Singapore Trip Day 2 : Merlion Park + Gardens By The Bay + Singapore Flyer

We woke up still with the fatigue from the first day, lol. The schedules for the second day was Merlion Park, Gardens by The Bay, and Singapore Flyer. Some of us ate pop mie that brought from Bandung for breakfast. I chose to eat bread which was provided by the hostel.

(Baca juga: Singapore Trip Day 1)

For going to the Singapore’s landmark Merlion, we took MRT to Raffles Place station. From there, we have to walk and walk and walk…. It’s kinda far. And the humid air make it worse.. But the view of downtown stuffed with tall building fascinated me! It’s pretty :D We also passed through The Fullerton Hotel that full of bule lagi sarapan.

Around 9, we finally made it to the Merlion Park just to find it already filled with people :’D Kinda hard to take a decent picture. Apparently there’s nothing to do here aside from taking pictures proving that you were here. Well.

Merlion Park was hot and humid, I even sweat, haha. The morning sun, the long walk, and the queue to take a photo combined and made us craving something sweet to drink…. So we stopped by McD (again) nearby. I was not into soda drinks and apparently was still hungry 😐 so I chose to order fish burger while the others ordered float. 🍔🍺

Finally we continued the journey to Gardens by The Bay!!! My most anticipated destination! One of my bucket list was finally checked, yay!

To reach Gardens by The Bay we took MRT to Bayfront station, walked through the underground link way, then crossed the Dragonfly Bridge. Before crossing the Dragonfly Bridge, we mistook an escalator that actually brought us to the kind of porch of Marina Bay Sands (MBS). 😶 But we did obviously not let this opportunity go because we unexpectedly found that it was a good spot to take photos with MBS as the background. 😀

We bought ticket for the two main attractions: Flower Dome and Cloud Forest (28 SGD).

Flower Dome is an indoor conservatory with various exotic plants from around the world. The 1.2 hectares conservatory consists of nine garden: Australian Garden, South American Garden, South African Garden, Californian Garden, Olive Groove, Mediterranean Garden, Flower Field, The Baobabs, and Succulent Garden.

The Flower Fields section displays an arrangement of flowers and decoration that changes throughout the year reflecting different seasons and festivals. It was around Lunar New Year when we visited, so it’s got mainly Chinese ornament like lantern and shrine.

Here we met a family from South Korea and took a picture with the kid.💕 I was kinda sad when the dad referring us as “imo” to the kid because I thought she should call us “eonnie” instead.

Next, we went to the Cloud Forest. It’s located just right next to Flower Dome. Upon entering, we were welcomed by world’s tallest indoor waterfall at 35 meters man-made mountain. The cool mist from the waterfall made temperature inside Cloud Forest felt cooler than Flower Dome.

In Cloud Forest, there are diverse tropical plants like ferns, orchids, and pitcher plants. Different from Flower Dome that looks colorful, this conservatory is mostly green, just like real forest. We can witness all of them by walk up to the walking bridges called Cloud Walk and Treetop Walk located up high surrounding the Cloud Forest.

Another attraction you can’t miss is Supertree Groove. This free-admission attraction is a constellation of 12 iconic tree-like vertical gardens measuring between 25 and 50 meters tall. The tree-like vertical gardens are designed with large canopies that provide shade in the day and come alive with a delightful display of light and sound at night.

The supertrees are linked by OCBC Skyway. This is a 128 meters aerial walkway, located 22 meters above the ground (about 16 floors-tall building). This attraction will cost you 8 SGD but you will never regret it, because the fantastic view from up above is like no other.

By the way, the ticket for the skyway is sold separately because it could be not available anytime if the weather is not good. Lucky for us to have a chance to go up, despite the wind was quite strong at that time.

I definitely will go back here when it’s tulip season and gonna stay till dark to watch the light show at Supertree Groove!

The next destination was my special request: Singapore Flyer! (It defeated the other candidate: Madame Tussaud’s Museum). 😍🎡 As an “altitude” junkie I am always attracted to Ferris wheel (ok just call me Ferris wheel junkie) so this former highest Ferris wheel in the world is also on my bucket list since forever.

(Baca juga: Jungleland)

From Gardens by The Bay, it took about 20 minutes to reach Singapore Flyer by foot.

The ticket costs 33 SGD. Whew, this is our second most expensive ticket attraction. 😝

The giant Ferris wheel is surrounded by a building that looks like a mall but it’s very quiet when we arrive. There were a mini food court and benches where we can grab a drink and some snack or maybe just resting for a while.

After gathering back our energy we finally entered the capsule. The 165 meters-tall wheel consists of 28 capsule and each capsule can load up to 28 persons. The time needed to have a full circle is approximately 30 minutes. There is a bench in the middle of each capsule. But isn’t it such a waste to enjoy the ride by sitting?

On every corner of the capsule there are photos and some brief explanations about the area or building that can be seen in the certain direction. For example, if you look at the direction of Marina Bay Street Circuit then on that side of the glass there will be an explanation about that.

It’s only 5 PM when we finished the ride and we had finished our schedule that day, according the itinerary. But we didn’t want to go back straight to the hostel so we decided to go to Bugis Junction. Bugis Junction is an integrated development consist of a shopping mall, an office tower, and a hotel.

It’s Sunday so the shopping mall was super crowded. We were just strolled around then bought some ice cream and had dinner.