Planes, Trains, Automobiles, and a Ferry: Singapore Vacation

Angel and I had planned our little Langkawi getaway months in advance. Come December 26th, my parents decided it was about time they come up with a holiday adventure for the family, too. Over a whirlwind of a conversation, a roadtrip to Singapore was decided upon. They invited Angel and I to join them in Singapore, but because they planned to leave a day earlier than we'd be returning from Langkawi, we would have to hop on a plane to Singapore instead of joining the road trip on the way down.

That spontaneous trip planning decision led to the most transportation-filled day of my life:

8:30 a.m.: Drove rental car from hotel to ferry terminal

10:30 a.m.: Boarded ferry.

1:45 p.m.: Arrived back on our home island and were picked up by our friend at the ferry terminal.

3:30 p.m.: Arrived at home.

5:30 p.m.: Left in our own car for the airport

9:00 p.m.: Boarded airplane.

11:00 p.m.: Boarded the first of the three MRT trains we needed to take to get to the place where our family was staying.

1:00 a.m.: Walked into the roomful of sleeping people, hoping we had the right room number and that this was actually my family, and fell into the two empty beds.

It was a total of: 3 cars, 1 ferry, 1 airplane, and 3 trains ridden in one day. Did I mention that this was on New Year's Eve? We wished each other a Happy New Year while transferring from one line to the other on the Singapore MRT--that's a first for me!

We had 3 days to adventure around Singapore. We had many excursions and saw all sorts of fun things. One of our destinations, Universal Studios Singapore, will get its own blog post all to itself, just because it was so awesome, so stay tuned for that.

One of my goals for visiting Singapore was to find Merlions. I found 2 official Merlions, plus this colorful one, so 2.5?

 Sentosa Merlion

 The Original Merlion

 Supertrees at Gardens by the Bay

We visited the first weekend in January, so all the Christmas festivities were still going, and we got to watch the Christmas Rhapsody light show, which was quite fun. Unfortunately, we were there too late to walk the bridge between the Supertrees--my long-standing love for bridges means that the prospect appeals to me greatly. On some return trip to Singapore we'll have to do that!

 We decided to go to Labrador Nature Reserve purely because, while looking at a Singapore map stuck to the wall in the place where we were staying, we saw some magic words: "Labrador Secret Tunnel" and a pin stuck smack in the middle of the Nature Reserve. We set off with the intent to find out if there really was a 'secret tunnel' and if we could go inside. In this respect, we were somewhat disappointed, because we did find the tunnel, but it didn't seem very secret and the door was locked, so were weren't able to go inside. However, we really enjoyed Labrador Nature Reserve, and were fascinated by the remnants and the history of Fort Pasir Panjang, an old British military fort which used to be located in the area. Once we started getting rained on, we went to Orchard Road area and spent a few hours wandering malls. Seems like Singapore would be a good place to buy Christmas presents, but perhaps not the best place to go shopping immediately after Christmas...

 We also made it to the S.E.A. aquarium!

"Merry Fishmas" was going on at the aquarium, which meant, among other things...that Santa himself was feeding the fish, which was quite hilarious to behold!

 On our last evening, we wanted to visit the TreeTop Walk at Macritchie Reservoir Park, but because we didn't read our info carefully, we didn't realize until we arrived that it was a 4.6 km walk to the TreeTop Walk--and that the Walk closed at 5 p.m. It was already 5 p.m. when we arrived, so we just enjoyed a nice stroll around the reservoir instead, but this left us with something else to do on our next trip. Its amazing how much you learn on vacation! 

 These (plus the Universal adventure I'll be writing about in my next post) were all accomplished during a mere 3 days in the country. We were out till 10 p.m. or later at night, which meant that occasional cat-naps in the car in between destination helped us keep our energy up. On our last morning, we were back in the car at an early 6 a.m. and made it through the border and back home by 2:30 p.m.--leaving enough time to unpack and do laundry and get all ready for school to start on the following day!

Have you visited Singapore before? This was my first time really getting to tour Singapore, I've been in the country before for overnights, but have never had the chance to see or do much. I think it's definitely the sort of destination that can be repeated without having to repeat the same activities again, just because there's so much to do!