Parenting Times: 2-day trip to Singapore with older kids

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

2-day trip to Singapore with older kids - Day 1 Chinatown and Sentosa Island

What do you do with two teens for a very short 2-day trip to Singapore? Actually, it's 4 days 3 nights but considering the fact that we checked in at 10 pm and checked out at 10 am, the extra days/nights don't really count plus we wasted half a day going around to buy our bus ticket back to KL so we had only 1 1/2 days to go around. What to do in such a short time? We still managed to squeeze in plenty of activities.

Where we stayed.

We stayed at York Hotel. I couldn't find a good air bnb in short notice so I had no choice but to look for a hotel. We wanted to be a little bit more central plus, I usually like to book one room instead of two so I often hunt down hotels with family rooms. When you travel with teens, they are no longer considered "children" so you have to pay adult prices and when family rooms are not available, it usually means that you have to take two rooms which is quite expensive. If they are in their early teens, being in one room also makes me feel safer though taking turns using the bathroom may be a little bit more time consuming.

It so happened that York Hotel, Singapore has a quadruple room for 4 adults. It has a king bed and two twin beds in the room, is clean and spacious with a walk in wardrobe as a bonus. Perfect for us. Below are the photos from Agoda where I booked the rooms. I didn't have any personal photos because it was always in a messy state. We arrived at 10 pm and I was too tired to take photos. It remained in a messy state thereafter.

The nearest MRT stations to York Hotel are Orchard MRT and Somerset MRT Stations about 10-15 minutes walk. Good strategic location.

Day 1 - Late check in, dinner, sleep

That's all we did. As soon as we checked in, we set out on foot looking for food because we were hungry from our long train ride with no proper lunch. However, since it was Chinese New Year, it was rather quiet at Orchard Road (unlike Christmas) and we eventually managed to get some chicken tenders from KFC before they closed for the day. Then we went back to sleep.

Day 2 - Chinatown, Sentosa Island

As it was only the 2nd day of Chinese New Year, it was very quiet and we had to buy instant noodles from 7-11 for breakfast!

Singapore Chinatown

Later on we dropped by the Buddha Tooth Relic and Museum. The information center is also nearby so you can get Chinatown maps from there.

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum

After that we took the MRT from Chinatown MRT station to Harbour Front MRT station to get to Sentosa Island. We opted for monorail to Sentosa Island.

Not a fan of rides, we opted out of Universal Studios and selected only 3 attractions at Sentosa.

1. Sea Acquarium
2. Madame Tussauds
3. Sentosa Merlion

Some of the sea creatures we saw at the Sea Acquarium.

The 4-D experience at Madame Tussaud's was quite fun with water being sprayed at us and soap bubbles released during the short 4-D Marvel Superheroes show. There was also a live show about Singapore history by real life actors.

We didn't realize that we could go into the Merlion's mouth and head.