Hippo-hopping in Singapore

Singapore is just a tiny island state between Malaysia and Indonesia. It used to be a stopover for pirates until it became a tiny fishing village called Singa Pura, the Lion City. Later, the British developed this diamond-shaped island into a commercial trading center. Sir Thomas Raffles of the East India Company is credited for establishing his trading post in Singa Pura in 1819. Singapore went through many milestones and experiences through the years and strived until it has become economically stable.

With its history and strategic location in Southeast Asia, Singapore is a melting pot of Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Eurasian cultures. Religion is freely practiced here as it brings Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and Christians to harmoniously live with each other.

Despite its lack of natural resources, Singapore thrived to preserve its greens and create a habitat for its animals. Surprisingly, it has a beautiful Night Safari, Singapore Zoo, Botanic Gardens, and Jurong Bird Park, not to mention the beautiful sea animals in Sentosa. Major highways are filled with trees and plants. Because land is scarce, houses are built vertically and not horizontally.

Singapore’s picturesque attractions also include skyscrapers and beautiful architectures. The Esplanade is a durian-shape inspired building. Across it is the popular Merlion and the Fullerton Hotel. Old buildings are painted and decorated colorfully. The National Library, on the other hand, is a major attraction with its glass structure that brings in natural light to the building.

Quick Tips:

There is no need to get a tour package with Singapore’s tourist-friendly facilities. Their local tourism office offers a Hippotour that has a hop-on, hop-off bus system wherein you can tour the city in one entire day. Visit the Singapore Information Center at Orchard Road or call 6-33-868-77 for details of the tour. You can also log on at www.tourist.com.sg for more information. If you want to avail of the Hippotour, book ahead of time and take the best package they offer. It gives you a free River Boat ride and a discount in the Hot Air Balloon ride.

Their Visitor Center has all kinds of brochures and maps that will guide you in your tour. In fact, Singapore is a city of brochures. Everywhere you go, even inside the Carlsberg Skytower cabin at Sentosa, there’s a bunch of brochures to keep you informed and updated. I wonder how much they spend for those materials. But they come in handy and you can even take them back home and share with others who plan to visit Singapore.

Best Way To Get Around:

Cabs abound in Singapore but with an effective transport system, you can always take the bus or subway and pay a lower fee. At bus stops, you can check the numbers posted and what route they take. There are also maps available on the train stops.

Buses can cost about one Singaporean dollar depending on the distance you will take. However, to make it more convenient, prepare coins so you can just drop them off at the driver’s area as you board your bus. The MRT is even much better. You pay S deposit fee for the Standard card plus the cost of the ride. But after the ride, you can always claim back the S at the card vending machine.

We stayed with a friend who is an expatriate in Singapore. She’s staying at Regency House, which is very strategically located because it is near Orchard Road. Separating Regency House from the avenue of malls is a very lush park, the popular Istana Park. Just a few walks away are MRT stations (Sommerset and Dhoby Ghaut) and bus stations.

The rooms are luxuriously furnished and air-conditioned. There’s a fully equipped kitchen and amenities like laundry service and in-house launderette. Other services include daily breakfast and maid services except on weekends and public holidays, 24-hour maintenance, round-the-clock guest services and security, Internet access, and other guest programs.

The rooftop has recreational facilities like a swimming pool and a small room with gym equipment. The view from the top is also breathtaking. The pool is surrounded by Brazilian ferns, trees, and plants. There’s a Jacuzzi, fountain, and barbecue area.

Regency House is a nice place if you want to stay in Singapore for a longer time. It’s quite expensive but for those who want the comfort and convenience of life, Regency House has it.

If you want to know more about Regency House, you can contact their office at +65 6839 1233.

Hawkers are where cheap but good food is found. Hawkers abound all over Singapore and one particular hawker where we dined is the Orchard Road Hawker. Local food is sold at a lower price. You can have Bee Hon and other noodles or chili wings.


The set-up for a Hawker Centre is a place where there are a number of stalls selling various kinds of food, and these stalls share a common seating area for the customers, just like what you see in a food court. It’s an open-air area so sometimes, it could be extremely warm during noon but it is great to hang out here at night time when the air is a bit cooler.


You can have a complete meal at the price of S$5 to S$9. Various stalls are found that bring you wide array of choices. There’s one particular stall that offer drinks to go with your food. The Hawkers are ideal for the budget travelers who look for delicious food that comes with the right value for their money.


Hawkers are so pervasive (they number to about 7,000 stalls in government hawkers centers in the entire country!) that the Singaporean Government, particularly its Ministry of Environment, takes care of Hawker Management.


The origin of Hawker centres is said to be from mobile stalls wherein traveling vendors go around to sell food. But to further control and manage these mobile stalls, they were given sites where they can set up. So in the 70’s the first Hawker centre was established. As they flourished and became widely acceptable, mobile stalls became extinct in the 80’s.

We went topless for 2 days! That’s because we took the popular HiPPO tour, aboard a topless double decker bus that took us around the famous sites and sights of Singapore. To get more privileges and benefits, we opted for the 2-day package which costs to S$33 that includes six fabulous tours (City, Heritage, Sentosa, Moonlight, Red Lantern, and Singapore River Cruise) and a S$10 off for the Hot Air Balloon ride.

To kick-off our tour, we first took the pink HiPPO bus for the Sentosa trip and stayed at the recreation island for about half a day till the sun was out. After the Magical Fountain show, we boarded the red HiPPO bus for the Moonlight trip that took us to the Bugis Village, a bargain shopping center, Chinatown and Orchard Road. With the heavy rains, only five of us took that night tour. Still, it didn’t dampen our "tourist" spirit as we looked forward to another day of HiPPO touring. It helped that our tourist guide that night, Gareth, was such a wonderful conversant who gave us interesting points about Singapore that couldn’t be normally found in travel books.

On our second day, we took the Heritage tour aboard the red bus (alternate purple bus) which basically covered the Eastern part of Singapore. We hopped off at Little India and spent the morning there. The next stop was Mustafa Centre. Although it was a few blocks away from Little India, we decided to wait on the HiPPO bus to avoid getting wet from the rain. Just a few minutes off its deadline, the bus arrived and took us to Mustafa where we spent 75 minutes, enough to look around the place and have some Indian lunch.

After that, as we boarded the bus, we never got off and enjoyed the sights until we came back to Suntec City where the three buses converge at certain times of the day. There we got off and took the yellow bus for the City Tour. Actually, we are touring the entire city already but the City Tour is just a distinction from the Heritage Tour and the Sentosa Tour.

For the city tour, we went around the Raffles Hotel, Clarke Quay, where we hopped off for the free boat ride, Esplanade, Botanical gardens, and Orchard Road. It’s the southern-central part that we toured for this particular ride. Again, we ended at Suntec City and had a fine dinner at the Esplanade. These HiPPO tours are a good activity for tourists who do not have an itinerary or for those who want to see every nook and cranny of this small city-state.

The city tour would never be complete without a cruise along Singapore River. Our river boat ride was not on a perfect timing with the rain drizzling yet we enjoyed it immensely. The wooden boat was small and net fully adorned except for the red Chinese lanterns on the window near the engine. The front part, where we are seated is just covered with tarpaulin. As the boat started on its way, a recorded voice became audible. The taped voice of a female narrated about the history and the background of every building and spot that comes into view. Starting from Clarke Quay, we cruised down passing the colorful boat quay. We also saw the colorful Ministry of Communications building and the Asian Civilization museum. Historical marks like the Raffles Landing Site and the parliament building were seen as we cruised down Singapore River. We went under seven bridges, or probably more, of varying designs and structures till we got into the Esplanade and see the awesome beauty of the Merlion, the beautiful Singapore financial district, and the classy Fullerton Hotel which once was a post office and a hospital building. The boat chugged as we lingered near the Merlion. A few minutes after we went back to the same route up to Clarke Quay. Many tourists love to take this river cruise and then after the ride, enjoy the tastes and cheers at the dining places at Clarke Quay. For more information about the river cruise. visit

The night is the best time to start an adventure in Singapore. Where else would you like to take this adventure but in the Night Safari where the wild comes alive as the sun goes out. It’s in the northern part of Singapore and going there is not that difficult. We were just a few hours in this tiny city-state and we embarked going to the Night Safari despite the fact that we were first timers here. That goes to show how tourist-friendly Singapore is even during dusk and beyond.

We took the MRT going to Ang Mo Kio, got off at the station and waited for bus 138 to take us in the Night Safari. It was about an hour traveling time before we arrived to our destination. Excited as we were, we posed in front of the Night Safari signage designed with torches on both sides that greeted us upon arrival. We paid S$28 for the entrance fee and the tram ride that will take us around the 40-hectare secondary forest.

Aboard the open-air tram, the lights were dimmed and the tourist guide warned us from taking flash photography. Truly, you’ll never know what those animals would do when they see a flash of light. The tram ride took us through various animal exhibits, namely, Himalayan Foothills, Nepalese River Valley, Indian Subcontinent, Equatorial Africa, Indo-Malayan Region, Asian Riverine Forest, South American Pampas, and Burmese Hillside.

What’s good about the tram ride is that you can hop off and hop on at the various stops. We hopped off at the Equatorial Africa area near the giraffes. Two sloth bears gave us a fright as they had a small skirmish. We were supposed to grab something to bite but food is a bit expensive here. We decided to walk around the periphery and found ourselves staring at a majestic view of the reservoir. Then, we continued with our tour.

Capping our tour was a night show at the amphitheatre. The host knows how to greet the audience in various languages that made the tourists light up as they hear their mother tongue being spoken. Then one-by-one the animals did their own acts. One particular scene was a woman from the audience who apparently lost her pet snake. Well, it was all part of the act but that got the audience jumping.

Up, up, up and away we went inside the DHL hot air balloon located at Tan Quee Lan St. near Bugis. The red and yellow striped balloon took us to about 150m from the ground for a spectacular view of Singapore’s cityscape.

As the balloon ascended, neighboring buildings like the Raffles Hospital, Inter-Continental Singapore and Suntec City Mall came to view. It went higher further and the skyscrapers at Orchard Road slowly appeared. We stayed on air for about 10 minutes and the balloon descended steadily.

It is a one-of-a-kind experience that I would recommend to friends who visit Singapore. Since we took the ride in the morning, I would like to try at night to see the city lights glowing in the dark night.

Regular rate would be S$23 but since we took the HiPPO package tour we only paid S$13. I think there were about 20 of us or more who were allowed to ride the balloon at a time. For inquiries, you may contact 6-33-868-77. It is open from 11am to 9:30pm.