Unique Places in Singapore

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We have visited Singapore many times, and felt the need to do something different, but nearby.
Bintan Island is only a one hour trip away by fast ferry, and I highly recommend it.
Being an Indonesian Island, one needs a visa, which can be obtained upon entry.
Bintan is ecologically very interesting, and has a few excellent golf courses, and beautiful flora.
The island itself has a few resorts, and we stayed at Bintan Lagoon resort, which was perfect in every way. Relaxing, great beach for walking (swimming we avoided because of strong currents)- fabulous food (breakfast is included) and lovely architecture. Our room was large, airy, with a balcony and sea view. There is a huge outdoor pool with pool bar, and a health/beauty spa for pampering.....
I recommend Bintan for a short getaway from the city.
(for more info, see my Bintan page)

You can book a trip to Bintan at the Singapore Visitors Centre in Orchard Road, or at travel desk of your hotel.

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Singapore is Basically one big chinatown wherein 76% of the population are chinese in origin and even if the state follows multiculturalism, you would notice that the dominant people here are the Chinese and Singapore having many kinds of chinese temples dedicated to Buddhism or Taoism of Confucianism and other smaller chinese sects are well represented here. Even the banned Falun Gong in Mainland China has a branch here since Singapore is a secular state with no state religion. You can visit many temples around Chinatown and the whole of Singapore.

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selling foreign call cards enjoy a brisk selling in the Lucky Plaza Mall especially to the foreign workers and expatriates to Singapore whether by Indonesians, Thais, Vietnamese, Malaysians, Sri Lankans, Indians, Filipinos and a Lot More. They can buy these phone cards that originated in their home countries telecom comapnies which offer cheaper overseas call and text rates than the more expensive Singapore Mobile Phone companies such as Sing Tel. they are in different denominations and expiry dates and they provide a cheaper alternative to the home sick workers to call or text their love ones back home.

located mostly at the lucky plaza mall in 304 Orchard Road Singapore.

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since singapore is a Progressive City, there are lots of foreign expatriates who had found jobs here since the pay is definitely higher than in their home countries and the Filipino Expatriate Community in Singapore is no exception so that there are numerous Remittance Centers located mostly along the Lucky Plaza Complex (mostly foreign branches of Filipino Banks) to cater to the expatriates (or OFW's as what Filipinos Call themselves) who send hard earned money to their loved ones back home. So for a minimal service fee, these remittance centers send the money to the philippines already converted to philippine pesos either via door to door delivery or by pick-up from the nearest branch to the expatriates family. These Modern Day Filipino OFW's are the Heroes of the Philippine Diaspora that keeps the Philippine economy afloat during these hard economic times. A salute to them!!!!!!

located at: 304 Orchard Road, Lucky Plaza - Singapore mostly at the 2nd and third level.

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Batam Island in Indanesia's Riau Province is the closest Part of Indonesia to Singapore and being the closest, it has a large chunk of tourist coming from Singapore (both local and foreign) coming to it since it is just 20 kilometers away from Singapore. Batam has also become popular with day trippers and weekend visitors, who flock to the island for its golf, duty free shopping, white sand beaches and delicious seafood restaurants. Sekupang and Batam Center (which are the entry points to Batam) is just 50 minutes by high speed ferry from the World Trade centre dock in Singapore. The ferry terminal at Sekupang and at the New Batam Center has numerous duty free shops selling everything from European cognac to Balinese handicrafts and Sumartran wood carvings. Prices are about half of those in Singapore for the same items. There is a taxi stand in front of the ferry terminal (the cross island journey takes about 40 minutes and cost about 20,000 Rupiah). You can book a day trip or overnight trip to Batam from any Singapore tours companies in Singapore.

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Still off the beaten track, but by end 2007 connected with the tourist hot spots Mt. Faber as well as Kent Ridge Park, is the historically significant Telok Blangah Hill Park.

Surrounded by mostly residential area - unsurprisingly - , it is a very peaceful and quiet Park, at least when I visited. On the summit of the Hill is a garden terrace, covered with beautiful flowers and there's a sheltered sitting area. Several benches are planted, from where you can catch a bit of a breeze and an interesting view over the nearby green and high rise (it is NOT a 360 degrees view as advertised on the NP website, since part is obscured by trees).

Another signposted feature is the Stream Garden. The 40cm wide streams and the 20 cm high waterfalls possibly wouldn't draw your special attention if you didn't know it was a Stream Garden. But if you follow this route downhill - after starting from the junction at Henderson Road- you end up at a main road where you easily can stop a taxi.

Maybe not the first or second park of choice, it's a nice place for a bit of exercise and a bit of relaxing. For instructions of getting there, you can visit the NP Board website as below, but it's far easier to take a taxi (approx. SGD 6 from town - outside peak hours )!

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East of the City in Jurong is the Science Center and the Chinese and Japanese gardens. Singapore takes great care to provide serene natural areas within the city state. The Chinese gardens is just one example.

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Sembawang Park is located up north just a stone throw away from Johor Bahru.

The Sembawang Park beach is very green with lots of big and old trees planted along the beach. The park gave a very laidback feel and very different from other parts of Singapore.

We found a nice shelter to play cards and eventually migrated to the wooden table. We could see families having BBQ, building sand castles, swimming, fishing and camping around the park and beach.

The park seem peaceful at night even though there are groups of foreign worker and a birthday BBQ going on.

We went to check out the colonial building, Beaulieu House Restaurant, where the food and drinks are quite reasonably priced. Western set lunch is going for $12.90.

Bus 882 will get you there.

Carparks are available at the entrances of the park at Sembawang Road and Tuah Road.