On a Visa Run to Singapore

Singapore was a spontaneous part of our moving-to-australia-pre-travel-trip. We had originally planned to stay 60 days in Indonesia, but because of a rather complicated visa extension process on Bali, we decided to make life easier (and a lot more fun than waiting in line at an immigration office), and jump on a plane to Singapore.

We only knew very little about Singapore before arriving, but during our stay we got a pretty good feeling of the city. It’s a huge city, but extremely easy and fast to get around with metro. We based ourselves in an area called Kampong Glam. An area we got recommended from a friend, and from what we saw it was definitely the best area to stay in. It was an easy 15 minutes walk to downtown, but far enough to have a local feel to it.

We had 4 full days and 5 nights in Singapore. To see everything we could have used a couple of days extra. But for this visit 4 days were enough. Singapore is a pretty polished city, it’s very stressfree – to the extend where it is even too much for an Asian city. We actually longed for a bit more excitement and energy from the city. Cities like Hong Kong and Tokyo are much the same, and at the same time nothing like Singapore at all. They have much more energy and roar, and personally I like that much more.
But it was the first time in many weeks that I didn’t have to think about what kinds of insects and animals would lick our toothbrushes if we didn’t put them away for the night. And even though I absolutely love open air bathrooms, it was nice to not think about that for some days 🙂

Our 4 days looked like this:

Day 1

We had arrived at the hotel at 2 am in the morning, so everyone was a bit tired on our first day. But we did manage to walk all the way to Orchard Rd. to go shopping.
In the evening I went out and met an old friend from Denmark who now lives in Singapore. We watched the world cup match between France and Denmark. Together with approximately 5 Danish people and 5.000 French people. It was not an even match!

 

Day 2

Our second day was again spent walking around. We were glad to stay so close to everything that we could walk (but could choose the metro when we got tired). We went to little India and it was exactly like we had hoped it would be. Amazing colorful people and clothing – and of course amazing Indian food.

 

Some things in Singapore are ridiculously expensive. Like washing clothes in our (midrange) hotel. It would have cost us 1.000 DKK (150USD) to wash our laundry compared to the 22 DKK (3,5USD) we pay in Indonesia!! (Not in hotels though, but local laundry shops).
But eating street food on the other hand is really cheap and at the same time delicious. Carla loved the Indian flat bread prata. And she loved watching it being made.

 

We also had time to explore the area where we lived. There were two nice small streets with a load of cafes and shops – Bali Lane and Haji Lane.

 

Our neighborhood was mainly Muslim, and the sight of the mosque with skyscrapers in the background was pretty unique.

Day 3

The third day was ‘kids day’ and we went to the zoo. It was a pretty cool kids day, because I’ve never seen a better zoo in my life! It was in a beautiful setting, and all animals had really nicely landscaped areas. Additionally, they had a splash pool area which the kids really loved – and luckily we had extra clothes for them 🙂

 

Day 4

On our last day we went to the marina bay area. We had drinks and took the necessary selfie ‘on top of the world’, as well as a visit to the Gardens by the Bay where the view of the Marina Bay Sands buildings was so cool!

 

After our city escape we flew to Jakarta. Back in Indonesia we will explore the island of Java. And hopefully we can soon tell you that the Aussie visa has arrived. But not yet!