Singapore Along

Day 21 – Our flight with AirAsia from Denpasar gets us to Singapore smoothly just under three hours. We pick up our backpacks and in our shorts (slowly learning from our mistakes) and make our way with the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) to our temporary home for the next three days, the Coziee Lodge in the Kallang neighborhood. We arrive a bit early and have to wait for a little before we can check in so decide to indulge ourselves into the local cuisine around the corner. Different smells, a different language we don’t understand, and different currency, the Singapore Dollar. Not too much later we check into our dorm room which we share with a few other travelers. We all have our own ‘coziee’ pod. We hop back on the MRT (two-minute walk which is super convenient) and are ready to discover the touristy spots of this city-state.

We make our first stop at Sentosa, this island is known for the place to be for a good portion of fun! Some say it has everything for the perfect family vacation; amusement parks like Universal Studios, beautiful beaches, resorts… it is all there at your fingertips and ready to be enjoyed. With limited time we decide to catch a small glimpse of what this is all about and carry on to Orchard (Street). This is a perilous area for the shopaholics among us. From here we take a walk to our final stop for the day, the Marina Bay where we see the iconic Marina Bay Sands, a luxury resort with casinos, tons of restaurants and shops, and even an infinity pool on the rooftop.

Day 22 – After spending our first day in some of Singapore’s most popular and high-end touristy locations we try to start our second day in a more budget-friendly local area, Little India. We end up in Mustafa Centre, a place where they must have lost the key to the entrance a long time ago cause this place is open day and night. This maze has every possible item you can think of, from watches to shoes to food to plane tickets.

We continue our afternoon through the streets of Singapore and end up at the same place we did last night, the Marina. This time we bring a visit to the Gardens by the Bay. This nature park is a floral and architectural gem that brings me to an Avatar-like world. It is a great place to visit both during the day and nighttime. We stay at the Marina until nightfall and are experiencing the ‘Water and Light show’. The theme is the Circle of Life, which is a mix of fountains, music, and images projected in the water. After the spectacle, we decide to move back to our little pods and call it a night as we have an early start to a long day ahead of us in the morning.

Day 23 – After our checkout, we jump on the MRT to Woodlands. From there we embark on a bus trip to Johur Baru in Malaysia. The cheap bus ticket comes with a bit more hassle as you need to get off twice with all your luggage to get through immigration. Once we exit Singapore we need to get back on the next available bus and then we have to do the same thing again a couple minutes later to enter the next country on our list, Malaysia, where we visit tea plantations in the Cameron Highlands, witness a local food market Singstar competition and our tour bus gets into an accident…