michaels_edinburgh

In October we arrive in Singapore at 4 pm and do not leave for Melbourne until 11 pm the next night. I am looking for recommendations for a good hotel to spend the night (I have looked at Swisshotel Merchant Court and Royal Plaza on Scott so far and they seem well placed and reasonably well priced) and also looking for the best things/tour we can do in the short time we have have.

Thanks

Kathie

In recent days there have been a number of threads about things to do in Singapore. Look at those and search for other Singapore posts and you'll find plenty.

In terms of hotels, you'll want to be close to an MRT station.

KMLoke

You would have just missed the first F1 race in Singapore. It would be the first F1 night race ever!

http://www.singaporegp.sg/

Melnq8

Hi Micheals -

I often stay at Royal Plaza on Scotts Road and it's a good hotel in an excellent location. It's a short walk from the Orchard Road MRT station.

Cicerone

For ideas on what to do with your limited time, try searching for recent posts called “Help me Lay out My 2 Meager Days in Singapore” “Three Days in Singapore with Kids” and “Overnight in Singapore Anything to Do?” which myself and others have responded to. Also take a look at the website for the Singapore Tourism Authority, which has good suggestions, see http://www.visitsingapore.com. Without knowing your specific interests, its hard to make recommendations.

There are two holidays in October in Singapore, one is October 1 and is Hari Raya, the end of Ramadan, so if you are there then or for a few days after that, you should include a trip to Geylang to see the celebrations and have some food. Deepavali/Divali is October 28 (the Hindu New Year) and there will be special foods and other items on sale in the markets of Little India leading up to that time, and you should try to visit one of the Hindu temples as well. Note that the 1 and 28 are public holidays so some things like museums may be closed and public transport will be running on a different schedule, it probably won’t affect you too much. On the 28th in Little India you probably will find most shops closed and perhaps for a day or two afterwards

I have always liked the location of the Merchant Court, you can easily walk to the river area of restaurants along Boat Quay and Clarke Quay, to the great Asian Civilization Museum (http://www.acm.org.sg/home/home.asp) and the other museums in the Parliament Square area or to the main business centre, it’s really an easy walk to Chinatown in one direction and not a bad walk in the other to Little India/Arab Street (it’s not short, but it’s flat; but taxis are not really expensive and there are direct buses going the down New Bridge Road that will drop you in the heart of Little India). The Asian Civilaization Museum is opening a new branch in an old shop house on Armenian Street which is just a few blocks from that hotel. There are some very good cheap and cheerful restaurants along New Bridge not far from the hotel. The wonderful <b>Flutes at the Fort Restaurant</b> would be walkable from the hotel if you want to have a splurge dinner in an old black and white colonial bungalow (http://www.flutesatthefort.com.sg). The very lively <b>restaurant and bar area of Mohamed Sultan Road</b> would be just a few minutes by taxi (walkable I suppose, but probably not in the heat.) But then there are so many good places to eat in Singapore…) I do not know the rooms but have only been in the lobby area, which seemed nice. The Swiss hotel group generally run nice hotels.

I prefer to be out of the Orchard Road area just because it is mostly all shopping malls and other hotels which aren’t my goal when I am in Singapore. Depends on what you want to do with your time. I love to spend time in the more traditional ethnic neighborhoods, or if I need to shop, go to Holland Village. There are some lovely old colonial black and white bungalow areas walkable from Orchard Road, and the Botanic Garden is walkable which is the other plus. There are some good restaurants in this area, too, notably <b>Ming Jiang</b> in the Goodwood Park hotel (http://www.goodwoodparkhotel.com/), the <b>Les Amis au Jardin</b> in a black and white bungalow in the Botanic Garden (http://www.lesamis.com.sg, or the more casual and inexpensive <b>Halia</b> http://www.halia.com.sg) also in the Botanic Garden, or the <b>Song of India</b> in an old bungalow (not a black and white but still charming) up Scott’s Road (33 Scotts Road Tel 6836-0055, no website that I am aware of.)

banares

Since hotel checkout is usually around noon and you will be doing most of your touring the day of your checkout, make sure your lodging will hold your luggages for you until you are ready to leave for the airport. Probably not necessary, but I'm not familiar with your choices.

Joybell

I would recommend staying at the Carlton Hotel. We stayed there in July 2006 on our way back to Canberra from Frankfurt. It very central and easy to get around from there. Nice Hotel. We used the Singapore Airline Stopover Booklet which had tours and hotels at great prices. We did a tour which included dinner and showed most of the places of interest in the short time we had. We booked all of this before we left Australia. We enjoyed Singapore.

Joybell

Lia

I stayed at the Royal Plaza on Scott twice in Dec 2007 and both visits were great.

Location - Close to Orchard MRT and of course, everything on Orchard Rd.

Room - The room was clean and well-designed with updated furnishings (and everything worked!).

Dining - The buffet was pretty good but always crowded with long wait time in line to get in.

Service - Excellent; always there to help with luggage or transportation.

Price - Very reasonable

Misc - Especially appreciated the no-smoking environment and complimentary high-speed Internet access.

I would definitely stay there again.

GrahamC

ON our last trip we visited the Night Zoo. It's not a zoo the way we understand it and seeing the animals out at night, seemingly completely unaware of us, was fabulous.

Another fascinating stop was the Chinese Heritage Museum (?) in Chinatown. Otherwise, it's shopping and eating.

We stayed in the Ritz Carlton Millennia, which is probably one of the best three or four hotels I've stayed at in my life.