3 Days in Singapore: Complete Itinerary for the City’s Top Sights

Singapore is a small country but not because of that you have a shortage of activities to do. There’s plenty! Singapore enjoys from a highly safe environment, great career opportunities with high salaries, high life expectancy, and quality and low corruption. The city is clean and safe, with many beautiful parks and tasty food options. I loved it as a destination! Check out this 3 days in Singapore guide to get a good overview of the city and some inspiration for your trip.

Itinerary

Day 1: Botanical Garden, museums, and city center

Botanical Garden and Orchid Garden

One of the most famous places in Singapore are the Botanical Gardens, parts of which are a UNESCO heritage site. The Botanical Gardens were first founded in 1859 and they consist of separate thematic gardens. It’s mostly free to visit. For me, one of the most interesting parts of the garden was the National Orchid Garden. The Orchid Garden has a fee, $15 for adult foreigner, but it’s really worth visiting – it’s absolutely impressive! The Orchid Garden is organized again in smaller gardens, with different decorative styles. One of the ones that struck me the most was the Sembcorp Cool House, which emulates the climate of a high elevation mountain forest (and thus feels really pleasant to get in when it’s hot).

The gardens get very crowded, so get in early. They open at 5 am, although the Orchid Garden only opens at 8:30.

National Gallery

Since I had a limited time in Singapore, I hesitated a bit choosing the museums I wanted to visit, in particular between the National Museum and the National Gallery. The National Museum covers more of the history of Singapore, while the National Gallery focuses more on art, both from international and from local artists. Since I enjoy more art than history, I decided to visit the National Gallery. In addition, when I went there was the exhibition Modern: Impressionism, which made the choice easier for me.

You can buy the tickets online or on machines inside of the building. The combined ticket of the gallery with the special exhibition costs $30. I don’t know if it’s always the case, but when I was visiting, most of the people went to the exhibition, while the rest of the museum was almost empty. Not going to complain about that – I could take my time seeing local artists.

The National Gallery consists of two buildings, which can be both visited with the same ticket. There is a bridge that connects both, or you can go from one to the other through the main floor. They both have a terrace, with one of the buildings having a great overview of the city, while the other has an internal terrace where you see some interesting architecture. The bottom floor had quite a few activities for kids, while the rest had a few exhibitions dedicated to individual artists and others with a selection of artists and styles.

Peranakan Museum

A museum that my friend recommended me was the Peranakan Museum, which explained Singaporean society. I unfortunately didn’t time my visit with the guided visit, so I ended up visiting the museum by myself. It had quite good explanations of the artifacts that I was interested in, so the guided tour would have been an add-on, not a must. The Peranakan museum explains a bit the history of Singaporeans, showing snapshots of how they live: the fashion, the jewelry, the furniture. It’s a museum worth exploring! The price for the entry is $18. During my visit I could check out the Peacock Power special exhibition, which showed the role of peacocks in different cultures.

Exploring the city

Singapore has plenty of cool places that are worth a visit. I had limited time, so I squimed through several places I wanted to see, but there’s definetly enough not to get bored. All these attractions are walking distance from each other.

• Chijmes: it’s an historical building with roots as a Catholic convent, which is currently an event and restaurant avenue.
• Fort Canning Park: pleasant park that has some instagrammable features, such as the Fort Canning Tree Tunnel, which has a line of people wanting to take a photo. The Tree Tunnel is located on the northern area of the park, close to the National Museum.
• Parkroyal Collection Pickering: a 5-star hotel with a very special architecture. Really cool to see.
• Sri Mariamman Temple: a cool hindu temple in the middle of Chinatown.
• Buddha Tooth Relic Temple: a large Buddhist temple, also in Chinatown.

Spend the evening with a light show at Gardens of the Bay

To complete your day, head to the Gardens by the Bay. Since it’s already evening by now, you’ll be heading to see the light show at the Supertrees, the Rapsody. The show is free and thus crowded, so if you want a good spot, go there early. My friend explained that they’re changing the show every month, which is a great way to engage locals as well. There’s two shows a day, at 19:45 and at 20:45. After the show, we got to enjoy a new show Aurora borealis, where they used lasers to create an effect similar to northern lights. That was a cool experience! Since we were already there, we visited the rest of the park and Marina Bay, which looks really good with the night illumination.

Day 2: visiting the Zoo and Katong

Zoo

On my second day in Singapore, I could not sleep due to stomach pain. The day before I had jackfruit as dessert, since I like trying new fruits in the places I go to. Apparently, jackfruit doesn’t feel good to everyone, and I’m one of those unlucky people. My intial plan was to go to the zoo in the morning and early afternoon, but obviously due to health circumstances I could not. However, I heard from a few friends that the Zoo in Singapore is really cool. I’ll have to keep it for my next visit.

Katong

In the afternoon I felt better, so I headed to continue with my schedule, which was visiting Katong. Katong is a cool neighbourhood with heritage buildings painted with colors. The area is filled with cute stores, local cafés and restaurants, and cat cafés. It’s ideal to spend a few hours there.

From Katong you can walk to the East Coast Park, where you can rent a bike and just pedal along the beach. It was a bit rainy, so I skipped the bike part, but still got to enjoy the calmness of the beach.

Day 3: Hiking, visiting Gardens by the Bay, and quick trip to Sentosa

Hike at the MacRitchie Reservoir

A great place to enjoy th jungle in the middle of the city is the MacRitchie Reservoir. It’s not a huge area but there’s a few trails around. I did the longest, with approx. 12 km, that went around the reservoir and climbed up the TreeTop Walk. It’s an easy walk, in which the highest difficulty will be the temperature. Fortunately for me, when I was doing it, it rained a bit so it felt fresh. It took me about 2 h at a leisurely pace, so definetly the times they mark in the entrance seem overestimated. Be aware that the TreeTop walk has directionality, so if you want to integrate it as part of your walk, you should start your hike going to the north.

There’s some animals that you can see on the trail. Certainly monkeys, but I also saw some other mammal whose name I don’t know, and one of the giant lizards swimming in the reservoir.

Gardens by the Bay: the Cloud Forest

Although I did go to the Gardens by the Bay my first night, I wanted to see more, so I went there again. This day, I visited the Cloud Forest, which took a good chunk of time. The Cloud Forest was pretty cool inside – they had exhibition of Jurassic Park, with animatronics of dinasours installed around the garden. In the Cloud Forest you start on the bottom and then you’ll take an elevator to the last floor. From there, you’ll keep taking stairs to go down.

Now, getting in is quite expensive. The Cloud Forest ticket itself was $36, and the combination ticket with the Flower Dome costs $46.

Light show at Sentosa

Sentosa is an island on the south of Singapore. You can reach it by monorail (4 SGD both ways) and there’s plenty of enterteinment activities to do. When I was there, there were lots of decorations for the movie Wicked.

Something that is really worth doing is going to Sentosa and enjoying the Wings of Time Fireworks Symphony. It’s a light, laser, water, and fire show nearby a beach, that’s really cool to watch. The story plot is a bit lame (sorry, had to say it), but the show is really cool and pretty impressive.

Sultan Mosque, Haji Lane, and Atlas

At night, if you still have energy, you can quickly visit the arab region, taking a look at the Sultan Mosque and the businesses of the Haji Lane. Nearby you can find the restaurant Atlas. No need to eat there, but the building is really cool to see.

Extra: the famous Singaporean airport

How could I forget the most famous sight in Singapore – the airport waterfall? Depending on when you arrive or depart from the country, you may want to check it out after your arrival or before your departure. It’s worth seeing – Singaporeans really like their waterfalls inside of buildings. Technically, the waterfall is not in the airport but in the shopping mall attached to the airport, but in any case, it’s easy to visit before you do passport control. It’s pretty cool!

Personal highlights

I really loved Singapore! Everything is very well-organised, clean, and efficient, and I love visiting places where I don’t need to be worried about my personal safety. My personal highlights of the trip were:

• The Sentosa light show: the Supertree light show was also nice, but I found the one in Sentosa to be more different from what I’ve seen before. It was the first time I see water being used as a screen for lasers, and the incorporation of all different elements (fire, water, fireworks, lights, and music) made it very special. Personally though, I would remove the weird story and keep the rest.
• Cloud Forest and Gardens by the Bay: I know this one is more touristy, but as I often say, some things are popular because they’re cool. A waterfall inside a building, can you believe that?
• The Orchid Garden: absolutely stunning!

Where to eat?

Song Fa Bak Kut Teh

This chain specializes in beef soups, a traditional Teochew dish. The food is quite cheap but it’s always crowded.

Sushi Kyuu by Shunsui Orchard Plaza

A fine dining option for sushi omakaze. Here, reservations are essentials, as they buy enough fish for the daily clients only. Although the dishes were small, I ended extremely full by the time we finished dinner, which is not always the case with fine dining!

Edo Ichi Japanese Cuisine

Not too far from the MacRitchie Reservoir, this Japanese restaurant is an ideal place to stop for a complete and tasty lunch set. They had fancy options too, I just took something lighter for lunch.

Holy Crab

Do you want to try crabs? Well, this is your place. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a photo because my phone battery died, but they were kind enough to change it while I was eating. The food is great, and it was not too crowded when I went there at 15:00.

Luo Niang Niang

Small Chinese restaurant nearby Chinatown. I had late dinner when everything else was already closing, and had a blast with the wonton soup!

Sodeng – the village BBQ

A really cool Korean BBQ place (reservation required!) in Chinatown. The waitress showed us how to prepare a few different combinations of veggies with the meats, and then we took some rice to finish up.

Practical tips

Safety

There’s cameras everywhere, which makes it a perfectly safe environment, even for women alone and at night. While obviously you want to be cautious, as always, there’s nothing wrong with letting your defences go a bit down when you’re in Singapore.

The famous Singaporean rules

Safety and high stadards come with some rules for everyone. When we were landing, we got greeted by an announcement letting us know that drug possession carried death penalty (remember that marihuana is a drug too). I’m not sure why you would announce this during landing, as once you’re in the plane with drugs your best chance would be to flush them down the toilet, I guess. Anyhow, the summary is, don’t bring drugs to Singapore. Don’t go around raping or murdering people either, as the penality are many lashes, and that holds true for foreigners as well. The many cameras around ensure that you’ll likely get caught. This seems to work rather well to keep the crime rates low in Singapore.

If you’re a more conventional person and were not expecting to commit crimes while on your trips, you still need to watch out for the fines. No chewing gum (even in your suitcases), no drinking in the metro, no littering, and no vaping. It’s really not that difficult (the not drinking water in the train was the hardest for me as it’s hot).

Transport

The metro and bus system is extremely clear, well-organized, and reaches everywhere you need to go to. You can pay with your credit card for both bus and metro, and the trips are relatively cheap. I spent around 5-7 SGD per day with the itinerary I described above. I was staying with a friend who lived near the brown line and it was amazing – it brings you everywhere you want to go to, so it’s a good line to have when you’re booking accomodation. Remember, no food or drinks in the public transport!

Grab also works in Singapore. It’s more expensive than in Malaysia and less needed as public transport reaches everywhere, but you may want to use it if you’re carrying suitcases or need to reach somewhere outside of the public transport times.

Are three days enough in Singapore?

I would say that 3 days allow you to see all the main attractions. If you’re not big on visiting cities, you’ll have plenty. If you love these kind of environments, I would recommend to come for 5 days to take things easy.

Want to do a day trip from Singapore?

Singapore is small, but it’s a good base for day or weekend trips. A good option is visiting Batam or Bintan, Indonesian islands easly reachable by ferry. Another option is to visit Malaysia, in particular Kuala Lumpur, which is located at only 1 h away by flight.

Need more inspiration?