Singapore was the first stop of our Southeast Asia trip and we had allowed three days and three nights to explore. We arrived from our flight from Zürich with our two backpacks and very little expectations. Singapore to us was the country you flew through on the way to and from Europe (and also the place where the Marina Bay Sands infinity pool photo is the envy of many on Instagram). Once we told our friends and family we were going we started getting recommendations of what to do when we arrived…go to Raffles for a Singapore Sling, go to the observation deck of the Marina Bay Sands and have a drink, no wait go to one of the bars on the harbour for a view of the Marina Bay Sands so you could admire the view. We knew Singapore was an expensive city, even for us coming from Zürich, but it was starting to sound like a very expensive (and touristy) bar crawl.
While we enjoy seeing most of the tourist sights (they are generally touristy for a reason) we always try to avoid the crowds. We knew we wouldn’t be seeing picturesque mountains or beaches, we knew the weather for us was going to be cloudy and thunderstorms for our stay (given we were leaving 10 degree days in Zürich we had been monitoring the weather for some time), we knew it was a highly populated financial centre…so aside from taking in the impressive skyline we instead turned to our favourite travel activity…eating.
Planning…
We think three days was the perfect amount of time to explore Singapore and by the end day three, I was already having my withdrawals from my daily dose of mountain and lake views.
Step one to planning our trip was to find the perfect hotel which would be central to everything. We ended up choosing the Carlton Hotel (we turned up with our backpacks, that still counts as backpacking right?) It was in the middle of town next door to the famous Raffles hotel, the rooms were decent size with a view of the Marina Bay Sands, it had a brand new gym and pool, and it came with a free “Handy” smartphone which meant we had data for our whole stay.
Step two was to start researching the best street food, and by we I mean Brendon. He has a gift…you should see our Google My Maps for this trip that he created it’s insane. By the time I manage to find one half decent place through Google he’s found a dozen places that put my one to shame. So after “we” spent some time researching, we knew we wanted to hit up the many hawker centres (food halls) including Maxwells, China Town and Old Airport Road. We also knew from friends that we needed to try the Hainanese chicken rice, Char Siu, roasted pork (aka pork belly) and the famous Chilli Crab.
We started to get excited and when we were asked what we would be doing for three days in Singapore….forget the overpriced drinks it was going to be three days of eating.
Our experience…
We landed at 6 am, too early to check in so what’s the first thing we do? Drop our bags and head into town to try some food. First stop…Maxwells hawker centre. Finding the centre is not difficult but once you get there, choosing somewhere to eat is the hard part. There are dozens upon dozens of stalls, some closed, some with huge queues, some with locals, some with tourists…we were overwhelmed. We had been told to go to visit these hawker centres for the best street food and we had been told to try a whole bunch of different foods but where do you actually start? What are the stalls you avoid and the stalls that are must-try? We tried to quickly google the best stalls but after no luck, we just browsed and tried to find the spots that seemed popular. This was our approach the whole trip until we had found our favourites and then we just went back for seconds.
We figured other people must be in the same boat as us so after three days of practical research we are sharing our favourites. We’ve listed these in our Singapore travel guide.
One thing we realised straight away was how much Singapore was a night city. The morning we arrived we happened to walk through the business district and we watched hoards of people emerge from the metro and walk straight into the high rise buildings scattered around town (it was a very surreal feeling to know we wouldn’t be doing that again for a very long time). After this rush, it was strangely quiet and peaceful. It was nice to have the streets to ourselves but something felt like it was missing. It wasn’t until later that evening when we ventured out to Orchard Road (aka shopping heaven) we soon noticed how lively it had become. It’s quite a stunning city to stroll around after dark literally surrounded by the towering high rises that light up the city.
The second thing we realised was how early the locals eat dinner. On day two we went to watch the night show at the Gardens by the Bay (it starts at 7.45pm every evening and the Christmas theme had just started). We then headed to the China Town hawker centre for dinner and soon realised we were limited for choice because many of the stalls were closed. (it was only 8.30pm). So if you’re heading out then the earlier the better to avoid the queues and to make sure they haven’t sold out.
What else did we do?
Apart from eating our way around Singapore, we managed a visit to the Gardens by the Bay (at dark for the night show) and again during the day with a visit to the Cloud Forest. It was definitely worth the visit to such beautiful attractions and it makes you feel very removed from a city of this size. At the same time, it really hit home how much we were looking forward to escaping the big city travels and head to the mountains of Vietnam and the beaches of the Philippines.
While we didn’t get to the observation deck of the Marina Bay Sands we did manage to get to Raffles for a Singapore Sling. Our hotel was actually next door to Raffles and as the hotel is undergoing renovations we visited the Bar & Billard room where they were selling the famous cocktail. While I was excited about getting a gin, Brendon was excited about the peanuts (if you don’t know already, each table has a straw bag full of peanuts still in their shell and when you leave all the shells are tipped onto the floor so that everyone walks through a sea of shells). It was definitely worth a visit and the drink was delicious (even though the cost of our two drinks was more than our dinners combined for the whole stay).
Would we go again?
Absolutely…for the food of course. If you’re ever travelling through Asia then we definitely recommend stopping off for a couple of days. It wasn’t until we reached Hong Kong (our next destination) that we started to miss the clean and orderly city, the hawker centres, and the quiet and conservative locals. We are lucky enough to have a day in Singapore on our way back to New Zealand at the end of these travels and we are already planning how to fit in as many food stalls as we can…
For details on our trip and our recommendations head to our Singapore Travel Guide.
This article has been featured on taleoftravels.com.
