Haw Par Villa was a place I loved to explore with my parents as a child. I remember all the scary demons of hell best, together with a tiger I got to ride on. The park, originally called "Tiger Balm Gardens", was built in 1937 by the Burmese-Chinese brothers Aw Boon Haw (in Mandarin, Wu Wen Hu ) and Aw Boon Par (Wu Wen Pao), the developers of Tiger Balm, as a venue for teaching traditional Chinese values. They moved their business from Burma (Myanmar) to Singapore in 1926 and purchased the site in 1935.

Do you know you can get from one place to another in Singapore for less than $2.20 if you are paying by cash and less than $1.96 if you are using the EZ-Link card? These are the revised rates after the price increase in Oct 2011.

Most people don't use the bus services enough, which is strange, because Singapore has probably the cleanest and most comfortable public buses in this region.

TransitLink, operator of most of the buses, the MRT and the LRT in Singapore, has just updated one of the most useful apps they have created, How2Go. This app brings you to places, calculates the fares and even shows you the bus's estimated arrival time. Click on the link for the full review!

Now you don't have any reason not to step out and explore, because almost the whole of Singapore is linked via public transport.

For the budget traveller, Singapore has budget friendly areas to visit as well! Dorm rooms are $12-$16 with free wifi, just search online!


FREE STUFF!


1) Head over to East Coast Park where there are plenty of cheap eats at the East Coast Lagoon Food Village, afterwhich you can walk along the beachfront and buy beers or cocktails from 7-11( cheapest option would be 2 bottles for $7, just look out for the promotions ). People watching is fun here, you have babes on rollerblades and bare bodied hunks jogging in the evening. People are friendly, especially those who are walking their dogs! Singapore also has alot of other parks to explore, like West Coast Park, Labrador Park and more!

2) Go on a tour of the shopping centers along Orchard Rd, starting from Tanglin Mall, walk down Orchard Rd - plenty of people watching and you can get food under $5 anywhere in any food court. There is all kinds of cuisines available cheap, from chinese, malay, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese to Italian and western. Food shops in Orchard Towers are a plenty, and you can take a look at Far East Plaza too. Singapore has quite a lot of unusual looking shopping centers like Ion and Orchard Central, so remember to take more photos! If you didn't bring money out, head to the supermarkets for free food. Isetan has a basement supermarket with a lot of different Japanese food available for sampling, and on Sundays, Jason's at Orchard towers has free wine sampling. Ice cream can be sampled at any outdoor gelato kiosk and soup is available for sampling from our many soup restuarants like Soup Spoon and Souperlicious. Wine and dine in Singapore for free! ( Though getting the food after sampling is definitely more satisfying! )

3) Get high in Singapore! Go to the tallest hotel in Singapore, Swissôtel The Stamford. Head up to the bar for an amazing view of Singapore for free! If you want to stay for a drink, they have special "sundowner" promotions, so check ahead. 

4) Go on walking tours to the Marina Bay Sands stretch! You get to have beautiful photos that are uniquely Singapore, and if you walk over to Boat Quay as well, you can find many famous sculptures everywhere, including sculptures by Salvatore Dali! If sculptures are your thing, take a bus to Resort World SENTOSA too, the thinker, Adam and Eve and several Salvatore Dali sculptures are found there too. There are walking tours you can join too, The Original Singapore Walks, and they have so many different walks for different folks!

5) Chinatown is good for a wonderful street experience with plenty of food everywhere, including the famed Durian! Try duck heads, BBQ pork, frog porridge and more, all along the streets! Meet an engineer who gave up his job to start a business selling fruit juice, or a German PR selling sausages, or simply the old man roasting chestnuts at the road side. Trinkets and souvenirs should be bought here as you can get items as cheap as $1! Take a look at the 3 for $10 shops as you can get some quality items. There is a Tin Tin shop and a local "museum"
You can peek into. Scour the many lanes for different "attractions" from food to cheap perfume and kitschy T-shirts. 

I will be putting up some photos and reviews of things you can do in Singapore, so do check back every few days!