Singapore: An Unplanned Stopover
Singapore was never on a go-to travel list for me–or for David. Before he passed away in July 2023, we had started talking about a Southeast Asia trip with our dear friends and intrepid travel companions, Ray and Coco, but his untimely death put a halt to the planning for a while. The three of us finally agreed to make it happen, and we did–in January and February of this year: 2025.
Singapore was not on the itinerary until we realized that we could use our points and miles to fly the amazing Singapore Airlines to Vietnam via Singapore, so we added it to our trip. It was a nice place to get acclimated to the 12-hour time difference for a few days, but, truthfully, it was not my favorite place. It was mostly just a big, shiny city with a lot of very tall modern buildings–kind of a combination of Dubai and Las Vegas. But there were some very interesting and worthwhile parts of Singapore that I liked, too.
We stayed at the Andaz, so we could use our many Hyatt points, which we had earned from having had my daughter Zoe’s wedding at the Andaz Scottsdale two years earlier. Besides being a lovely hotel with sweeping 360º views of the city, its location (the trendy Kampong Glam district) was excellent. We could walk to almost every destination on our to-see list, including the Arabic Quarter, with its colorful murals and street art along Haji Lane, and the gold-domed Sultan Mosque. Stamford Raffles, founder of modern Singapore, allowed the Sultan Hussein Shah to build this beautiful mosque (1824-26) there and establish the British East India Trading post in Singapore. The current structure, decorated with glass bottle ends, was finished in 1932 and can hold up to 5000 worshippers.
On our walk to the waterfront, we passed another stunning structure: the War Memorial honoring the civilians who died during the Japanese occupation of Singapore in World War II. Esplanade Park, with the lotus-shaped science museum and many fountains, wide paths for strolling, and lush green spaces, did not disappoint us at all. The most impressive structure we saw from a distance was the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, with its three 57-story towers and the “boat” stretched across all three, containing gardens, restaurants, an infinity pool, and an observation deck. For lunch, we queued at the restaurant at the Mandarin Hotel–we seemed to be among the very few non-Asians, many of whom were dressed in formal and sparkly attire, ready to celebrate the Chinese New Year. We covered all these areas and more as we waited for our rooms to be ready when we first arrived in Singapore.
We had booked a walking history tour for the next morning and that was quite interesting. We covered some of the same places that we’d walked the day before, but this time we had an art historian to lead us and explain in more depth what we were seeing. We met at the striking St. Andrews Cathedral, built in 1861 by the Anglicans.
We learned a lot more than our guidebooks told us about Stamford Raffles, who was an early urban planner and introduced the Raffles Town Plan, which structured the city into different ethnic districts. He was a progressive administrator who modernized Singapore and protected local communities. The famous Raffles Hotel was one of the most gorgeous Colonial buildings we visited. It has wide, elegant porches and outdoor walkways connecting the various parts of the hotel and lush tropical gardens. We passed the Old Parliament House, which is the oldest building in Singapore, the Cricket Club, and the Victorian Theatre and Concert Hall.
We did more waterfront walking where we saw the official mascot of Singapore, Merlion (a cross between a fish and a lion, symbolizing the city’s origins as a fishing village and its strength and resilience) and ended the tour at the Cavenagh Bridge, a pedestrian suspension bridge built in 1869, which connected the Commercial District with the Civic District on the Singapore River. Coco and I tried Singapore’s national dish, chicken rice, at the very elegant and elaborate Fullerton Hotel, which used to be the main Post Office.
To cover more distance than on foot and to experience more parts of Singapore from a local’s perspective, we joined a small cycling group for a four-hour bike tour. We rode through Colonial Singapore and enjoyed viewing buildings with its signature architecture: wide verandas, ornate facades, large windows with louvered shutters, tall columns, and balanced symmetry.
My favorite stop was at a small, unassuming shop in Chinatown for lemon tea and kaya toast, a Singaporean breakfast specialty made with a sweet, creamy jam of coconut milk, eggs, sugar, and pandan leaves.
All around us were temples decorated with bright red and gold lanterns, orange and red flowers and fruits, and for the Chinese lunar New Year. My favorite temple was the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum, which houses what is claimed to be a tooth relic of the historical Buddha.
Juxtaposed to the old, we saw the Grand Prix race track and the site of the new futball and concert stadium. Everywhere we went, I was impressed with the cleanliness of Singapore–there was almost no litter anywhere, and very few smokers or vapers. Since importing, manufacturing, and selling chewing gum has been banned since 1992, you rarely see people chewing it, although it is allowed and tolerated as long as it is not littered. Vandals were using gum to prevent elevators and subway doors from opening properly, so the government got involved!
Another interesting observation about Singapore is how few pet dogs on leashes were seen. It's such a normal occurrence to see people out walking their dogs everywhere in the US–even big cities–that the absence of it was very noticeable! When asked the reason, one guide said that Singaporeans were very busy people and that they simply didn’t have time to raise and care for pets.
I was really looking forward to our last night in Singapore, when we were supposed to be picked up by a car and driver and given a nighttime guided tour of the beautiful Gardens by the Bay and experience the amazing light show. Ray and Coco had been to see the Gardens earlier that day to get the full effect of both their daytime and nighttime beauty. They reported that the always-blooming gardens were stunning and lush and included over 1.5 million plants from every continent except Antarctica. Thinking I would see them that night, I chose to do something else that afternoon. We were to end the evening tour at the observatory deck on the top of the Marina Bay Sands to get the full effect of the sparkling city at night. Finally, we were to have a 40-minute boat ride in the Singapore harbor and river.
However, after drinks at the stunning art deco Atlas Bar (nicknamed the “Gotham Building”), known for having one of the world’s largest gin collections, David Yarborough would have loved the dozens of proper gin and tonics they concocted. We waited for over an hour for our evening car and driver to arrive. They never did.
We discovered our tour had somehow been canceled and never found out the reason. But we quickly went to Plan B, took a taxi to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel complex, watched a colorful and music-filled fountain light show that shot synchronized jets of water high into the night air on the harbor, wandered around lost in the huge, dizzily complex and overwhelming mall, and finally had dinner at the trendy and delicious Maison Boulard, a Michelin-starred Daniel Boulard restaurant.
We couldn’t go to the Observatory Deck for some reason, so to enjoy the city's view, we ascended to the 57th floor to Spago for dessert and drinks. By peering over the glass walls, we could see the tail-end of the amazing light show in the Gardens by the Bay and the iconic lighted trees. Just a snippet of the wonderful evening we were so looking forward to! It was a disappointing and exhausting way to end our visit to Singapore, but we were excited that we’d be in Vietnam the next day, so we retired to our luxurious rooms at the Andaz for a good sleep, excited about our next day’s flight to Hanoi to begin our exploration of Vietnam.
