SINGAPORE · THE LION CITY
A whole country, the size of a city.
Gardens by the Bay and the Marina Bay SkyPark, hawker feasts in Chinatown and Little India, Sentosa's beaches and the Night Safari up at Mandai — with a free light show on the water to close out every evening.
Only here
Three things you'll only find on this island.
Rooftop bars and city zoos turn up everywhere. A forest of solar Supertrees, a rooftop balanced on a ship and the world's first after-dark wildlife park belong to Singapore alone.
Future garden
The Supertree Grove
There is nothing else like Gardens by the Bay anywhere. Eighteen steel-and-living Supertrees rise as high as a sixteen-storey building, vertical gardens by day and a sound-and-light show after dark. The OCBC Skyway threads between their canopies, and the Cloud Forest hides a thirty-metre indoor waterfall.
- 1 Singapore: Gardens by the Bay Bundle Entry Ticket
- 2 Singapore: Gardens by the Bay Admission E-Ticket
- 3 Big Bus Singapore Night Tour with Gardens by the Bay Light Show
Rooftop on a ship
The Marina Bay SkyPark
Three hotel towers, and balanced across the top of them, a deck shaped like a boat. The SkyPark observation deck sits two hundred metres above Marina Bay, with the whole skyline, the harbour and the Gardens laid out below. It is the most-visited view in the city for a reason.
- 1 Singapore: Marina Bay Sands Observation Deck E-Ticket
- 2 Singapore: SkyPark Observation Deck at Marina Bay Sands
- 3 Singapore: Marina Bay Sands SkyPark Observation Deck E-Ticket
World first
The Night Safari
When it opened at Mandai in 1994, the Night Safari was the first wildlife park in the world built to be visited after dark. A tram glides through seven habitats lit like moonlight, where rhinos, tapirs and clouded leopards are awake and on the move. You hear the forest before you see it.
- 1 Night Safari Tour with Transfer
- 2 Singapore: Night Safari Entry Ticket with Tram Ride
- 3 Night Safari with Buffet Dinner with hotel pick-up
Start up high
The view everyone comes up for.
More first-timers begin their Singapore trip looking down on the bay than anywhere else in the city.
The classics
Singapore's Most Popular Experiences
Gardens by the Bay, the SkyPark, the river cruise and the wildlife parks. The handful of days nearly every first trip is built around.
Where to begin
The experiences a Singapore trip is built around.
The gardens, the rooftop view, the hawker trails, the river, the wildlife parks and the island resort. The handful of days most trips plan around, and the best way to do each.
After dark
How to spend a Singapore night.
The city saves some of its best for after sunset, and two of the three cost nothing. Pick the evening that suits the mood — the free light shows on the water, or the wildlife park lit like the moon.
UNESCO hawker culture
The only place street food wins Michelin stars.
Singapore eats at the hawker centre — open-air halls where Chinese, Malay and Indian cooks have worked the same woks for decades. The culture is on the UNESCO list, two stalls have held Michelin stars, and a plate of Hainanese chicken rice or chilli crab still costs a few dollars. A guide is the fastest way past the queue to the stalls that earn one.
Read the guide: the best hawker food tours →Three quarters, three worlds
Chinatown, Little India, Kampong Glam.
The old immigrant quarters sit a few MRT stops apart and feel like different countries. Red lanterns and temple incense in Chinatown, garland sellers and the spice of Little India, the gold dome of Sultan Mosque and the mural lanes of Kampong Glam. A walking tour stitches all three into one good morning.
Walk the heritage quarters →Marina Bay
The bay puts on a show every night.
A reservoir in the middle of downtown, ringed by the skyline, the Gardens, the Merlion and the lotus-shaped ArtScience Museum. By day you cross it on a bumboat; at dusk the towers light up, the fountains start, and the whole waterfront becomes the city's living room. There is no better front-row seat than the water.
River & bay cruises →The island resort
Sentosa is the island built for a day off.
A cable car or a boardwalk carries you across to Sentosa, a small island stacked with everything a day off needs: Universal Studios, the world's steepest skyline luge, beaches, an aquarium and a cable car strung between two peaks. Reach it by gondola for the harbour view, then pick a lane and stay till the evening show.
See all 15 Sentosa experiences →By quarter
One island, six quarters.
Marina Bay for the gardens and the view. Sentosa for the island day. The old quarters for the food and the temples. The river for the quays. Mandai for the wildlife. And the causeway when you want to leave the city behind.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
Hawker tour if you came to eat. River cruise if you want the skyline slow. City tour to cover the ground. Heritage walk for the quarters, a bike for the park connectors, or save it all for after dark.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time on the island? Here is a long weekend that hits the essentials without a wasted hour.
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