We decided to leave Southeast Asia in style, spending our final three days in Singapore! This was the most expensive city on our trip, but the cost was justified – it was the most law-abiding, cleanest, and extravagant city of our stops.
Getting There
From the Malacca bus station in Malaysia, we booked the next available bus to the City Plaza station in Singapore, which was within a reasonable walk to our hotel. The bus pulled into the Malacca station right on time. We scanned our tickets and boarded through the gate. The bus platforms have a countdown timer, so the bus left right on time (rare in Southeast Asia). We left Malacca with a full bus, but everyone except us and three others deboarded right before the Singapore border in Larkin, Malaysia. We continued to the Malaysian border control, where we got off with all of our luggage, walked through a temperature screening, up escalators, and through immigration to get stamped out of Malaysia. Then we returned back to the same bus with the same three other people to cross the bridge to Singapore! There was a lot of traffic going into Singapore, but even more leaving Singapore into Malaysia (probably rush hour).
Once we got across the bridge, we entered the Singapore border control in Woodlands. Again, we got off the bus with all of our luggage, through a temperature screening, up escalators, and stamped into Singapore. Each immigration stop only took about ten minutes. From Singapore immigration, we continued straight on to the City Plaza bus stop in Singapore. Overall, the bus ride took almost five hours to travel about 150 miles. Upon arriving, we walked about 40 minutes to our hotel, and for once, we had plenty of sidewalk to walk on!
In order to save money, we booked a hotel (Five/6 Splendour Hotel) about an hour’s walk outside the center of the city. The hotel was plenty nice and located within a ten-minute walk of the subway (Kallang stop), making it convenient for exploring the city.
Things to Do in Singapore
There is no lack of things to do in Singapore. We spent about three full days exploring the city using a mix of transportation (walking, subway, and uber). Our hotel was about an hour and a half walk from downtown Singapore, so we typically took the subway (MRT) when feasible. The subway was amazingly easy to use. Tickets cost us about 2 sgd per person. Each ticket can be reloaded up to six times and on the third use, you get a ten-cent discount. Our favorite activities are listed below, but we always enjoy just wandering as well!
Peranakan Terrace Houses 
- Marina Bay Sands Hotel/Mall
This is the famous three-tower hotel with a large boat spanning across the rooves of the towers. While we couldn’t afford to go up to the boat rooftop area, it was quite a spectacle to see from the ground level! The mall on the other hand, is free to visit and is one of the fanciest malls I’ve ever been in. All high-end stores and even a casino built in! There was a light show exhibit at one end near the food court where they displayed lights from above onto the floor. Patrons could pay to get into and interact with the lighted floor area. For example, one display was an ocean with sea creatures swimming around that moved when you stepped near them. Several children were enjoying themselves!
- Gardens by the Bay
Most of the city was filled with beautiful landscaped areas along sidewalks, streets, buildings, you name it. But the Gardens by the Bay are truly unique (as are the Botanical Gardens, see below). The stunning park contains many different interactive exhibits, some free, some that cost money. I’ll start with the exhibits that we paid for – the Cloud Forest and Flower Dome. A combo ticket gets you into both for 28 sgd per person (or about $20 USD per person). Absolutely worth the price! Both the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest are indoor greenhouses, but cold inside. We started with the Flower Dome which displayed gardens/plants from all over the world and organized by country and continent, plus some wood sculptures thrown in for good measure. Well worth several hours of your time.
Next, we went into the Cloud Forest. Unfortunately, it was dark when we entered the Cloud Forest (last admission is at 8 pm and it closes at 9 pm) so we couldn’t see everything quite as well. However, there are lights and the night-time views do create a nice atmosphere, especially when the “clouds” (i.e., misting of the plants) are released. The Cloud Forest also has a huge indoor waterfall, the second highest in the world only to the waterfall at the Singapore Airport. There are elevated walkways so you can admire the entire height of the plant wall and waterfall. Other exhibits scatter the ground floor. It’s amazing that they can grow plants from all over the world in these greenhouses considering the climates of these places differ so greatly. We could watch the 7:45 pm SuperTree Grove light show from the top of the Cloud Forest, but you can’t hear the music, so it’s much better to watch it in the grove itself, which is what we did after the Cloud Forest!
The SuperTree Grove are the giant steel trees with plants installed up the trees’ trunks. Lights are also installed and at 7:45 and 8:45 pm every night there is a light show to music that lasts about 15 minutes. The music changes from time to time, but while we were visiting, the performances were called “Opera in the Park.” The performance is quite incredible – we watched two nights in a row.
There is also an exhibit in the Gardens by the Bay with light-up egg-shaped balloons fixed in shallow water. When you hit the balloons, they changed colors throughout the exhibit. Meanwhile, there was a soft music playing in the background. Another impressive exhibit was “The Planet” statue – a giant baby statue balanced on just the right hand. Aside from the many exhibits to explore in the park, there is plenty of green space to just sit out and relax as well. An amazing place!
- Botanical Gardens
Even after having been to the incredible Gardens of the Bay, the Botanical Gardens were still something special, and free to visit! We entered at the Bukit Timah Gate, which is adjacent to the Botanical Gardens subway station. From here we wandered around Eco-Lake to Jacob Bellas Children’s Garden (which was closed at the time). We saw many monitor lizards along the way digging for worms. Net, we wandered through the Ethnobotany Garden and then the Herb & Spices Garden to the Red Brick Path which led to the Orchid Garden. There was an entrance fee into the Orchid Garden (5 sgd per person), but very economical and well worth the fee. The number and quality of the orchids is incredible, not to mention the care, detail, and creativity in the displays. There is also a section with cross-bred orchids named after or in honor of famous political leaders around the world (seems to be those that have visited the gardens). Very beautiful! We didn’t even get to explore the entirety of the Botanical Gardens but loved what we did get to see!
- East Coast Park
Another great park with several running/biking paths located right along the coast. This is apparently a great spot for water sports along the beach, but we only saw a couple people swimming when we visited. We should have worn our swimsuits for a quick dip! We could also see many cargo ships parked right offshore. It was very hot (as is typical), so we only walked around for about an hour.
- Food
We had one of our favorite dishes in all of Southeast Asia here – bak kuh teh – a pork rib dish. It’s served with salted vegetables, rice, and you tiao (fried dough). So delicious! We got lucky and happened upon this our first night in Singapore. It was a very busy shop, but fortunately one of the workers told us exactly what to order for our first tasting! We ate this a few times while we were in Singapore. I think it is also considered a Malaysian dish, so we had been missing out for weeks!
Leaving Singapore
Usually this isn’t its own separate section, but the Singapore Airport deserves its own space. We took the subway to the airport – green (east/west) line to Tanah Merah where we transferred to the airport green line for two stops before arriving at the Changi Airport. There is an entire mall called the Jewel at the airport. Inside the Jewel sits the world’s largest indoor waterfall. They do a light show at this waterfall every 30 minutes or so and lasts about 10 minutes. We watched a couple shows since we had extra time.
With about 2 hours before our flight, we decided to go through security. All we had to do was walk through some cameras, scan our passports, provide our thumbprint and we were in. The easiest security screening we’ve ever experienced. In the airport, there were two outside bars – the Cactus Bar and Rooftop Pool Bar (yes, there’s a rooftop pool and you can pay 17 sgd to swim and use the facilities for three hours). It was way too hot to drink outside, so we wandered to the only other bar – a sports’ bar/restaurant – but beers were 20 sgd, which was too much for us. We just wandered around the airport with the remainder of our time before boarding for Melbourne, Australia.
