Quick stop in Singapore...
We'd had a taste of what backpacking in an expensive country was like getting through Japan (note: pretty damn tough), so chose not to spend too long in Singapore - three nights would be it for us, so we'd plenty to fit in. First thing we noticed upon arriving was the airport: Jesus Christ, it's like a 5-star hotel. Genuinely above and beyond anything we've seen before in an airport - art installations and greenery everywhere. A sign of things to come!
We arrived in late and so got the airport shuttle to our hotel, Seong Kwai Hotel, based in Chinatown, a busy/swanky little area - though we found that's pretty much what Singapore is in general.
We also noticed that it was definitely a mega city built in the middle of the jungle/rainforest, as like in the airport, there's greenery e v e r y w h e r e. Similar to our reaction to the airport - we've never seen anything like this before. The city has been planned immaculately. We went exploring for our first day, and as per usual, first stop was coffee:
at Nylon Coffee Roasters - it was great, and it was similarly priced/cheaper than Dublin, so no need for us to panic about the budget just yet. After some caffeine we were ready to head on to some of the different areas that make up the city, first stop being Kampong Glam, the Malay-heritage area which houses Haji Lane, and the Sultan Mosque.
The city centre itself is quite small, and after turning down one small street we found ourselves stumbling out upon Little India, which as you'd imagine is the area of the city with a strong Indian heritage/presence.
An absolute highlight of the day for us here as it really brought us back to what India was like (though safe to say a little bit cleaner...) - the shopfronts, music, smells, all the same. The street art was something new, but again reminded us of scenes you'd see every day in India - nice for us to reminisce about how we started this trip.
The best part about all this though, was our stop at the Tekka Centre, a Hawker centre/food market where we got the most authentic Indian food since we left back in February/March, and brought us right back to all the best meals we had in our time there - Paneer Kadhai and Butter Chicken Masala were our go-to options, and we of course opted for it here. ~€8 for a full meal too, so while it was 2-3 times what you'd pay in India, you'd struggle to get anything as good as cheap in Dublin.
For the evening we ended up in the Mustafa Centre, which we had mistakenly thought to be a gigantic/premium mall. Turned out it was a 24 hour department store selling pretty much everything, and pretty much all of it fake. We ended up spending far longer there than we'd care to admit, picking up a few things we needed to replace in our bags.
And for dinner we decided on another Hawker style (...cheap) place - HawkerCHAN, home of the "world's cheapest Michelin-starred meal". Think it cost €4 for the chicken/rice/egg/cucumber/peanuts/soy sauce you get served up. It was grand like, nothing too mindblowing.
And to round off the evening we rushed over to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, to explore probably the most famous thing the city has to offer - The Gardens By the Bay, home of the "Supertrees". The hotel itself isn't too bad either, and we made sure to catch the free light show both nights we could (which was absolutely mindblowing, but we'll get to that for our last night) - feeling pretty tired after a long day we hit the hay not long after the show wrapped up.
A good night's rest unfortunately wasn't really enough, and neither of us was feeling too great to start off our last day in Singapore. We took it handy, had a bit of a "life admin" day (Stuart finally got his phone screen fixed which had cracked in Hong Kong), and recuperated. Finally feeling up to going out and tackling the heat/humidity of Singapore that afternoon, we ventured a little more around our local area of Chinatown, and realised we were staying two minutes away from the Budda Tooth Relic Temple - we had a quick look in, but nothing too interesting for us anyway.
Much more interesting was our after-dinner choice that night, as on the way home we stopped at Apiary for a Baileys-Brownie+Ferrero Rocher ice cream waffle. It was every bit as good as it sounds.
Thinking it was our last night and we hadn't yet done some of the main touristy things, we headed out back to our favourite spot, the Marina Bay Sands. Deciding the budget could go out the window for a moment, we decided we'd go up to the rooftop cocktail bar - not the viewing deck. Both cost about €20 to get in to, and are on the same floor - the difference being the cocktail bar can't look over the edge of the viewing deck, but the €20 at the cocktail bar counts towards a drink - and Dani wanted a Singapore Sling while we were here...
So we still got to see the stunning skyline of Singapore in all it's glory. As we did for the light show that we got to for the second night in a row. Pictures can't do it justice, we'd go a third night in a row if we could:
With our three nights coming to an end, we reluctantly said goodbye to Singapore, but the time we spent there is probably enough. A great little stopover, especially the airport - if you ever have a layover there don't worry in the slightest, the place is a dream. We headed to the airport early enough to spend some extra time chilling there, and checked in for our sub-hour long flight to Kuala Lumpur, where we'd be meeting back up with Sean and seeing what Malaysia has to offer.
Big love,
Dani & Stu.
We'd had a taste of what backpacking in an expensive country was like getting through Japan (note: pretty damn tough), so chose not to spend too long in Singapore - three nights would be it for us, so we'd plenty to fit in. First thing we noticed upon arriving was the airport: Jesus Christ, it's like a 5-star hotel. Genuinely above and beyond anything we've seen before in an airport - art installations and greenery everywhere. A sign of things to come!
We arrived in late and so got the airport shuttle to our hotel, Seong Kwai Hotel, based in Chinatown, a busy/swanky little area - though we found that's pretty much what Singapore is in general.
We also noticed that it was definitely a mega city built in the middle of the jungle/rainforest, as like in the airport, there's greenery e v e r y w h e r e. Similar to our reaction to the airport - we've never seen anything like this before. The city has been planned immaculately. We went exploring for our first day, and as per usual, first stop was coffee:
at Nylon Coffee Roasters - it was great, and it was similarly priced/cheaper than Dublin, so no need for us to panic about the budget just yet. After some caffeine we were ready to head on to some of the different areas that make up the city, first stop being Kampong Glam, the Malay-heritage area which houses Haji Lane, and the Sultan Mosque.
The city centre itself is quite small, and after turning down one small street we found ourselves stumbling out upon Little India, which as you'd imagine is the area of the city with a strong Indian heritage/presence.
An absolute highlight of the day for us here as it really brought us back to what India was like (though safe to say a little bit cleaner...) - the shopfronts, music, smells, all the same. The street art was something new, but again reminded us of scenes you'd see every day in India - nice for us to reminisce about how we started this trip.
The best part about all this though, was our stop at the Tekka Centre, a Hawker centre/food market where we got the most authentic Indian food since we left back in February/March, and brought us right back to all the best meals we had in our time there - Paneer Kadhai and Butter Chicken Masala were our go-to options, and we of course opted for it here. ~€8 for a full meal too, so while it was 2-3 times what you'd pay in India, you'd struggle to get anything as good as cheap in Dublin.
For the evening we ended up in the Mustafa Centre, which we had mistakenly thought to be a gigantic/premium mall. Turned out it was a 24 hour department store selling pretty much everything, and pretty much all of it fake. We ended up spending far longer there than we'd care to admit, picking up a few things we needed to replace in our bags.
And for dinner we decided on another Hawker style (...cheap) place - HawkerCHAN, home of the "world's cheapest Michelin-starred meal". Think it cost €4 for the chicken/rice/egg/cucumber/peanuts/soy sauce you get served up. It was grand like, nothing too mindblowing.
And to round off the evening we rushed over to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, to explore probably the most famous thing the city has to offer - The Gardens By the Bay, home of the "Supertrees". The hotel itself isn't too bad either, and we made sure to catch the free light show both nights we could (which was absolutely mindblowing, but we'll get to that for our last night) - feeling pretty tired after a long day we hit the hay not long after the show wrapped up.
A good night's rest unfortunately wasn't really enough, and neither of us was feeling too great to start off our last day in Singapore. We took it handy, had a bit of a "life admin" day (Stuart finally got his phone screen fixed which had cracked in Hong Kong), and recuperated. Finally feeling up to going out and tackling the heat/humidity of Singapore that afternoon, we ventured a little more around our local area of Chinatown, and realised we were staying two minutes away from the Budda Tooth Relic Temple - we had a quick look in, but nothing too interesting for us anyway.
Much more interesting was our after-dinner choice that night, as on the way home we stopped at Apiary for a Baileys-Brownie+Ferrero Rocher ice cream waffle. It was every bit as good as it sounds.
Thinking it was our last night and we hadn't yet done some of the main touristy things, we headed out back to our favourite spot, the Marina Bay Sands. Deciding the budget could go out the window for a moment, we decided we'd go up to the rooftop cocktail bar - not the viewing deck. Both cost about €20 to get in to, and are on the same floor - the difference being the cocktail bar can't look over the edge of the viewing deck, but the €20 at the cocktail bar counts towards a drink - and Dani wanted a Singapore Sling while we were here...
So we still got to see the stunning skyline of Singapore in all it's glory. As we did for the light show that we got to for the second night in a row. Pictures can't do it justice, we'd go a third night in a row if we could:
And deciding it wasn't quite home time yet, we had a quick look in the casino of the hotel. Not looking to gamble away a weeks worth of travelling in a few minutes we just window shopped, and came across a look into the future - robots carrying around free drinks for people in the casino. Singapore is next level.
With our three nights coming to an end, we reluctantly said goodbye to Singapore, but the time we spent there is probably enough. A great little stopover, especially the airport - if you ever have a layover there don't worry in the slightest, the place is a dream. We headed to the airport early enough to spend some extra time chilling there, and checked in for our sub-hour long flight to Kuala Lumpur, where we'd be meeting back up with Sean and seeing what Malaysia has to offer.
Big love,
Dani & Stu.
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