Singapore In Three Days!

We recently had a long weekend here in the UAE, so Dan and I decided to make the most of it and booked a short trip away.  Singapore was a place that we had been meaning to re-visit for years and we thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to do just that :).

Singapore was actually the first place that Dan and I ever visited together, almost ten years ago!! Back then, we spent two nights there en route to Penang, Malaysia.  We absolutely loved Singapore the first time round and we knew it was somewhere that we would go back to one day.  So much has changed there since 2009 so we thought now would be a good time to back :).  We really had such a great time, so I wanted to share with you how we did Singapore in three days.

We took an overnight flight on the Thursday night and arrived in Singapore early on the Friday morning.  The holiday was off to a good start when we arrived in Singapore Changi airport, which is without a doubt the most enjoyable and impressive airport I have ever been to.  There wasn’t a queue in sight and we were through security and had our bags delivered in the blink of an eye.  This was pretty impressive given that this airport is one of the largest transportation hubs in Southeast Asia and one of the world’s busiest airports!

In addition to the smooth arrivals experience, the airport itself is such a pleasure to be in.  It has tons of amazing shops and indoor garden areas! It really doesn’t feel like an airport at all!

After finding the cutest coffee cups ever, we took a taxi from the airport to our hotel.

Hotel – PARKROYAL on Pickering

The hotel which we stayed at was the PARKROYAL on Pickering. It is an eco-hotel that is located close to Clarke Quay and Gardens by the Bay.  The unique concept behind the hotel is that it’s ‘a hotel in a garden’ and that is exactly how it is! No prizes for guessing who chose this hotel for us to stay at lol!

From the outside the hotel really does look like an urban garden.  It’s such an impressive building!  It has more than 15,000 square metres of gardens, waterfalls and planter walls throughout the hotel. The facade of the hotel was inspired by the rice-paddy fields of Bali and is supposed to represent a modern-day interpretation of the hanging gardens of Babylon.  The hotel was labelled ‘Hotel of the Future’ by Forbes Magazine and apparently it featured in the movie ‘Hitman, Agent 47’.  It has also won a number of awards for its unique design.  We didn’t actually know any of this until we got there lol, I chose the hotel purely on how it looked and that fact that it was in a great location and very reasonably priced!

Walking to the hotel room was so, so pleasant.  The hotel has a very inside out theme.  One minute we were inside and the next minute we were outdoors walking past garden walls and little waterfalls. Our hotel room was also really nice.  It was spacious and bright and was very minimalist which I am a big fan of.  We had an amazing view which was part garden, part city.

My favourite part of the hotel was the lobby area that had a little walkway over an indoor river and green wall.  Big funky chairs lined the walkway where you could sit relaxing and enjoy the view.  Everything about this hotel has such a calming and relaxing feel.  I loved everything about it!

The fifth floor of the hotel is dedicated to a ‘wellness space’ that has an infinity pool overlooking the city and a 300m garden walk.  Colourful birdcage cabanas were also dotted along the pool and the garden walk, and I also discovered a cute little garden patch where they were growing fresh herbs.  We spent most of our first day just relaxing at the wellness space before heading out for dinner that evening.

Lau Pa Sat

For dinner we went to the Lau Pa Sat food market.  It is a historic building located within the Downtown Core in the Central Area of Singapore.  If you want to sample local food, this is the place to go!  There were lots of little stalls cooking and selling street food.  A lot of it I was uncertain about to be honest lol, but we did manage to find something that we felt comfortable eating!

Gardens By The Bay

The next morning after breakfast we headed out to Gardens by the Bay, which is an incredible nature park that spans across 101 hectares of reclaimed land, adjacent to the Marina Reservoir.   The park is described as “a national garden and premier horticultural attraction for local and international visitors, Gardens by the Bay is a showpiece of horticulture and garden artistry that presents the plant kingdom in a whole new way, entertaining while educating visitors with plants seldom seen in this part of the world, ranging from species in cool, temperate climates to tropical forests and habitats“.  

The park consists of three waterfront gardens with ‘supertree structures’ that connect the gardens by a skywalk.  The metal tree structures are lit up at night and are SUCH an impressive sight!!  There are more photos of this later on.

There are also a number of ‘Greenhouses’ at Gardens of the Bay; one called Cloud Forest and another The Flower Dome.  The flower dome is described as a gigantic conservatory and that’s exactly what it is like.  This impressive air conditioned structure is packed to the brim with tree and plant species from all around the world!  It was absolutely beautiful! I can’t even begin to explain how big the aloe plants are!  I was in awe!

After spending some time walking around the Flower Dome, we went across to the Cloud Forest which completely blew my mind! It is a shell-shaped building that has a 35m high mountain completely covered in tropical plants and a waterfall that is the height of the building! A walkway brings you all the way to the top of the building where you can get an amazing view looking down over the walls of plants below.  I feel as though my description is not doing this place justice but it is absolutely beautiful!

ArtScience Museum 

After visiting Gardens by the Bay, we went to the ArtScience Museum, which certainly isn’t your average museum.  There are different exhibitions on at any one time, but the one that we chose to go to was the ‘Future World Exhibition’ and it did not disappoint!  They have impressively combined technology, science and art to create some really interesting and amusing exhibitions.  For example, in one room guests got to experience digital art by scanning our hand drawn sketches into a machine which resulted in them being displayed on a big screen.  I drew on a template that had the outline of a panda and once I scanned my drawing, the panda came to life and was running around on the screen with my drawing on its back.  This was definitely more aimed at kids but we still enjoyed it.

Another room within the Future World Exhibition that we particularly enjoyed was the ‘Space’ room which had a ‘crystal universe’ installation.  In this room, particles of light are digitally controlled creating a three-dimensional light space.  Movement affects the light particles and creates changes in the installation as viewers walk through.  It was bright and sparkly and quite simply magical.  This is obviously one of the most popular installations as people were queuing to get into it.  Unfortunately this meant that staff were encouraging people to move through the space quickly, which was a bit of a shame.  I definitely would have liked to spend more time there taking in the experience.

Marina Bay Sands – Observation Deck

Visiting Marina Bay Sands was definitely one of the things we were most excited about doing in Singapore.  Marina Bay Sands is the largest hotel in Singapore and is famous for its design.   The development consists of three towers that are bridged by a three-acre park on the top of the building with the world’s highest and largest infinity pool.

The reason that Dan and I were excited to see it was because we saw the building site for Marina Bay Sands when we visited Singapore 10 years ago! At that time it was under construction and we had no idea what it was going to be, but we could see the site very clearly from the Singapore Flyer (ferris wheel) which is situated right across the water from Marina Bay Sands.

It was a very surreal feeling to be standing on top of the building 10 years later!  The observation deck is on level 57 of the building and the views from the top are breathtaking.  We went up just before sunset so we could take in both the day time and night time views.  From here we could clearly see the expanse of the the Gardens by the Bay which we had visited the previous day and they looked amazing all lit up once it got dark.  We could also see the ferris wheel that we went on back in 2009 :).

For comedy reasons I have added the photo of Dan and I on the Singapore Flyer 10 years ago! We look like kids! lol

And this was us this time round!

That evening we went to see the light and water show (Spectra) along the Marina Bay Sands Promenade.  It was really beautiful and lasted for an impressive 15 minutes – I would really recommend it, and it was much better than the show we saw in Hong Kong earlier this year.

Singapore Cable Car – Sentosa

The next day we headed over to Mount Faber on the main island of Singapore, to take the cable car across the Keppel Harbour to the resort island of Sentosa.  From the the cable car we got 360 degree sights of the southern precinct of Singapore including the iconic Mount Faber Park, universal Studios and Resorts World Sentosa.

Whilst the cable car journey was fun in itself, the island of Sentosa was a little disappointing.  We didn’t actually go into any of the attractions but we just had a walk around the island and it felt very dated and a little creepy somehow.  Sentosa was one of the place we didn’t have time to visit the first time we were in Singapore but I’d imagine that it was probably a bit more impressive back then.

That evening we flew back to Abu Dhabi and that was the end of our quick Singapore trip.  It really was amazing to be back after such a long time and to see how much it has changed over the years.  I would love to think that we might visit it again in another 10 years and see what has changed by then.  If you get the opportunity to visit Singapore, do it! It’s one of those places that just has it all.

P.s. Dan’s parents are visiting us in Abu Dhabi this week so I am taking a little break from the blog.  I will be back with a new post on the 15th December 🙂