For breakfast, we walked to one of the food markets in Chinatown, that was close to our hotel. We bought a peanut bun and a scallion pancake, which were both very good. We also entered the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, which was beautifully decorated, but really aimed at tourists because they had souvenirs to buy everywhere. Chinatown was really fun to see, lots of colourful houses and really well-kept and clean hawker stands.

Then we continued walking to Marina Bay, with the famous ‘Gardens by the Bay’. This was a really modern area, with lots of businessmen in suits. From a fancy shopping mall, you could go upstairs and start the walk to Gardens by the Bay. It wasn’t busy at all, and only here you saw a few tourists.  We didn’t go inside the two buildings, the flower dome and cloud forest, as it was too expensive but we walked around it and wound up at a little pond and trees where we saw a Malaysian water monitor Lizard!

On the way back, it started raining a bit, but it didn’t last too long. We went to a pretty big supermarket to buy some water and dropped it off at the hotel. Then, we went to the Hong Lim Market & Food Centre in Chinatown to buy some dinner. It was difficult to choose, but we had some dumplings with roasted pork. Then, we walked to Marina Bay again to see it at night and go to the fancy casino. For foreigners, they didn’t have an entrance fee, and we walked around a bit and got some free drinks. It was difficult to only play with 14 dollars (we ended with 17) as most tables and machines had a high minimum bet, but it was fun to play some roulette and slot machines. 

We started the day walking through Fort Canning Park to see the tunnel, which was really busy and had even a line to take pictures. We continued to a little Japanese bakery, where I got to blow out some late birthday candles 🙂 It was only a short walk to Arab Street and the sultan mosque. We tried an ‘epok epok’, which was really tasty! Haji Ln was a really small and cute street with shops, and it was also where I got my haircut. It was only 6eu and it took way longer than expected, 90 min, since it was with washing and styling.

Then we went to little India, where we walked around for a little bit and entered the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple. It was really beautiful and had so much detail and colour. We had some amazing dinner at Santhi Vilas Restaurant, especially the thosai was really good. Ordering food was a bit difficult, also because we didn’t know any dishes because it was South-Indian food.

We started the day off slowly and slept in a bit. We had to check out at 12 and left our stuff at the reception downstairs. For breakfast, we went to the Hong Lim food market again and tried some bao and ended up going back for another one (10/10). On the way there, we also saw a little bakery, where we got some pastries. We still had some time left, so we walked to Marina Bay again and entered the casino for some drinks. We didn’t play anything this time but watched and tried to figure out some (Chinese?) games people were playing. 

We tried to finish all the Singapore dollars we had left at the 7/11 next to the hostel and grabbed our backpacks. To cross the border, we first grabbed a metro (45 min) to Kanji, where we took the 170x bus to the border. At the bridge, we had to exit the bus and go through Singapore customs, and then re-enter the bus again to cross the bridge and go to the Johor Baru station in Malaysia.

When we arrived at the station, we got the stamps from the Malaysian customs and had to put our bags through the security check. The station was quite confusing, so we tried to follow where the people were going. However, for some reason, we had walked a round and ended up at the customs to enter Singapore instead.. We tried to explain it to the officers, and they luckily let us go through the side entrance without much trouble. When we got outside, we didn’t see any sidewalk and only a big main street, so we had to grab a short taxi drive to the hotel.