Ah, Singapore. You lived up to all of the hype. Rich and I knew you first as a country with a phenomenal educational system, and then we knew you as the home of Crazy Rich Asians, introduced to us by one of our favorite new authors, Kevin Kwan.
While we only had three short days with you, they were meaningful, and we will find a way to be back to see you soon. That’s a promise.
Day 117: Travel from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Singapore
Day 117 may have been one of my very favorite days of the trip from start to finish. Yes, even on a travel day.
Working Out in the Dark in Kuala Lumpur
As I shared in my Kuala Lumpur post, our AirBNB there had an incredible gym. Rich and I woke up extra early to get one more strong workout in. Small problem: we got dressed and headed down to the gym at 5:15 AM. The gym opened at 7:00 AM.
Our apartment building had many incredible amenities including a playground, an outdoor chess board, barbecue grills, and a putting green that might as well have been a miniature golf course. Rich and I decided to head to the putting green to do a body weight workout on my Aaptiv app. There were no lights on the green, so we jumped around and got sweaty with the reflected city lights of Kuala Lumpur all around us.
At about 5:45 AM, before sunrise, the Muslim call to prayer started playing from intercoms in the city. The soft chanting and the bright lights of the tall buildings really created an other worldly experience.
Flight from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore
One of our Grab drivers told us that there are over 80 flights a day from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore every day. Wild, huh?
Our flight into Singapore was unremarkable, other than the pilot’s reminder before landing that Singapore has the death penalty in place for drug possession. We clearly were drug free. But being reminded that you are entering a country where they can take your life is more than a little intimidating.
We arrived at our hotel, Hotel Yan, a cute boutique hotel within walking distance of everything we wanted to see. Singapore is pricey so it was the most expensive hotel room of Asia for us at $100/night and was also probably the smallest hotel room we have ever shared. It could not have been more than 100 square feet. The bed was in a corner touching two walls. Good thing we like each other. It also didn’t hurt that they gave us two free cokes, a bag of chips, and two packs of M&M’s each day.
Seeing Crazy Rich Asians in Singapore
I read Crazy Rich Asians in Vang Vieng, Laos in less than 48 hours, before handing it off to Rich for him to devour too. If you are not familiar with CRA, it was a megahit romantic comedy this summer and is based on the novel by the super talented Kevin Kwan. Rich and I have since read the second and third novels in the trilogy.
As soon as we read these delightful novels (seriously, read them), we knew we had to see the film. I also decided that we had to see it in Singapore, where the books and movie are set.
So the first thing we scheduled in Singapore was seeing the film, and when we looked up showings, the only one we found was at 9:30 PM, the night we arrived.
Nine thirty is a little late for us, but it was a bucket list item so we headed to a nearby mall at about 8:00 PM to buy our tickets. When we arrived, we discovered that the only showing was in fact at eleven thirty five, hours past our bedtime. We bit the bullet and decided it was worth it.
We spent the next three hours wandering the Singaporean mall and ate dinner in the food court at an incredible Korean restaurant.
Seeing the movie in the theatre in Singapore was all we could have hoped for. First, the movie itself is so much fun. But we were looking at scenes set in an airport that we had been in hours earlier and at places we had on our agenda to visit the very next day! This made the whole experience just that much more exciting.
One of my other favorite parts was listening to how the humor translated: there were lines that made us giggle that the mostly Singaporean audience didn’t blink at and other lines that hardly seemed like jokes to us that had them in stitches! This proved totally worthy of the loss of sleep.
On our middle of the night walk home through the beautiful and incredibly calm streets of Singapore, Rich and I agreed that this had been one of our very favorite experiences of the whole trip. Fun for all ages! Five stars! Two thumbs up!
Day 118: We See All of Singapore By Foot
Okay, slight exaggeration, but we did walk a lot!
Merlion Park
We first walked to Merlion Park which includes sweeping views of the Marina Bay Sands, the most amazing hotel I have ever seen. The hotel has three super tall towers with a roof deck that includes multiple bars and restaurants and an unbelievable infinity pool– more on that to come. We took some pictures with the Marina Bay Sands and the Merlion, a giant half lion, half fish that overlooks the lake.
Lunch at the Hawker Stalls
If you have seen Crazy Rich Asians, you know that Singapore has markets of street food sold in individual hawker stalls. My crazy Rich (couldn’t resist) looked up the hawker stalls from the books and movie, and we headed to Maxwell Food Centre for lunch. We were starving so we ordered a lot, and it was all so, so, so good.  Like so good that these tiny stalls with kitchens no bigger than what you would find in a food truck have earned Michelin stars.
We ate:
- Fried Dumplings. Yum.
- Carrot Cake. Forget the dessert. This dish is actually made of radish, garlic, fried eggs, and rice, and the flavor defies description.  I’m salivating thinking about it.
- Hainanese Chicken Rice. The chicken is boiled, then served with an oily, vinegar-y ginger rice. I am not the biggest meat eater these days, but this was so good.
- Char Kway Teow. This is a big plate of charred noodles cooked in a hot wok with eggs, soy sauce, bok choy, and bean sprouts.
For ~$13, we had a true feast!
The SuperTrees
After this very big meal, we need to walk again. We walked about two miles to the SuperTree Grove in the Gardens by the Bay.
I feel like for so much in Singapore, you just have to see it to believe it. The SuperTrees fall in this category.
So the SuperTrees are giant, vertical gardens that are the same height as a sixteen story building. The solar panels on the SuperTrees generate enough electricity for all of the lighting in the Gardens by the Bay. The SuperTrees are indeed super: they are home to “over 162,900 plants, comprising more than 200 species and varieties of bromeliads, orchids, ferns and tropical flowering climbers.”
My mom’s garden club back in Nashville, Tennessee would have been in heaven.
Rich and I paid a $3/person admission fee to walk on the walkway above the park for even more spectacular views of Singapore. There was live music on the lawn below, and lots of local families were clearly enjoying their day. If we lived in Singapore, I know what grove you would find us in every weekend!
Drinks at Marina Bay Sands
Rich and I debated whether we just wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon at the SuperTrees grove, but ultimately decided we might regret not at least stopping by the famous Marina Bay Sands hotel.
One of the most replicated shots in the cannon of luxury international travel has to be the shot of the back of a traveler staring off into the Singaporean high rise skyline from the infinity pool of the Marina Bay Sands (for a quick sample, see here, here, and here). Unfortunately, the only way to swim in the pool is to pay for a room there, and at $380 a night, that experience did not fit into our around-the-world-for-a-year budget.
Shoot, at $14/a drink, I’m not sure two cocktails fit into our budget either, but when I tell you that the rooftop bar at Lavo surpasses every rooftop bar, maybe every bar, I have ever experienced in terms of atmosphere, please believe I am not exaggerating for a second. I felt like I was an extra in the Great Gatsby (minus the outfit I walked all over the city in!) sitting on top of a skyscraper. It was really just the absolute coolest.
We enjoyed about an hour of bliss high above the world, and then, thankfully, caught a Grab back to the hotel. We immediately went to sleep.
Day 119: The Singapore Botanic Garden
Because the Philadelphia Eagles took on the Carolina Panthers at 1:00 AM. If you haven’t been following along, Rich and I are psycho extremely dedicated football fans so despite a 12 hour time difference, we have watched almost every Georgia Bulldog and Philadelphia Eagles football game.
The Eagles lost by blowing a 4th quarter lead, and we stayed up until 4:00 AM. Wah-wah.
More Hawker Stalls
In Crazy Rich Asians, four of the main characters enjoy a meal at the Newton Food Centre. So, of course, we had to eat there too! And we had to make jokes about our friends Colin, Nick, Rachel, and Araminta meeting us.
Rich and I realized that the day before our eyes had been slightly bigger than our stomachs, so we reigned in our ordering. We shared one noodle dish and one oyster omelet and left stuffed!
The Singapore Botanic Garden
Our walk from the Newton Food Centre to the Singapore Botanic Garden was just lovely. Imagine the nicest neighborhood in the city where you live. Now make it greener. Now add sidewalks. Now remove any and all trash. You have our walk.
The Botanic Garden could have been my mom’s garden club’s second favorite Singaporean field trip destination. There is a large lake with swans, but the crown jewel is most definitely the National Orchid Garden.
You may be skeptical that Rich and I wake up at 1:00 AM to watch football and enjoy flowers as much as we do, but put your skepticism aside. This is not any average garden; the National Orchid Garden contains the largest collection of orchids in the world with over 60,000 varieties.  The gardens are so peaceful and colorful– we had a really nice time wandering around.
The ION Orchard Shopping Center
From the garden, we headed to the ION Orchard Shopping Center to eat food court dinner and see if we could refresh any articles of clothing in our backpack that were especially haggard after days and days and days of wear.
I should start by saying that Rich and I are not big mall fans. We do almost all of our shopping online. Still Singapore malls are so incredible compared to American malls; we got our first Dunkin’ Iced Coffee of the trip (!!!!) and went to work.
Two stores that we found that we loved:
The concepts of both stores was similar: they both offer high quality basics (t-shirts, jeans, etc.) with no labels for reasonable prices. Rich was able to replace a lot of articles of clothing (t-shirts, shorts, etc.), and I picked up a few fresh t-shirts. Winning!
Final Thoughts on Singapore
Singapore is just so lovely. The city is calm and clean, and everywhere you look you see greenery and art.
When we were in the Grab on the way back to the airport, we heard a commercial on the radio reminding Singaporeans that they must be united as a people. Multiculturalism, secularism, and meritocracy are seen as keys to social harmony, and collective success is valued above that of the individual.
Before Crazy Rich Asians came on in the theatre, there were a number of commercials that played instead of movie trailers.
One commercial urged Singaporeans to save for retirement as not being a financial burden on their children was the greatest gift they could bestow. Another commercial highlighted the importance of young adults becoming early childhood education teachers in order to teach small children values and skills they would carry forward throughout their life. The final commercial encouraged Singaporeans to avoid antibiotics when they have the flu because the flu is a virus and not a bacteria, and they could develop resistance to antibiotics by taking them when they were not helpful.
My point of sharing these anecdotes is that we did not love Singapore just because it looked pretty, although it is visually stunning. We loved the beauty of the ideals of Singapore. Since its founding in 1965, Singapore has experienced a meteoric rise economically and socially. It is clear that there is national pride in being the best in every possible area, and in pulling all citizens up with every success achieved.
We are excited to visit Singapore again in the future…like when the sequel of Crazy Rich Asians hits theatres! Â
