Singapore
Hello,
I’m starting to catch up on a whole month or so of travel blogs. Casting my mind back to our wonderful week in Singapore…
We started our time off in the Lion City by visiting that ultimate of cultural treasures… Universal Studios. I kid, of course, about the cultural significance of such a place, but we did have a super fun day going on rides, eating carnival treats, taking pictures with Hello Kitty – I will always love her! – and exploring the various areas of the park. The true sleeper hit there (in my humble opinion) is the Transformers ride; not the flashiest attraction, but it had me cackle-crying in hysterical and terrified laughter the entire time.
We were staying in the Bugis area of Singapore which I’d recommend as quite a central, accessible base to see a lot of the city (country?). It is surrounded by a metro station, a hawker food centre, and tons of little shops and places to eat, drink and get snacks. The Bugis Street Mall was just behind us and one evening we explored all that it had to offer, which included an arcade, a movie theatre, a restaurant where you could select your live eel for them to grill for your meal (among many, many other culinary choices), a shrimp-fishing pond (unclear if people were fishing for sport or for food? There were small BBQs…), lots of K-beauty shops, a sushi train restaurant (much to the kids’ delight) and a bakery full of gorgeous little cream cakes with various baby animal faces inscribed across their surfaces in icing.
An OG Singapore Sling
Singapore was HOT. And humid. We caved and bought the kids some tiny portable motorized fans they could hang around their necks, which we had seen a bunch of people with at Universal Studios. The lovely thing about Singapore’s climate is that it is lush and green everywhere. Even the highway from the airport is lined the whole way with lovely flowering bushes and tropical trees.
Despite the jungly heat (which I actually loved), we explored a lot. One day we walked down to the Marina Bay Sands waterfront area, the Helix Bridge and the Merlion, after which we felt we deserved an original Singapore Sling from the iconic Raffles Hotel; sorry, bank account. We roamed Tiong Bahru one day – its hawker centre with the most delicious food and fresh icy juice offerings, the cool architecture, murals galore, and some cute little restaurants and shops. Another day we strolled through Little India which was a gorgeous riot of colours and Indian sweet shops and sari stores and gold jewellers. I spent an afternoon wandering Joo Chiat, losing myself in the delightfully colourful architecture before enjoying a solo glass of rosé; ahh the peace.
We spent one evening in the Gardens by the Bay, and unbeknownst to us, it was cosplay week so there were wild costumes galore (and plenty of Instagram shoots going on in every direction we looked). We explored the Cloud Forest with its massive indoor waterfall, the Flower Dome with its Sakura-themed displays, and the Supertrees which light up to music each evening.
The cocktail scene deserves its own paragraph. Sean and I went out by ourselves one evening and enjoyed a few stunning cocktails at Nutmeg & Clove which was named one of the top ten best bars in Asia in 2023 (while I can’t compare to other Asian bars, I can definitely say that they were delicious, inventive, and beautiful). We had a late afternoon drink one day at a cool art nouveau bar in Bali Lane. And we had a stunning martini at Atlas, which was the number one must-do recommendation from friends who used to live in Singapore. It did not disappoint. The bar is in the lobby of a heritage art deco tower and it.is.stunning. Walking in I felt like being on the set of The Great Gatsby. Check out the website; my words cannot do the space justice. Apparently it is home to the largest gin collection in the world! We also enjoyed some gorgeous gin cocktails at CIN CIN, another beautiful space offering amazing drinks.
Amongst all the wandering and gin-drinking, I was organized enough to apply for our Vietnam travel visas with the recommended minimum amount of processing time (and even a day extra!). Despite my preparation, we got to the airport sans visas but thought we would be able to board and finish the process upon landing. No such luck! We were not allowed to check in without showing physical copies of our visas and quickly realized that unless they came through in the following hour, we would be missing our flight that day. Ooph; major fail. We spent the following two days at a hotel near the airport; paying out the nose to expedite the visas, checking email incessantly, and communicating with our Vietnamese hotel which wanted to charge us a “no-show” fee ON TOP OF THE DAILY ROOM RATE for not being there! Ohh the rage. We finally got our visas 36 hours later and luckily were able to book a flight out for the following day.
We were finally off to Vietnam! With more travel hitches to come… stay tuned!
Love Caley
So glad you got to enjoy the sights of Singapore 💕. The prawn fishing pools are for food. You can either take the prawns home or grill them up on the little bbqs. It’s actually pretty fun!