Solo to Singapore
- chloegbridges
- Apr 1
- 10 min read
From March 17-21, I am traveling solo around Singapore. I am excited to have my first real solo vacation. I think Singapore is a good place to start solo traveling because it is a very safe country. I’ve gone on weekends away but never to a whole new country by myself. I was a little nervous about any unexpected things happening but mostly I was excited. Also, Singapore is well known to be a very safe country so I wasn’t really too concerned about that aspect.
March 17 - Monday
I traveled from Jakarta to Singapore, which is not very long of a flight. It was only about a 1 1/2 hour flight so it was pretty easy travel. US citizens (at the time of writing this blog) do not need a visa to enter Singapore, you just have to fill out a form up to 3 days before traveling there. Once I got there, I walked around the Changi Airport for a while and saw the jewel and had some food there. The airport is huge and has a bunch of cool art pieces and gardens to poke around in. I took the MRT (public train) to the area where my hotel was. Singapore has very comprehensive public transportation and it was very easy to navigate.
My hotel was actually in the Funan mall and was somewhat connected to the MRT station through an underground passage to another mall that had the MRT station under it. Singapore has a bunch of underground passages between malls and other buildings which are super helpful when it's raining. The hotel was really nice and the location was great.
I pretty much just dropped my stuff off in the room because I wanted to go to Garden by the Bay to see the trees light up in the Supertree Grove. Each night they have a free light show where the trees light up to a musical number. However on Mondays and- I believe- Saturdays they also have the Aurora Borealis lights after the normal light show. I wanted to go the first night so I could see both. This were both amazing to see and one of the highlights of the trip. I walked to the show along the waterfront so I coud explore the area a bit. On the walk back I got some food and sat at the water front to see all the buildings lite up at night. I felt very safe walking around Singapore even at night.
March 18 - Tuesday
I went to the Asian Civilization Museum, which was a recommendation from a family friend who used to live in Singapore. I honestly wouldn’t have gone without this recommendation because none of the “10 best things to do in Singapore/museums in Singapore” mentioned this museum. However, that would have been a mistake because it was probably one of the best museums I have been to in my life. It’s definitely in my top 5 museums. I had an amazing time and the exhibits were really well put together. The history, culture, and societies within and around Asia were well researched and they had so many artifacts. One of my favorite exhibits was a shipwreck off the coast of Indonesia. The museum had almost the entire collection which was rare because typically items from shipwrecks found around the time would usually end up in various private collections. Most of the ship was full of ceramics that were made in China and being transported to the Middle East when the ship went down. I highly recommend this museum to anyone who goes to Singapore. In fact, a colleague I know is going to Singapore in a few weeks and I recommended it to her so hopefully she’ll be able to go.
After spending about 3-4 hours in the museum, I decided to walk around the area because the museum was on a waterway that had many different restaurants around. While walking, I came across a street vendor selling ice cream sandwiches. It was interesting to see because the ice cream was in giant blocks and the seller would cut off a slice and put it between two waffer cookies to make the sandwich. I got mint chocolate chip because it’s very hard to find mint chocolate chip ice cream in Indonesia.
After walking for a while, I was convinced to stop at one of the many restaurants for some lunch. The restaurant pulled me in with a lunch meal deal. A plate of food and a soft drink for 10 Singapore dollars. A lot of the restaurants in the area do lunch deals because there are many big office buildings around and many people grab lunch in the area. I ended up at a place where I got a hummus plate with naan, falafel, hummus, and a salad with red onion, cilantro, feta, and tomato. This was a great plate of food and a great deal for the quality. It was one of the better deals I saw outside of the hawker centers (street food stalls center). I continued down this row of restaurants and found one that had a good price for a Singapore Sling. I had never had the drink but I knew I had to try one while in Singapore. It was delicious and was one of the few drinks that I liked Gin in. The place I stopped at was an Indian restaurant and I got a tomato soup and garlic naan. I would have gotten more food but it was less than an hour after I had lunch. I continued walking around the area and made my way back to the hotel and poked around the mall that was attached to the hotel.
March 19 - Wednesday
On this day my original plan was to go to one of the viewpoints in Singapore and get the skyline view. I found a building that had free tickets to their top floor with the view. I was able to get a ticket and went there. Unfortunately, it was foggy and pouring down rain the entire day. The top floor was actually closed because of the weather. I was able to walk around the garden but I was a bit disappointed about the viewpoint. I guess this just means I need to go to Singapore again because I left some things undone.
Next to the building with the viewpoint, there was a small hawker center with a bunch of food stalls. I got a delicious iced coffee that had cinnamon in it and I got some braised pork leg and rice dish. I walked around the center, which had two floors, just looking at all the options. I had already planned to go to the Chinatown hawker center this day so I didn’t want to fill up too much. Originally, I was going to walk to Chinatown and see the city on the way. The rain would not let up and I didn’t have an umbrella so I decided to use Grab (like Uber) to go to the hawker center.
Once I got to the center, I was a little confused because the ground floor just had clothing vendors and souvenirs. There were no signs indicating where the food stalls were. I eventually found the food stalls on the floor above. I was immediately a bit overwhelmed by all the delicious looking options. If you are ever in Singapore with a group of people I would recommend getting a few different things and sharing family style.
Let me tell you, I had some of the best food of the trip at the Chinatown hawker center. I was walking around for a while trying to figure out what I wanted when I saw a stand with soup dumplings and it had about 3 people in line. I figured I’d try it because the line wasn’t too long. The stand was cool because you could see the workers folding and stuffing the dumplings and the stand had stickers that said they made the Michelin list for at least 2 years. The stall was very simple. It had some dumplings, and a couple noodle options. I went with the soup dumplings and they were the best dumplings I’ve had in my life. So juicy, flavorful, and almost buttery smooth. They were so delicious and I’ll probably think about those dumplings for a long time.
After that, I wanted to walk around Chinatown a bit because I had a full plate of food and then had the dumplings. I ended up having to buy an umbrella because the rain would not let up. I didn’t walk too far because I ended up finding a temple I wanted to go into. It was a Buddhist temple on the bottom floor and then the second floor had a museum about important Buddhist monks. The temple was beautiful to look at and interesting to learn about. I’m always interested in learning more about various different religions. I probably spent 45 min to an hour in the temple. After that I walked around the area and ended up finding an interesting looking cafe.
The cafe was 2D so ill the furniture and designs looked like they were from a comic book or something. I got a recommendation from another patron and ended up getting the Biscoff latte. It was delicious and the cafe had a cute and fun idea in the design. I walked around some of the stores outside and found a souvenir shop and got a keychain with some iconic landmarks of Singapore on it. My family often buys keychains or other nicknacks that can be used as ornaments for the Christmas tree to remember various places we have traveled.
After I found the souvenir I wanted, I headed back to the food stalls. Originally, I thought about getting those soup dumplings again but I also wanted to try new things. My decision was made for me when I saw the soup dumpling stall now had a line of 10-15 people. I decided that must be a sign to try something else. Previously I had been torn between the soup dumplings and fried dumplings so I found a place that did fried dumplings. They were delicious and the place next door had some rice dishes which I decided to get and bring back to my hotel for dinner. I got a sweet and sour pork and rice dish for dinner. My hotel had microwaves on each floor and fridges to store food so it was very convenient to bring food back.
March 20 - Thursday
It was also very rainy on this day as well, but there was one thing I hadn’t seen yet that I was determined to see. The Merlion statue is an iconic landmark in Singapore and represents previous names of Singapore. The statue is part lion and part fish. The lion comes from an old name “Kota singa” or “lion city”. The fish comes from “Temasek” which means “sea town” in Javanese. This represents Singapore’s origin as a fishing village.
The statue is on the waterfront and water pours out of the lion’s mouth. The rain was very heavy but I decided to go out anyways…. A little rain never hurt an Oregonian! It took probably about 30-45 minutes to walk to the Merlion statue. It was cool to see and was way bigger than I was expecting. Surprisingly there was a fair amount of other people braving the weather to see the statue.
After this I was walking and trying to find a cafe to get a coffee. The first cafe I went into happened to have a broken coffee machine so they could only sell non-coffee drinks. I decided to go underground to the MRT (train) station and noticed that without getting on the train, the station connected with another building that seemed to have some coffee shops. I was really eggier to find a coffee shop because the rain plus my sandals had rubbed the side of my foot raw. Luckily there was a coffee shop so I stopped there and enjoyed a nice coffee.
By this time I was pretty wet and decided to head back towards the direction of my hotel. I took the MRT because I knew I could get from the station to my hotel without having to go back out in the rain. I went back to my hotel for a bit and decided to get lunch at one of the malls connected to my hotel. I originally found an Italian place to try but I quickly realized that all of the restaurants were super busy because it was a weekday lunch break and it was raining so everyone wanted to stay inside and eat. I walked around the food floor of the mall for a while and saw a bunch of places but nothing was really speaking to me. I spent a while looking though a grocery store on this level because I always like to see what kind of foods they have in grocery stores in other countries. I decided to have a little random assortment from the grocery store for lunch. I picked out a few things and was making my way back to my hotel when I came across a cute bakery/cafe that had a deal with a piece of cake and a coffee. I got that as well and had a nice little collection of foods. I didn’t end up eating until around 3:30 p.m. so it was more like a lunch/dinner.
March 21 - Friday
I only really had one thing on the agenda for this day, go to the airport. My flight was at 11:50 a.m. so I was able to have one more of the free hotel breakfasts because I headed to the MRT station to take the train to the airport. My plan was to go early so I could explore some of the airport and not feel rushed. When I first got to the airport, I enjoyed a coffee while figuring out where I needed to go. I ended up needing to go to a terminal that was a 5 minute shuttle ride away. Luckily the Changi Airport is really nice and has free transportation between all of the terminals. Once I got to the correct terminal, I checked in and went through security no problem. I looked around for a while in the terminal and found a food court where I got some delicious pork chop fried rice. After that I pretty much just went to my gate and left without issue.
The flight from Singapore to Jakarta was only about half way full so it was a super easy flight. And because I have a visa for Indonesia, going through immigration barely took any time. Unfortunately the shuttle from Jakarta to a big city near where I live took 5 hours instead of the normal 2 because of Friday afternoon traffic and a car crash.
I had a great time in Singapore and I hope I will have another opportunity to visit again someday.
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