Depending on how much sightseeing you want to do, a long weekend in Singapore is plenty of time for a solid introduction to this city-state in Southeast Asia (not least of all because it’s relatively small, only about 3.5 times the size of Washington, D.C.). This is exactly what I did when I spent a long weekend in Singapore, which is a quick one-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur, my home for that month of Remote Year.
On our first night in town, we splurged for a room at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel purely so we could get into what is one of the most famous pools in the world. It was teeming with people trying to get selfies with the city’s recognizable skyline as a backdrop and the weather wasn’t on our side that afternoon, but still worth it.
From Marina Bay Sands we could walk to Gardens by the Bay, an amazing park across from Marina Bay Sands that’s full of colorful, filled with different forms of greenery and plant installations. We visited the Cloud Forest and saw the light show from the Skyway above the Super Tree Grove. We didn’t have enough time to check out all of the attractions within the Gardens, which I’d definitely do upon a second visit.
The food in Singapore is delicious and a weekend is definitely not enough time to try it all. Highlights were the black pepper and chili crabs at Long Beach Seafood and dinner at Neon Pigeon. Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodles, the first hawker stall in the world to receive a Michelin star, serves chicken & rice (a popular dish in Southeast Asia). It was good, but not wait in line for 2.5 hours good, and the pork ribs were, in my opinion, the better dish.
Singapore itself is a very interesting place. It has a reputation for being “sterile”, especially compared to other nearby cities like Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia or Jakarta, Indonesia, that are more colorful, crowded and where the cacophony of scooter horns, hawkers in the street and the buzz of everyday life can overwhelm the senses. In comparison, Singapore is orderly and clean; the city-state famously banned the sale of chewing gum back in the 1990s. Formerly a British colony, Singapore was a part of the Malaysian Federation from 1963 to 1965 and then gained independence in 1965. Roughly 75% of Singaporeans are ethnically Chinese, so cultural and ethnic differences were at play in the split from Malaysia (ethnic Malaysians make up another 12% of the population). It’s also very expensive because the government adds taxes to many things that it wants to discourage, such as smoking, drinking and driving cars.
I was lucky enough to visit Singapore with a Remote Year friend who has friends living there. They showed us the more local side of life in the city-state, like where the start-up scene is concentrated, where to get the best noodle dish at 3 am after leaving the club, and where young Singaporean couples go to hang out in “private” since many of them live at home until they get married (hint: the local beach).
Singapore didn’t work its way into my heart like some other places in Southeast Asia have (more on those in the coming weeks), but it’s definitely a place I would return to next time I’m in the region and am looking for a change of pace.
