Singapore

Following our extended stay in Thailand, we needed to make our way back to the mainland USA to attend a couple of family weddings in Boca Raton, Florida.  

We booked our flight back to the USA on Singapore Airlines and our business class tickets permitted us to have free stopover in Singapore.  We gladly took advantage of this layover and elected to stay in Singapore for a full week.  It was perfect timing as our stay in Singapore coincided with Chinese New Year.  Singapore has a large Chinese population and the colorful New Year celebrations made our stay very festive.

We broke up our week stay with a few days at a real cool boutique hotel (Ann Siang House) located directly in the heart of Chinatown where many of the festivities were located.  It was also conveniently located only block from the Maxwell Hawker Centre with its myriad of food stalls.  We spent the second half of our stay in the lively Bugis Junction area and directly across the street from the famous Raffles Hotel.

Singapore has, in my opinion, an unjustified reputation for being very expensive.  It is one of the world’s best cities in which to eat.  While it’s home to a lot of restaurants that require a second mortgage, if you just open your eyes and follow the locals you can also eat gourmet food for very little money.  

After years of travel, Barbie and I both have developed a keen eye to sniff out all of the best valued local joints.  The many spotless clean Hawker centres (food courts) spread throughout the island are popular places to feast, with their wide range of unique homemade Singaporean dishes.

Outside of eating, there are really nice walks around the city center and the marina area.  For animal lovers, the Singapore Zoo was really cool and it could go down as one of the top zoos in the world.  If you enjoy shopping, the malls lining Orchard Road is your place to get your shopping on.

Singapore’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) is spotless clean and is the most efficient way to navigate around the city.  The MRT stops at all of the popular malls which are not only a great place to escape the renowned Singapore humidity, but these malls also have a shitload of glorious eating options.