Singapore had never been high on my travel hit list. I think for many travellers, it’s often seen more as the ‘perfect stopover point’ than a main destination, a place where you can visit a few of the major sights during a 24-hour layover before heading on elsewhere.
Oh, how wrong that thinking is.
I spent five days in the city-state with a group of fellow writers as a guest of the Singapore Tourism Board, and discovered there’s so, so much more to do than I realised. We were shown around by Singapore local and tour guide, Winnie Ubbink, who showed us just how special this place is. From kind souls that invite you into their home for an intimate cooking class on Peranakan (traditional Singaporean) cuisine, to exploring the tiny slice of traditional Singapore one woman is single-handedly fighting to keep alive, you could easily turn Singapore into a week-long travel destination.
Here are my recommendations for an unforgettable vacay in Singapore!
Yes, you do need to visit the tourist attractions
While Singapore is defined by far more than its well known tourist attractions, you can’t pay a visit to the country without leaning into all the hot spots.
Marina Bay Sands
Shortly after I dropped off my luggage at my hotel, I called myself a Grab (Singapore doesn’t use Uber), wanting to knock the iconic hotel and shopping destination Marina Bay Sands off my list of things to see.
My driver asked me what I wanted to buy from the MBS Shopping Centre. After telling him I was on the hunt for a new work bag, he told me that “Louis Vuitton has some great ones. I buy them for my wife all the time — I’m a member”.
I laughed and said that was a little out of my price range, so he offered Coach as an “affordable alternative”. When I arrived at the shopping centre, I realised why his version of affordable was a little higher than mine. Everywhere I turned, a pristine, glittering designer store greeted me. Chanel, Prada, Acne Studios, Goyard — the list goes on. Luxury is on another level here.
You could easily spend all day wandering around the Marina Bay Sands mall, starting off window shopping (or splurging), or perhaps even catching the little Sampan boat that floats through the centre. Yes, there’s a river in the middle of the shops for you to cruise through.
Staring out at the bay from the boardwalk left me awestruck. Each way I turned, towering skyscrapers dotted the horizon. Locals weaved in and out of tourists on their daily run, people dined on the waterfront, and tourists took snaps on the boardwalk. At night, the bay lit up in a light show, and jets of water streamed upwards in time with the beat of oriental music drumming out through hidden speakers.
Gardens By The Bay
Gardens By The Bay is a man-made park and artistic garden centre that spans across 260 acres — it’s like our botanical gardens on steroids. Think vast domes of cacti and hidden pockets of lush greenery at every turn.
A full day could slip away here without you noticing (and even then, you’d hardly scratch the surface), but since I was limited on time, I restricted my visit to the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest. Each one was vastly different from the other, and both were awe-inspiring.
The Flower Dome was light, bright, and full of colour. Succulents and cacti filled one half of the dome, and a rainbow of florals the other. Vibrant red decorations filled the centre of the dome to celebrate Lunar New Year, and flower bushes surrounded the horse statues standing proud in the middle of the display.
The Cloud Forest had been transformed into Jurassic Park for a limited time exhibition. When I entered, I craned my neck at the man-made waterfall showering down into a pool below. This dome had a lot more lush greenery in comparison to the Flower Dome, and the moisture in the air was akin to a rainforest.
Singapore Oceanarium
Personally, when I go overseas, visiting the aquarium rarely makes my to-do list. But let me tell you, the Singapore Oceanarium is worth the slight detour to Sentosa Island (where Universal Studios is located). It recently reopened after a five-year closure due to renovations, and it’s now massive. It’s a three-storey marine wonderland — three times the size of its predecessor, the S.E.A. Aquarium.
There’s something so calming about wandering through while soft music is playing, watching jellyfish bob about and fish swim around in their schools. There’s also multiple tunnels you can walk through while sharks swim overhead, and spots to sit and observe. It’s divided into 22 different zones exploring unique parts of the ocean, from tropical reefs to deep sea creatures, so you feel like you’re slowly descending to the bottom of the ocean.
You could spend an entire week here for the food alone
Singapore is a multicultural country, and because of that, the food is pretty damn amazing.
Hawker centres are where culture thrives
The Hawker centres are a highlight. There are 200 across the country, each an affordable food hub wherein you can usually get an entire meal for $10. I was told I needed to go to a Hawker Centre and try the Hainanese Chicken — chicken boiled in broth and served with rice — so after the light show ended at MBS, I decided to walk to one that was nearby.
A girl and Google Maps against the world. What could go wrong?
I go up the escalator to the Hawker Centre to find every single stall closed. So, I popped in the next closest one into my maps. Google was getting confused, as was I. What was an 800 metre walk turned into getting a Grab to pick me up because I was hangry.
Even though it was 9.15pm, the Maxwell Food Centre was bustling. A short walk through quickly told me that Uncle Louis Famous Chicken Rice was the ~must try~ spot. Little did I know that joining the back of the line would lead to a 45 minute wait before I could order.
After the almost-two hour journey to get my Hainanese Chicken, I can confidently say that while it was delicious, and I devoured every mouthful, it probably wasn’t worth the extensive wait (but that could’ve also been my exhaustion and hangriness impacting my mood).
The variety of restaurants is next level
When I tell you I ate well while I was in Singapore, I ate WELL. The restaurants in Singapore are all wildly impressive, from the casual dining to the fancier stuff.
The standout from my trip by far was The Coconut Club. They have a fine dining restaurant upstairs called Belimbing — which is also an incredible experience — but the more casual eatery downstairs is where it’s at. We all ordered Nasi Lemak (coconut rice with a bunch of garnishes on the side), as well as entrees to pair it with: beef rendang, fried chicken, okra and eggplant. This dish felt like a warm hug, with flavour and heat and fragrance.
My favourite restaurant on the fancier end of the scale was MasterChef Singapore host Damian D’Silva’s restaurant, Gilmore. The menu is a mix of Eurasian and Chinese cuisine, and when he opened the restaurant, he told his grandad, “I’m coming home.”
“This is the food of my soul,” D’Silva told us.
The food tastes soulful indeed. However, as much as we enjoyed the food, it was the Limau Asam Boi that captured our hearts, a non-alcoholic drink made from calanmansi (similar to a lime) and sour plum drink.
When D’Silva came to check on how we were enjoying the food and we responded that while the food was incredible, we couldn’t stop talking about this simple drink, he retreated to the kitchen and returned with individual containers of sour plums for all of us, so we could make the drink back home. A simple yet thoughtful gesture that I’ll never forget (and I cannot wait to go back to his restaurant).
A cooking class was the highlight of my trip
During my trip, I was lucky enough to attend a cooking class at Ruqxana Vasanwala’s home, a wholesome small woman who radiates sunshine. She’s the founder of Cookery Magic, a cooking school that hosts small, personal classes on how to cook Peranakan cuisine (a fusion of Chinese, Indian and Malaysian flavours that formed traditional Singaporean culture). Working in teams of two, she guided us through the process of making chicken satay and Nonya laksa.
Once we were done, we dined on Vasanwala’s front porch, while she shared stories about how she accidentally started her business. Previously an engineer and tech entrepreneur, Vasanwala started teaching her friends how to cook Peranakan cuisine. Word of mouth spread, and before she knew it, her friends’ friends were asking her to teach them to cook, too. From that, it continued to grow, and Cookery Magic was born.
I’d never experienced such intense, authentic flavours as I did in Vasanwala’s kitchen. Sitting there eating while she glowed with love and pride for what she does made the meal feel even more comforting; it was like sitting in a grandmother’s kitchen, being fed and told stories in equal measure. Her cat popped by to say a quick hello while we were dining, too.
Don’t skip seeing Singapore’s last surviving Kampong
Before Singapore was towering skyscrapers, offices and apartment buildings, it was a green, tropical landscape dotted with villages called Kampongs.
Tour guide Choo Siong, 57, told our group that he watched his country transform from lush greenery and a simple way of living to the modern concrete jungle it is today.
“That comes at a price,” he said.
Now, all the Kampongs have been destroyed in the process of modernising the nation. Siong said that they lost a bit of their history and their childhood homes “for the bigger good”.
“We can’t show our children where we grew up,” tour guide Winnie told us, who is in her 60s.
The only surviving village is Kampong Lorong Buangkok, just over 20 minutes from the city centre. As for why it’s still standing? It’s privately owned by 73-year-old Madam Sng Mui Hong, who inherited the acre of land when her father passed on and acts as a landlord to the 20 people who reside there.
Siong also told us that in 2025, Hong had turned down a $25 million government offer to buy the land, saying she had promised her father she would keep the house for his spirit to live in after he passed.
With its weathered houses dwarfed by tall, modern public housing blocks on all sides, the Kampong can appear far more modest than its surroundings. But Siong said that impression is misleading. “No, these people have money,” he explained, gesturing to a shiny Mercedes-Benz parked outside a battered two-storey house. “It’s simply a different lifestyle choice.”
As we wandered through the Kampong, it saddened me to think that when Madam Sng Mui Hong and her siblings eventually pass, it won’t be a surprise if that acre of land is turned into yet another skyrise building — especially when land is so precious.
There’s more to Singapore’s shopping scene than designer brands
While MBS and Orchard Road (Singapore’s main shopping strip) are teeming with high end designers, there are some gorgeous smaller Singaporean brands to shop — you just need to look.
We visited New Bahru, a multi-level shopping centre that’s taken over an old school building. On the bottom level, you’ll find mostly restaurants and cafes. Above lies halls of stunning independent brands that don’t receive the recognition that they deserve, since tourists often default to shopping the high end designers that line Orchard Road.
Among my favourite stores in New Bahru was The Missing Piece, an independent label focussing on elegant and versatile pieces. It was here that I bought a beautiful bucket bag handmade from recycled T-shirts and plastic water bottles; on the tag it told me exactly how many of each the creator used, and it had a Polaroid of the woman who crafted the bag, too.
There’s the opportunity not to just shop at New Bahru, but to create. Make by Ginlee makes most of its pieces in their flagship store, and it also hosts bag-making workshops, where you can design a bespoke bag from scratch. You pick the fabric, learn how to pleat it, and choose every single element to customise it, right down to the eyelets and rope. It was a fun, hands-on experience, and now I have a memento from my trip that didn’t cost upwards of $2,000.
Looking past the skyscrapers
While Singapore is seen as ‘the perfect stopover’, a shiny city to marvel at for 24 hours before boarding your next flight, that gloss melts into a warmth that can’t be revealed in a short stay.
It’s the woman preserving her father’s promise. It’s the chef cooking the food of his soul. It’s the stranger who invites you into her home and feeds you laksa on her porch. It just depends on whether you’re willing to look.
Image credit: Alyssa Forato
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