An Overnight Layover in Singapore

This post has been held captive for the past two years because I’ve had the hardest time sorting though pictures and figuring out which ones I wanted to share with you. Singapore is magical — I’ve never been to a city quite like it!

The Singapore Changi Airport would be very difficult to miss if you’ve traveled Asia over an extended period; we had layovers a handful of times between 2012-15, but never had time to go out and explore Singapore until our third visit. The airport itself is a sight to behold, and if anything, correctly represents wonders the rest of the city has to provide.

Derik and I were on our way to Europe from Bali , and it just so happened that our layover in Singapore was about 24 hours, so we decided to book a hotel and spend as much time walking around the city as possible. It can be overwhelming trying to plan a day trip in such a beautiful place, and sacrifices had to be made because of the time crunch. If you’ve ever been, you know it’s impossible to fit everything within a single day. Our hotel was in a great location (I can’t remember what the name of it was for the life of me), so we chose to walk everywhere. We heard public transit wasn’t bad either, but with all the sitting we had been doing and would be doing up to Europe, walking sounded great. For reference, our hotel was approximately 2km from Marina Bay.

Since our flight arrived at 3:00pm, the first thing we wanted to do was to find a late lunch (which technically ended up being dinner since it took a while to exit the airport, check into the hotel, and find a place to eat). We both were craving something fresh, so we decided to go for shabu-shabu. Oh boy though, the sticker shock of restaurant prices after previously living in Bali the past month was a hard pill to swallow, and we ended up settling for ramen (which was good too by the way).

The Garden Rhapsody light show (my ‘must do’ for our Singapore trip) at Gardens by the Bay began at 7:45pm, and I was shocked as to how many people were hanging around and waiting for the light show to begin. It was a gorgeous show and the Supertrees are such a surreal sight to behold. After the light show we headed back in the general direction of our hotel to find a late night snack and drinks.

The next morning we got up early to get in a little more of the city as possible before we headed back to the airport. Since our hotel was so close (ish) to Marina Bay, we headed back to the Gardens by the Bay to check out the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest. We did not expect to spend as much time there as we did, but looking back on it, I don’t regret our decision to enjoy.

We both thoroughly enjoyed our layover, and it definitely beat sitting in a stuffy airport for an entire day! I would love to head back to Singapore eventually and check out Chinatown, Universal Studios, go to the top of the Marina Bay Sands Skypark , and ride the Singapore Flyer.