The island nation of Singapore is a world class melting pot of cultures, religions and activity. For our first visit, we covered a lot of ground, but of course, only scratched the surface of all the things to do and see here. We acknowledge our summary is a bit limited because of this narrow time window. But, thanks to a housesit, hawker stalls and public transportation, we were able to make this destination far under budget, about half! Not all “expensive” destinations have to be expensive!
Time Spent: 8 nights
Money Spent: $215.30 or $26.91/day
Accommodation: $21.23 (one night using a $50 hotel credit.)
Restaurants: $52.84: we ate out six times, all at hawker stalls or food courts, also one ice cream
Groceries: $74.69, we made our own meals twice a day
Transport: $32.59 was our baggage fee from Hanoi on Scoot Airlines, $33.98 was for 7 days of local bus or metro rides (x2)
Favorite Place: Little India
Least Favorite: Financial District
Best Stay: our housesit
Favorite Experience: having lunch with Esther, a native Singaporean follower during friend
Least Favorite: the tree top canopy walk, but only because it was pouring
Would we return? Yes, for another sit, but a week was about our limit.
Upsides of Singapore
- the demographic of the people is very diverse
- you can drink the tap water
- English is an official language and almost everyone speaks it
- they are environmentally conscious
- hawker stalls and food courts are plentiful and cheap
- super easy, and reasonably priced public transport
- life is easy in general here
- ridiculously safe and clean
- a variety of beautiful hiking/outdoor walking options
- an endless array of things to do
- people are very polite and rule abiding
- the grocery selection is top notch
Downsides of Singapore
- there is a lot of construction which is a bit disorganized. As a pedestrian, it can be aggravating
- like most of SE Asia, it’s very hot and muggy. But all the concrete makes it feel even more so.
- the cost of living is high, including groceries
- the jaywalking laws, combined with the unbearably slow crosswalk signals were really maddening, especially thanks to the beating sun.
- this goes hand in hand with the rules in general. There are a lot of them, and while some are ones that every society needs, some were quite silly.
- the plugs are UK friendly, so we had to buy an adaptor because we left that one in the States this time. Turns out, we needed it for Malaysia too.
