Singapore – A long way home to Leytonstone

We were only in Singapore for 36 hours, so we arrived with a rough plan, which mainly revolved around food. On our previous visit to Singapore, we visited what most would consider the main attractions, so we didn’t feel the need to squeeze any others in during the short time we had.

Singapore is expensive, and we were aware that our normal daily budget wasn’t going to get us very far. Katy had found a hotel (Hotel by Wassie’s) in a good area of the city, between Chinatown and a Little India (Hong Kong Street in Clarke Quay). It was still around £100 per night, and got us a box room. It was so small that we couldn’t unpack, so we dumped our bags on the bed and headed straight out.

Katy had arranged to meet Dan, a family friend who lives in Singapore. He took us to the Arab Quarter (Kallang) where we’d never been before and caught up over drinks and some food.

We spent the night in a bar called Blu Jazz on Bali Road, where there was live music. It was great to speak to someone who knows the city and plan for what we would do the next day to make the most of our time.

After drinks, we walked back to Chinatown to hit one of the late night hawkers at Maxwell Food Centre. Only a few stalls were still open, but we managed to get a couple of nice dishes before walking back to our hotel.

The next day, the plans we had made the night before to get bikes and tour around the city were out of the window. It was pissing it down. Instead, we made good use of the covered walkways and spent a few hours in the nearby National Gallery. Thankfully, there were a couple of exhibitions that were really interesting, and it allowed enough time for the rain to die down.

Once outside again, it was dry, hot as hell and we were hungry. We found a nearby hawker centre (Hong Lim Food Centre) in Chinatown and went in to see what we could find. The first mistake we made was to visit during lunchtime; it was very busy. The second mistake we made was to assume you could pay by card.

We had come to Singapore with no cash at all, as over 95% of the country has gone cashless. This includes the hawker centres. Unfortunately, you have to use a specific payment app for most stalls here, and we didn’t have any WiFi to set it up.

O2 also wanted to charge me £6.99 per MB, so there was no way I was turning on data roaming. So we left hotter and hungrier than when we entered, but quickly found somewhere for some noodles and dumplings at Darling Dumplings.

After a few afternoon beers to cool down, and a brief visit to see the Merlion, we were out to meet another one of Katy’s friends, Yen. They both used to work together and share a love of food. It just so happened that Yen was visiting family at the same time we were there.

We headed to another area we hadn’t been to before (Geylang) and a restaurant famous for it’s seafood and specifically its pepper crab, No Signboard Restaurant. We were joined by some of Yen’s friends, and having six of us at the table allowed us to try more food (check out Katy’s Instagram post for more food detail).

It was a lovely meal, and it was great to meet new people. It blew our budget out of the water, but it was worth it. It was a nice end to a very quick visit to Singapore.

The next day, we took a quick flight to Bali. We’ve been before, and to be honest, we didn’t like it. It has been over ten year’s since we last visited, and our budget was much tighter back then. So we thought we’d give it another try.

Within minutes of leaving Denpasar airport in a taxi, I was reminded why we didn’t like it. The traffic is awful. Its chaos. It took an hour and a half to do a 15-minute journey, and even once we arrived in Legian, it didn’t stop.

This time, we not only arrived in peak season but also on a national holiday weekend, so Kuta, Legian and Seminyak were heaving. It was also forecast to rain all week. Let’s just say the place wasn’t winning us over.

Thankfully, we were staying in a really nice hotel (Mahata Hotel). The staff were lovely, the room was big, clean and comfortable, and it had a nice pool with a swim-up bar. All this bang in the centre of town for around £35 per night.

As soon as we walked out of the hotel, we were constantly harassed every couple of meters, and struggled to find a bar or restaurant that didn’t have Aussie rules football on. Thankfully the weather cleared up, and we got to spend a couple of days on the beach. After a second try, I’m not sure we’ll be coming back in a hurry.

We did get to eat some nice food though, which included beef rendang and rowan at Warung Bernadette (see Katy’s Instagram post for more food detail) and Korean fried chicken and nasi goreng at Warung Pacman.

After three days in Bali, we decided enough was enough. We also opted against going to Ubud and a 6-hour round trip. Instead, next up is Nusa Penida, a small island 39 minutes away by fast boat.

Sam

After the bustling streets of Jakarta, we headed south to the lazy town of Bogor. We had planned to spend a few days in the mountains here, but on arrival we changed our minds. We found a nice hotel close to some great restaurants which also had a pool, so we decided to chill there for a few days. We actually realised that we had booked our flight to Singapore for the wrong day, so we didn’t really have time to do much else anyway.

Bogor itself has very little to do, and most people use it just to get to the mountains on the Puncak Pass. It does have a selection of really good restaurants though, still within our budget. We enjoyed local delicacies such as oxtail and bandrek, which is a ginger spiced tea-like drink.

Our next stop and our last country in South East Asia was Singapore, only a short flight from Jakarta. My first impression of Singapore was all good, and in the few days that we’ve been here I like it more and more. For a start it’s very clean compared to the rest of SE Asia. There are also lots of little things that make it stand out, such as pavements that you can actually walk on. It may sound a bit strange, but after eight months of walking on roads and weaving in between traffic, it’s a nice change.

One thing that we haven’t really enjoyed about Singapore is the costs. It’s a very expensive place to be, especially on a traveller’s budget. What makes it even more difficult is that there is so much to do here, so you have to pick and choose what to do and where to go. Beer averages about £6 per pint, and wine isn’t even worth considering at £50 for the cheapest bottle. Katy did get it into her head that she wanted to go to Universal Studios, but thankfully I talked her out of that.

Food here is actually quite cheap, and we’ve enjoyed some of our favourites since we’ve been here. We’ve had our chicken curry and naan fix in Little India, our pork and cabbage dumplings in China Town, and we even found a proper English chippy in Clarke Quay. We were tempted to buy a Singapore Sling in Raffles (it was invented here after all), but when we arrived and saw that it was £16 per cocktail, we settled for some pictures of the courtyard and gardens instead.

Accommodation here is also quite expensive, so for the first time on our trip we have had to stay in a dormitory. We’re sharing with six other people; three of whom seem to live at this hostel. It’s not too bad staying in a dorm, and potentially can be a great way to meet people. Unfortunately once someone has kept me up for most of the night snoring and then woken me up at 06:00am sorting out their carrier bag collection, my friendly nature seems to subside slightly.

One thing that we did do was go to Singapore Zoo; supposedly the best in the world. The main reason that I wanted to go there was to see the Malaysian Tapir, which is my favourite animal. I had hoped to see one in the wild in Taman Negara in Malaysia, but I didn’t realise how rare they were in the wild. So I got to see my Tapirs, and it made me very happy. We even got to see them swim, which I didn’t realise they could do. It is a great place to walk around and definitely worth the money.

We also had a day walking around Sentosa, which is an island just off of the city. This is where Universal Studios is, but also has other big names such as Café Del Mar to spend your money at. We just had a walk around the nature trail on the island and then along the beach. You could spend a lot of money here as there are loads of things to do. Unfortunately we had to walk past them all before we spent all of our money.

The best thing we did while in Singapore was spend the afternoon and evening in the Clarke Quay area. There are loads of riverside bars and restaurants, with live music and a great atmosphere. We managed to find a pub with a decent happy hour, and grabbed a pint of Stella for £5. As we walked up the river, we found that the Singapore Civilisation Museum had some live music outside. The music was great, and can only be described as Indian jazz (think The Cinematic Orchestra crossed with a Bollywood soundtrack). The museum had free entry for the evening so we had a look around, before heading to the most famous statue in Singapore, the Merlion. The hotel opposite has a light show every night, so we watched that before making our way back to the hostel, and our snoring roommates.

Today we have been out to the equivalent of Oxford Street, Orchard Road. Katy had spotted that there was a big weekend of sales. So the money we had saved by not doing certain things, she then spent in the shops on some more Katy treats. A new pair of jeans and three new tops later, we headed back to the hostel with our cup noodles as we now couldn’t afford dinner.

Tomorrow we have a very quiet day before we head to the airport for our flight to Tokyo on Monday morning. We had planned to stay an extra night at the hostel and get up early for our 07:00am flight, but we decided that it would be cheaper to just stay in the airport lounge for the night. Katy will be ok though, as she has her new pair of jeans to keep her warm as she sleeps on the floor.

Until the next time…

Category: Singapore

Flying through Singapore and Bali

Singapore $ting

Share this:

Share this: