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We arrived Singapore after a relaxing but busy week scuba diving. The day of travel with a speed boat, car to airport, two flights and a layover were not so fun, but first impressions of Singapore were amazing. The airport was big, beautiful, clean, and well organized. As we Uber’ed our way to our apartment, we all noticed how clean and green everything was. Our apartment was located in a high rise in Marina Bay. I particularly liked it because it had a pool, playground, and small splash pad for the kids to play in.

We didn’t do a ton of activities in Singapore. The city itself is amazing, however, the cleanliness, safety, and beauty come at a steep price. We were able to find a few things to do that weren’t shockingly expensive, but by and large, we were very limited on activities due to budget. It would have been great to go to Universal Studios, but no one was willing to give up days of diving for the day at the amusement park. Even the science museum was around $100USD to go to.

We still got to see some of iconic Singapore though. One day we started at the famous Merlion and walked all around the boardwalk.

The iconic Merlion of Singapore.

Singapore gets pretty hot, so the city had installed cooling stations that run on solar energy. It was amazing how much air they could move!

Solar powered cooling station

We walked all over the Marina Bay Shops and through the famous Marina Bay Hotel. Scott didn’t even try to go into the casino! The definite highlight of the day though was the Gardens by the Bay.

It’s a beautiful (free!) park that one could easily wander around all day in. Additionally, under two giant glass domes, they’ve constructed vertical gardens.

One of them has been designed to replicate the exact conditions at various altitudes of a mountain forest. All run by green energy and using harvested rain water, they require little energy to run.

Rainforest vertical garden

We made it back over to the gardens at night to check out the Singapore skyline. We showed up just in time to catch a light show to Star Wars music. People packed into the park to see it. While it was quite impressive, I also suspect that many were there because it was free. We purchased the tickets to go on the canopy tour of the trees. The night views were worth every penny.

We spent a few days chilling at the apartment and catching up on school and blogs. Scott had to do some work, so it made for an easy decision: go spend loads of money or stay home and make some money.

One of our friends had previously lived in Singapore on an expat contract, so she hooked us up with her babysitter. It was the first time since January that Scott and I actually left the kids with a sitter and went farther away than whatever restaurant was next door. We had some delicious, but outrageously priced dinner with wine, and then went and played darts at a bar next door. The kids didn’t run off the sitter, so we secured her for an additional night out. For that one, Scott and I went to Clarke Quay and shared an appetizer and had a few drinks. We had a really good time just hanging out and visiting and people watching.

Singapore was great, but I wish we hadn’t spent a week there. For a family budgeting a nine month trip, most of the “things to do” were too expensive. It ranks slightly better than Hanoi for me, but only because it is prohibitively expensive. The city itself is beautiful, but unless we were there on another expat assignment, I can’t see it being a city we would live in.