Many friends of ours have been to Singapore and always told us how fascinating this city has been. The first points that came into their mind were: „This City is so clean.“ „Marina Bay is really impressive.“ „The view from Marina Bay Sands hotel’s pool is unbelievable“.
This points are all valid. Singpore is the cleanest Asian city, we have ever visited. Marina Bay is really impressive, nevertheless it not only appears man-made. We choose to visit the Gardens by the Bay twice at day time (including Flower Dome, Cloud Forest and the Skywalk) and after sundown (including the light show). The Gardens are impressive especially the Cloud Forest during daytime and the light show after sundown under the trees of steel. The Flower Dome was not so impressive, since we visited the Botanical Garden of Singapore (including the National Orchid Garden) the day before. We did not visit the pool of MBS since such an attraction does not belong to the list of our favorite attractions.
The Botanical Garden was our favorite spot in Singapore, if you have the chance to visit it, take it. We have also liked the Hadj Lane and the whole quarter around the Arab Street. Strolling around the lanes with lots of street art and the small shops with handcrafted products from all over Asia have been lovely and inspiring. Hadj Lane is a rather alternative and international lane, you can find lots of other Back- and Flashpackers and additionally lots of small restaurant (mainly international not local Asian).
Our Highlights in Pictures:
Accommodation:
The Capitol Kempinski Singapore:
We had booked a Grand Deluxe Room (a bit more spacious standard room), but directly at the check-in we were upgraded into the much bigger Stamford Suite. This two room suite was really a blast and just stunning. The stay at „The Capitol Kempinski Singapore“ was wonderful, all the staff is very friendly, helpful and highly motivated. The breakfast was well arranged with lots of choices, at breakfast buffet we detected the only point which we can criticize: the bread. There were multiple choices, but if you stay with a German hotel group you expect German style bread especially their signature bread, but all the bread had nothing in common with German bread.
Nevertheless we are planning to come back to The Capitol Kempinski Singapore next year and really are looking forward. Despite our critics on Booking.com (which can be understood to be very strict) we totally recommend everything, the room is spacious, modern and classy at the same time. Also the breakfast was very good and above average.
Dinner Locations:
We can recommend three dinner locations in Singapore. The first two are typically Hawker Centers next to Chinatown (Thank you for the advice „Lady in Red“ Ming, The Capitol Kempinski Singapore.)
Lau Pa Food Court:
We already presented a night shot of this food court on our instagram account. There were plenty of choice, we tried the typical roasted duck, a pork dumpling soup and some chicken, beef and prawn satay. All food was really good and tasty, but as always, we as physicalflashpacking.com do not want to take your choice away. In our opinion such food courts and your very own experience with them get better if you just stroll around and decide on your own what you want to eat and where. Just a little hint, the best satay skewers can be found outside of the food court on a closed road.
Maxwell Hawker Center
In our opinion this Hawker Center is even more local than Lau Pa, we ate roasted duck, chicken and pork which were also really good and tasty. Additionally we also tried pan fried dumplings which we can really recommend to you. We have never eaten any better dumplings.
Tres Amigos Hadj Lane Singapore
On our last evening, before visiting the light show at Gardens by the Bay, we took a quick stop at Hadj Lane (which was also proposed by Lady in Red Ming to us). Spontaneously we decided to have Mexican food in Singapore for dinner. Everything was really good, fresh and tasty. We can completely recommend Tres Amigos. (The other Mexican Restaurants around seemed to be owned by the same people).
We can recommend Singapore and really like the city and the people very much. Our question from the beginning can clearly be answered with „Yes“, Singapore is clean, well organized but totally Asia.
So long,
P.
physicalflashpacking 