Singapore

Singapore earned its place on our list of destinations primarily for one reason – it houses a Universal Studios and we’re both theme park junkies. This meant we arranged to stay for five nights here, slightly longer than travellers normally allot to the most developed South East Asian city.

Our flight from Bali was uneventful enough, apart from the thoroughly annoying new ‘airport service fee’ that Bali Airport has decided to charge each departing passenger. It was about $23 USD each and ate into our precious US dollar fund for visas as we’d thought we were brilliant having all our Indonesian Rupiah spent!

Singapore’s Changi Airport is often heralded as one of the best in the world, and the immigration process is quick and painless. Getting to the city is also easy peasy; they have an airport shuttle bus for about $9 each that’ll drop you straight to your hotel. It leaves whenever it fills up basically, but we were only waiting ten minutes.

Our humble abode, Mori Hostel, was in Little India which is a popular backpacker area. Our private room wasn’t the most glamorous, being essentially windowless and tiny, but the hostel was within a few minutes walk of Farrer Park MRT station so the location was really handy. Singapore’s subway system is excellent and getting around the city is a breeze, and also really cheap. People warn about how expensive Singapore is, and it’s certainly not on par with other South East Asian countries for dirt cheap living but we didn’t find it too bad. We just had to limit the nights out as drink was too expensive for us poor backpackers!

Four full days was plenty for us to see everything we wanted in Singapore. First up was the newly built Gardens by the Bay, which is a large man-made garden system that’s really nice to walk around. We didn’t have enough interest to pay the $30 SGD into the huge domes that house all sorts of different plants from around the world but they’re supposed to be impressive. There’s lovely views of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Singapore’s iconic building.

We then walked up to Marina Bay to have a go on the Singapore Flyer, basically the London Eye equivalent. I thought this was well worth the $33 SGD; we went up just before sunset so got some incredibly picturesque views.

A full day was devoted to Universal of course, which was great fun but predictably not a patch on its American counterpart. It’s located on Sentosa Island just south of the city, which is easily reached by an MRT and then a short bus across the bridge. The set up is very similar to the one in Florida, with some rides, like Shrek 4D, also being identical. We were mainly here for the thrill rides which unfortunately aren’t that abundant since the closing of the park’s main attraction, the duelling rollercoasters, a couple of years ago due to safety issues. We didn’t know this before we got to Singapore so a little disappointing as they looked immense! The Mummy rollercoaster was good though, as was the new Transformers 4D ride. The Jurassic Park ride was good for a refreshing splash in the middle of the day, but unfortunately the Madagascar ride definitely wasn’t worth the queue – definitely one that’s just for the babbies! Overall queues weren’t bad in the park as we made sure not to go on a weekend. We considered going to the water park on Sentosa too but heard that the queues were abysmal due to Singapore’s over-zealous health and safety regulations; apparently the person before you needs to have gone down the slide, exited the pool below and practically left the park before the next person can go!

Although we were at the start of our travels when in Singapore so really couldn’t be lugging around any additional purchases, I couldn’t resist a visit to Orchard Road, Singapore’s high end shopping district. Here we found ultra-modern malls with every shop you could want. Prices were on par with home so there’s no bargains to be found but it’s definitely a pleasant place to engage in a bit of retail therapy if that’s what you’re after. I also really loved Chinatown for having a browse; it’s got the sights, sounds and smells of any other city’s Chinatown district but is really well laid out and nice to walk around. Plenty of bargains to be found here in relation to souvenir-type stuff. Sean wouldn’t let me buy the latest must-have in photography, the selfie stick, and he regrets it to this day!

Chinatown also houses a gem of an attraction called a Break Out Games. We found this by having a browse through Trip Advisor’s ‘things to do in Singapore’ list and noticing it up in the top ten. It seems to be the newest Asian craze (and spreading) – the escape room. Basically, you enter a room and have an hour to escape it, by using clues and hints that are hidden all around you. They’re ideally meant for groups of about 6 so the guy warned us we were at a bit of a disadvantage trying it with just the two of us; we did struggle to find everything and mentally put the pieces together quickly! But the guys are watching you on CCTV and pop in with a hint every now and then if you’re struggling. Our room contained a secret compartment behind a set of drawers which we eventually found; as the hour mark was approaching I was still in the secret compartment and Sean gleefully informed me that he was ready to drop the trapdoor and leave me behind, Crystal Maze style! These rooms are spreading everywhere now and are touted as the perfect team-building exercise; if people can get through this without arguing they’re onto a winner!

Our last attraction was a visit to Singapore Zoo, followed by a Night Safari which takes place in the park next door. After Africa I kind of thought I’d never see the value in visiting a zoo again, and while it’s obviously not a patch on seeing these animals in their natural habitat, this zoo is one of the better ones I’ve been to. There are plenty of animals here that I didn’t know existed and a few that I’d wanted to see but never had, like the extremely rare white tiger. They have this great ‘feeding trail’ whereby you start at a certain time and follow the timetable along to watch certain animals being fed. For some, you can get the opportunity to feed a few bits yourself for $5 – it’s done on a first come first serve basis so requires a bit of darting to the queue but it was well worth it to feed a few rhinos!

The Night Safari park opens once the zoo has closed and is basically like a zoo for nocturnal animals. You take a tram through certain sections of the park, and other sections are for walking through. We really enjoyed this as it’s a nice twist on a regular zoo experience, a offers views of completely different animals. We were sceptical when we saw the ‘no flash photography’ signs everywhere but the staff were actually brilliant at shaming the snap-happy Asian tourists into turning them off.

Thus ended our few days in Singapore. I really enjoyed it but felt our four days here was enough to see everything we really wanted to. People rave about Singapore’s hawker centres for food, but the couple of times we tried them we weren’t overly enamoured – we are extremely boring eaters though! Bring on Vietnam for their culinary delights, can’t wait to sample them and see if they deserve the hype.