Trip to Singapore

We went to Singapore for our first wedding anniversary. We took a package tour called Singapore Surprise from SOTC. Though the package cost was slightly on the higher side, it has been a great experience. We were well taken care of and the tour was stress free. SOTC took care of everything including pickup/drop from/to the airport, hotel accomodation, daily breakfast/dinner and all the local tours. We had to pay only for daily lunch and we stopped over at some good indian restaurants with reasonable rates.

As SOTC has tie up with srilankan airlines, our tour started from Colombo instead of Singapore. We had to stay overnight in Colombo, as we had to take the early morning flight to Singapore. Our stay at Colombo was at a Beach Resort and we had a good time. We started to Singapore early next morning. We reached Singapore at 3:45pm and went straight to Sentosa Island. Here, we stayed over in Rasa Sentosa Resort, which is supposed to be the only beach front hotel in Singapore. The main tour attractions in Sentosa Island were the Dolphin Lagoon (There was a Dolphin show for 30 min), Musical fountain show (Awesome musical fountains showcasing special effects and cartoon figures on the fountains using laser techonogy I guess), Underwater world (It has a huge aquarium, and its a great experience to get so close to all those huge creatures), 4D magic (Its a 4D movie show for 30 min and its great), Carlsberg Sky tower (There is a revolving cabin, which takes us right on top of the tower, which is 131 metres high. We get a great view of the Singapore from here), Cable Car ride (This is again an amazing experience, with a great view of Singapore) and Singapore Museum (It started off with the show on the history of Singapore. The museum has great demo models, which look so real, depicting the history of Singapore right from when the immigrants started coming in, untill this day)

We checkout of Rasa Sentosa on the next day and checked into Swissotel, Stamford at the centre of Singapore. The good thing about this hotel is, it can be located even from a far distance, as its 76 floors tall. Also, there is a Raffles City Mall attached to this hotel itself. On the evening of Day 2, we went to the Night Safari. Here, we took a tram ride, which is about 45 min, inside the santuary. It was a good experience, being very close of the nocturnal animals. We saw everything from owls, deers, elephants, tigers, lions, rhino, hippo, zebra, girrafee and a lots of other animals. There is also an option to take a walk inside the santuary, but we were not so brave enough and were happy with the tram ride. After that, there was an animal show at the amphitheatre for 30 mins, which was not so great. Later, we had an indian dinner at a restaurant in the Night Safari itself.

Our Day 3 started off with a photo session from our hotel room in swissotel, which was on 26th floor. Around 8:30 am, we started off to Jurong Bird park, which hosts 8000 different types of birds. When we reached the bird park, we first took a tram ride inside the park. After that, we attended two shows in the amphitheatre, each showcasing different birds and their skills. These shows are awesome and we had a good time. From Jurong Bird Park, we headed straight to Mustafa, which is a famous shopping mall among Indians in Singapore. Its in a place called Little India, and it has everthing indian. We had a decent lunch at an indian restaurant here, and headed for shopping in Mustafa. After our shopping, we headed back to our hotel. We had some difficulty in getting a taxi, as it was supposed to be office time, and all the taxis were full. All the taxi fares start at $2.50 and in peak ours like office hours, they charge $2 extra. At about 7:30 pm, we had to start off to Hotel Novotel, where our dinner was being arranged. We had a decent Indian dinner there and came back walking to our Hotel (30 min walk), enjoying the night activities in Singapore. As Singapore’s day climate is quite humid and hot, most of the outdoor activities happen in the evening.

Our Day 4 started off with some more shopping around out Hotel. Later, we checked out of the hotel and started off to the airport around noon. At the airport, we claimed the GST refund, which is like the VAT refund and its 4% of the purchase cost. We can claim the refund if we have purchased anything above $300 at a single outlet. We can’t club bills from multiple outlets though ! As we were quite hungry by then, we started hunting for a restaurant and luckily found McDonalds outlet for our lunch. Our flight took off around 3:45pm and we reached Colombo by 5pm local time. We had the next flight from Colombo to Bangalore at 7pm. We reached Bangalore by 8:30 pm. Overall, it was a great experience !