapore as part of a wider trip which included Thailand and Malaysia, which I think many tourists do. There are a few options for this including train, plane and bus, and in the end I flew to Thailand, flew to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, got a bus to Singapore and then flew back to Thailand again. It's slightly more expensive to travel from Sinagpore to Malaysia than vice-versa which is interesting, and therefore I decided to go to Kuala Lumpur first and travel to Singapore.

I had originally planned to get an overnight train but they changed the schedules and routes shortly after I booked so I had to think fast, and opted to get a bus instead. The bus was luxury and the ticket was quite cheap, but the downside was it took a long time - we left KL at around 7am but didn't arrive in Singapore until around 1pm. Sinagpore Changi Airport is supposed to be the best in the world with all these crazy attractions - but to be honest I saw very little of this - there was a small Japanese garden, a small sunflower garden on the roof, and a small cinema room, which were nice but nothing particularly amazing like I had imagined.