Singapore

Singapore Stopover: Chinese New Year

Following our extended stay in Thailand, Barbie and I needed to make our way back to the mainland USA to attend a couple of family weddings down in Boca Raton, Florida. We booked our flights back on Singapore Airlines, and our business class tickets permitted us to have a free stopover in Singapore. We gladly took advantage of this layover and elected to stay for a full week.

It turned out to be perfect timing, as our stay coincided right with Chinese New Year. Singapore has a massive Chinese population, and the colorful New Year celebrations made our whole stay feel incredibly festive.

Shifting Singapore Bases: Chinatown to Bugis

We broke up our week-long stay by splitting time between two different areas. For the first few days, we stayed at a real cool boutique hotel called Ann Siang House. It’s located directly in the heart of Chinatown, which put us right where many of the main festivities were happening. Plus, it was conveniently located only a block away from the Maxwell Hawker Centre and its myriad of food stalls.

For the second half of our stay, we moved over to the lively Bugis Junction area, right across the street from the famous Raffles Hotel.

Sniffing Out the Best Value Food

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

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

Cruising the City and Beating the Humidity

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

To get around, Singapore’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) is spotlessly clean and easily the most efficient way to navigate the city. The MRT stops right at all of the popular malls. That works out perfectly, because not only are they a great place to escape the renowned Singapore humidity, but these malls also have a shitload of amazing eating options.