Singapore. The City in a Garden.

Hidden in the centre of Singapore airport is the most incredible scene you will ever find in an airport. We nearly rushed right past. Luckily we caught a glimpse of tropical forest and dumped our luggage at the bottom of an escalator (not great airport practice from us!) and rose into the middle of a paradise. A circular waterfall approximately 20m high fell in the centre of an oval dome full of tropical plants and tasteful lighting. Expanding over 3 floors, you could take short ‘walks’ through the tropical landscape and end up in an entirely different area or viewing platform. I’d rate this airport as a go-to destination – we almost didn’t want to leave! However, we had some haggling to do and by haggling, I mean reassuring the overly anxious taxi driver that yes, our bikes do get smaller and will most definitely fit inside his car.

The route from the airport to our hotel was beautiful. Parallel to the highway, Singapore’s East Coast Park runs the entire length, offering trees, greenery and a perfectly maintained leisure area. Everything here has been finely tuned and carefully planned, even the highways are built ready for more traffic in the future (more about those 6 lanes later). Once we arrived in the centre, we had our first self-service check in at one of Singapore’s many ‘capsule hotels’. An app on our phone opened our hotel room door and we stuffed 2 people, 2 bikes and our luggage into a 3m squared room. It was cosy, but at least we had a window!

We were most excited about the food and headed straight to Maxwells Hawker Market – one of Singapore’s many food halls serving an array of food from Chinese, to Malaysian to Indian. We were spoilt for choice and we actually ended up eating here multiple times throughout our stay. The food was incredible – full of flavour, cheap prices and a great community vibe everyone sits together. It was quite the contrast to the massive sky scrapers, city-feel restaurants and super-organised town planning of the rest of the country!

We started our Singapore tour with the classic Gardens by the Bay. Due to the 4 lane highway thing they have going here, we opted to walk over to the bay. Turns out, Singaporeans were not lying when they warned us it’s too hot to walk anywhere. By the time we’d walked the 20 minutes, I was sweating more than I do on the bike. Yum. Desperate for some aircon action, we hopped into a design museum – both lured in by the architecture and the promise of a cafe. We ended up being pleasantly surprised, browsing over many gadgets and design ideas that had won awards over the years. I got overly excited by the kitchen utensils (cordless kettle with heat preservation, yes please) and Aaron dragged me away to look at the minimalist chair designs. Realising that we were being distracted from the main event we wizzed around the gift shop (essential) and walked on to the Art Science museum. Chuffed that I’d managed to entice Aaron into 2 museums in one day, I quickly bought us tickets to their main exhibition. Anyone who knows me will understand my intense obsession with museums but this one is definitely worth visiting. We spent hours interacting with art displays (think walking under a digital waterfall, manipulating where the water cascades) and colouring in our own fish design to add to their moving projector wall. It was a really fun, inclusive museum, all laid out within a beautiful lotus flower building. Being led by our stomachs we left to look for some cheap food – Singapore is soooo expensive. We finally arrived in the gardens and decided to take a nap by the lake. The nature here is stunning and they’ve really put a lot of effort into the space. They’re a mix of different garden types, with areas for a Chinese garden, Malay garden and Indian garden. Most alarmingly there was a giant floating baby statue rising 5m from the ground and over 10m long. 

We wanted to pack in as much as we could before the fountain light show, so next we headed over to the famous Domes. Not wanting to disrupt my newly found freedom from hay fever (they have different pollen in Asia!), we opted for the Cloud dome rather than the flower dome. It was unbelievable. We both felt like we could stay for hours walking around the cloud forest. So many beautiful plants of all different varieties were packed into a beautifully designed circuit walk. Once at the top of this circuit, you had great views across the bay and the gardens, giving us a sense of how far the gardens stretch. We spotted the magical aerial Supergrove trees, lit up and twinkling in the distance. 

Now, as it was Singapore’s national day/weekend/week, there was all sorts of excitement over in the gardens. We walked over to the supergrove forest and stuck around, watching some kind of stage show (difficult to follow to be honest) and waited for the finale – the bohemian aerial light show and a special performance by 500 drones. I couldn’t quite believe they’d managed to get so many up there and so close together! But these little bugs zipped around and gave us a fire-less show, with pulsing hearts and a flag waving in the wind. Aaron was beside himself, as a drone enthusiast, he was loving it. The bohemian light show followed and we laid on the ground watching the aerial garden trees light up in time with the music. After we joined the crowds leaving the gardens and snuck up to the cut through that went right through the centre of the Marina Bay Sands hotel. We had originally planned to stay here for a night but prices skyrocketed due to the national day. It was fun walking through the lobby though so we’ll save it for another day. (Turns out we completely missed the fountain light show!)

Day 2 we did our own thing – I went to yet another museum, this time to learn about the history of Singapore (very good, would recommend), whilst Aaron wizzed back to Bali to meet a friend. It was fun exploring Singapore solo. I walked a long way to take in Little India, Arab street, Chinatown and more hawker markets. 

Around the island in a day...

More cycling was in order and we felt a loop of the country would be fitting. Unfortunately we both opted to assemble our bikes the next day at 5am before our ride (I know, I know, but we were tired). This was of course the moment that I managed to strip my handlebar joint. This made for a fairly spicy first 15km, riding with a wobbly handlebar across those 6 lane highways to the nearest bike shop!

With an interim fix and several precious hours of cool weather gone, we continued our ride around Singapore. It was quite an odd experience. We’d expected to cycle out of the main city and then into quieter country roads. But no! Turns out Singapore and it’s town planning is continuous around the entire island, so it felt like you never actually left the city. The only difference was the number of skyscrapers owned by banks! All the houses are high rise flats. All with a park and a school nearby, all on 3-4 lane highways. Madness. We managed to find small sections along the edge of parks and rivers but ultimately ended up riding on big roads the whole way round. Not as fun but made for a quick time! 

After this underwhelming landscape, we wondered whether we’d missed something and so popped into a Raffa cycle shop around the corner from our hotel. Once I’d mentally dressed myself in a hot pink cycle combo worth 3 times the value of my bike, we asked about the group rides that they offer. We jumped on their Wednesday lunch ride and met a fun group of people to cycle around Sentosa Island. This was way more fun! Everyone was curious about our bike set up – all bikes in Singapore are high-end-4-figure fancy bikes, our battered old bikes looked comical in comparison.  But what we lacked in style, we soon made up for in fitness and chat! Turns out those many days of cycling up and down volcanic landscapes have really paid off and without bags weighing us down, I couldn’t believe how easy the hills were! It was great fun getting to chat to everyone on the ride. A great group of people from all over the world working and living in Singapore. It was fascinating to hear their journeys and their affinity with the country – they all absolutely loved it. 

After a quick shower, we attempted public transport and headed to the national park for the tree top walk. We were convinced we could fit the entire 8km circular walk in before the next bus to the night safari. Obviously that meant we jogged along the boardwalk, snatching glances up through dense forest, pausing for moments to look out for wildlife. Quite alarmingly, and probably more so for them, we spotted wild boars within 20 minutes. They were great fun, waddling through the undergrowth with their babies snuffling at the ground. The suspended tree top walk was excellent and worth the hike over. Standing over 25m above the ground, you were truly up in the trees, able to touch the upper most leaves.

We wanted to finish our trip with the night safari. Tagged as a ‘must do’ we started with the Creatures of the Night and braced ourselves for a amphitheatre full of screaming children. However, we couldn’t be more wrong. The show was so well presented (with the presenter speaking an impressive 5 languages), sharing fascinating detail about the animals. Within 5 minutes we were being introduced to animals I didn’t even know existed including binturongs, civets and fishing cats. We were pumped for the rest of the safari and spent SO MUCH TIME walking all of the trails inside the zoo. There was something exciting about walking around in the dark – the lighting was so minimal, I questioned whether they had a power cut! We had such a great evening watching all kinds of animals including bears, hyenas, and cloud leopards.

By the time we exited the night safari, it was past 11pm and getting a Grab taxi home was proving too difficult and too expensive (surge pricing at its finest). So we navigated a shuttle bus, the MRT and a bus to get home – don’t ask what time we got back, it’s not pretty. I’d love to say we had a day off to get some sleep but no, we had a date with the cool morning weather and the border bridge. Malaysia here we come!