Welcome to Singapore

After two weeks on the high seas, our ship arrived in Singapore on schedule. Previously, we had only visited Singapore’s airport (during our earlier trips to Indonesia or New Zealand), so this time we wanted to take the opportunity to take a closer look at the city.

Hotel Bencoolen

A couple of weeks ago, Christiane already booked a room in Hotel Bencoolen which is located in the centre of Singapore. And we were really lucky! When we arrived at 10 am, our room was already prepared and we could check-in immediately 😉

First round of Sightseeing

After we had freshened up a bit we started our first short exploration tour… which ended up to be longer than we thought. After a few meters we were already at the Singapore River. And we liked the interesting mixture of small houses and huge skyscrapers right away!

And in between there are also some older buildings.

And there was always art to discover that represent life in the “earlier years” of Singapore.

Singapore has a lot to offer architecturally! Whether green skyscrapers, the really great Marina Bay Sands Complex, the ArtScience Museum or the Helix Bridge – we were very impressed.

The city is also a real example of cleanliness. There is no rubbish in the corners and no bubble gum on the sidewalks (chewing gum is prohibited in Singapore).

Singapore at Night

In the evening the illuminated Singapore awoke and fascinated us. First we visited the “Gardens by the Bay”. This is a large park that borders directly on the Marina Bay Sand Complex.

The Supertree Grove is located in the centre of the park. These are metal frames, which are based on trees. At the bottom they have planted the whole thing. And so the racks grow slowly and look like real trees at some point. The trees are illuminated and every evening there’s a lightshow with music… and it’s even for free 🙂

After the show we visited the illuminated Helix Bridge and waited for the next (again free) Light- and Watershow directly at the water.

The temperatures were still around 30 degrees around 22 o’clock in the evening and so we were happy to be able to cool off in our air-conditioned hotel overnight.

Chinatown

On the following day we first made our way to Chinatown with its many small alleys and temples. After about 10 minutes we were already there and were allowed to dive into a completely different world.

“Gardens by the Bay” during the day

After Gardens by the Bay had already fascinated us the evening before, we wanted to see the whole thing again in daylight. And the park was really beautiful even without all the lights.

The park also has two huge winter gardens, the Cloud Forest and the Flower Dome, which are up to seven floors high. We have gladly invested the 18 € entrance fee per person.

We started in the Cloud Forest and here we were greeted by a waterfall 😉

The entire complex is laid out and maintained with lots of love.

During our visit there was also a special exhibition with orchids.

At the end there was also an exhibition with information about how humans deal with nature and how global warming will affect our environment in the future.

We went on to the Flower Dome. This was structured according to different topics.

Besides, there was always nice art to discover.

The highlight from our point of view was the flower field – incredibly beautiful 🙂

Food

What would be a visit to an Asian city without also making a small culinary journey? Singapore is known for its many small streets with countless restaurants and bars. We already fell in love with the Vegan Bowl on the first day. The dishes were lovingly prepared and there was even vegan seafood 😉

And Christiane’s choice also looked more like goulash and actually tasted a bit like it, but they were actually monkey head mushrooms!

We also visited the Korean restaurant Bonchon and tried Bibimbap.

And there were also delicious smoothies to discover. More food intake in two days was not possible 😉