Joel's World Travel Blog

On my last full day in Singapore, I endeavoured to check out a few places I had never been before. My flight to Sri Lanka wasn’t scheduled until 11 pm, but I had to check out of my hotel by noon. Fortunately, the hotel was happy to look after my bags while I hopped around town.

The first place I wanted to check out was a new old place. That is, an old historic home known as the Baba House, recently bequeathed to the National University of Singapore, restored and furnished to its 1920s splendour, and recently opened to the public by reservation only. I have long admired these old colonial-style homes from the outside, but it was really interesting to see what they were originally designed like on the inside. Unfortunately, I wasn’t permitted to take photographs inside.

Lots of old teak floors, walls, and furnishings show influences from trading partners around the world, reflecting affluence. Among the surprises was an open area in the middle of the house for airflow in the tropics, probably 12 feet by 12 feet, with no ceiling or windows, so rain would pour into the house and drain out through the marble base at the bottom. The house also had several listening and spy holes built into the design so parents could keep tabs on who was trying to visit (including a spy hole in the floor of the master bedroom) or what children were talking about downstairs in the front room. A long line of Chinese descendants owned this house and ran a steam shipping company.

Afterwards, I made a crazy attempt to visit Singapore’s Zoo, which some consider one of the world’s best. Unfortunately, it isn’t on a subway line and requires a bus ride from a distant subway stop. The bus ride took much longer than I expected, so my visit was brief. Overall, I had about an hour to make a quick loop of the place. It sits on a small peninsula surrounded by water, right next door to another peninsula with an all-nocturnal zoo (which I visited several years ago). The zoo was very nice, with lots of lush green vegetation and animals roaming outside of cages that seemed to appreciate it.

Afterwards, I had to high-tail it back to my hotel to grab my bags and head to the airport for my late-night flight to Sri Lanka.

I thought I’d seen pretty much everything in Singapore on previous visits, but in any place, the longer you stay, the more you discover.

Very early on Sunday morning I snuck out before dawn (which, frankly, is pretty late here on the equator – about 7:30 am) to revisit the free Singapore Botanic Gardens and Orchid Gardens. Singapore actually has three botanical gardens, including a new one that charges $28 to enter, so I opted for the free one. The one I went to was full of European joggers, dog walkers, and Western cruise ship tourists being herded around town on their typical frantic day of in-port sightseeing.

The park is very beautiful, but not much different from the flora I got used to hiking through in tropical Queensland. The Orchid Garden is world-renowned and quite special. They regularly name orchids after famous visitors and have a walk of fame, so to speak. There were orchids named after Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, and Laura Bush, among others.

Singapore Botanic Gardens Visit

As I left the Botanical Gardens, it was just starting to sprinkle a bit as I headed down the escalator into the subway. By the time I got near my hotel, the sprinkle turned to light rain. By the time I got into my hotel room, it started to pour. And it poured and poured for most of the rest of the afternoon. Guess that’s the trade-off for living in the lush green tropics. Navigating the subways is quite easy and quick, but navigating the bus system here can be a bit more daunting. After a long wait for the rain to clear in my room, I started toying with the idea of catching a cab to a museum. I finally went downstairs to find a long line of people waiting for taxis, which obviously didn’t look promising. The subway was several blocks away, but I noticed a steady stream of buses running by the hotel and ventured out between stops to see where they were going. Fortunately, there was a map of the bus routes posted, and although it took me a little while to figure out how to read it, I eventually concluded that I should be able to get to the Asian Civilisations Museum fairly easily. I hopped on board and jumped off when I felt immersed in a museum district. It was still raining, and I had no umbrella, but fortunately I guessed right and found myself within a block of where I wanted to be.

The Asian Civilisations Museum was in a big old colonial-style British government building that once housed a courtroom, jail, and offices. There were some interesting displays about Singapore’s history as a port and how the British and Dutch became involved in the area. There were depictions of migrant Chinese workers who were lured into opium use to ease their sore bodies from the hard port work, to the point of addiction, which cost them 2/3rds of their salaries. There were also displays of how various cultures in the area came to be there, how rice came to the islands, and special exhibitions from Thailand. Fortunately, after my visit, the rain stopped, and I was able to track down a subway easily after exploring the downtown waterfront a bit.

Decided to head for Chinatown for a bit of a revisit around one of my favourite, most interesting and colourful places to photograph. It is a very cool part of town, full of old colonial-style buildings from the early 20th century with hints of high water, and very high curbs and sidewalks that run indented from the street, protected under the second floor of the buildings. It is a very photogenic area that I can spend hours snooping around.

You could call it a touristy part of town, but if it is, 99.9% of those tourists are Chinese anyway, so it doesn’t feel all that touristy to me. Chinatown was getting all spruced up for the upcoming Chinese New Year with lots of hanging lanterns and special items for sale in the markets. Some shops also had ungodly long lines of Chinese consumers waiting their turn to purchase special pork dishes for the occasion.

Some of my work colleagues who travel to Southeast Asia regularly can be quick to dismiss Singapore for its lack of grittiness compared to places like Kuala Lumpur, but it does have quite a few things going for it. Singapore is one of the safest places to visit that I can think of, which is great for pulling out expensive cameras and lenses. We have had female Singaporean students tell us they feel perfectly safe catching subways home at 2 am all by themselves.

Singapore is also very friendly to tourists (in most cases). Nobody really seems to mind you shooting pictures on their streets or in their markets. One Buddhist temple usher even came out to insist I come inside to photograph the service they had running. There is also bare minimal targeting/harassing of tourists for sales gimmicks, unlike a lot of other Asian countries.

Singapore is also known for its great food. I’ve managed to already have 2 great Korean feeds and one nice Japanese feed at various markets and hawker huts. Singapore is mostly Chinese, but it also has substantial populations of Indians, Indonesians, Malaysians, and many other cultures (including a fair few expat Westerners), giving it a nice multicultural flavour. There are quite a few trendy bars and cafes these days. I even found a hip little coffee place upstairs in Chinatown called “Group Therapy” this morning that even knew how to make a proper flat white (which I haven’t been able to find anywhere else in Singapore).

Singapore is a small place. A city-state that actually has a national park service (including one with wild monkeys), a wide range of sporting activities and facilities, and a proud tradition of volunteerism and community involvement – but probably a bit too much emphasis on shopping. There are endless shopping centres everywhere, and Singaporeans seem to have no interest in them, since they always seem packed.

The subways are great and probably among the best in the world. I believe there are a few new lines here since the last time I visited. They are very clean, very safe, very frequent, run all over the island, and very easy to navigate, with high-tech onboard signage that shows your precise location relative to the rest of the rail network (an idea they stole from Hong Kong’s subway, I think).

Arrived in Singapore bright and early Friday morning after catching a 2 am flight out of Perth. Thought I would catch the train to my hotel, only to realise halfway there that I should probably have just taken a cab. Negotiating the subway transfers with full travel luggage during rush hour in busy Singapore was probably a bit much. Fortunately, the hotel, across from a nice little district of colonial-style architecture shops, agreed to take my baggage straight away, even though I wasn’t supposed to check in until 3 pm.

I used to travel to Singapore about 3 times a year a decade ago for business, but I have not been back in years. Traipsing through my old haunts in my very jet-lagged state, I snooped around the Bugis and Orchard Road shopping districts trying to stay awake. Fortunately, I checked back with the hotel by noon, and they had a room available for me. I went straight to bed for a 3-hour nap, then headed out for dinner that evening. Probably the nicest hotel I’ve stayed in on my own dime.

Looks like Singapore is getting ramped up for the next two big events: Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day. Many Chinese markets had large piles of fireworks for sale, which I don’t think airlines would let me take out of the country. Valentine’s Day normally wouldn’t be worth mentioning, except that they had installed big, over-the-top purple light displays up and down the walkways along Orchard Road.

Flight from Perth to Singapore