When my now-fiancé and I started planning our holiday trip to Southeast Asia last year, we knew we wanted to spend New Year’s Eve somewhere special. The majority of our itinerary was going to be spent in Thailand—Bangkok, Koh Samui, and Chiang Mai—so we traced the map and scoured flight deals to come up with another location to close out the two-week trip. After much deliberation (how do you choose just one city?) we decided to end our travels with a three-day stay in Singapore.
A major draw for tourists in Singapore is the world-class food—and we were no exception. When we weren’t eating, we were finding ways to kill time in between meals. Which, as it turns out, is very easy to do. Below, see how we spent the perfect 72 hours in Singapore.
Try the original Singapore Sling from The Long Bar at Raffles Hotel
As soon as we dropped our bags at our South Beach hotel, we headed straight to Raffles to visit the historic Long Bar. Here, the Singapore Sling was born—a frothy, sweet pink drink topped with pineapple that is considered the national drink of Singapore. In a city that is otherwise sparkling clean (it is actually illegal to chew gum here), the floor of Long Bar is littered with peanut shells from the bags of peanuts that await you when you sit down. To say I contributed to the piles on the floor is an understatement: the salty peanuts pair perfectly with the tropical sweetness of Singapore’s namesake drink.
Feast at the many hawker stalls
Our second stop was Newton Food Center, a quick 10-minute drive from Long Bar and the first of many hawker centers we visited during our stay in Singapore. We hadn’t eaten anything since we left Thailand earlier that morning (well, except the aforementioned peanuts) and were ready to put together a feast from any stall that looked good—which didn’t exactly narrow it down. Some stalls were starting to shut down by the time we arrived around 9 p.m. (something to keep in mind if you’re arriving later as we did), but that didn’t stop us from filling our table with two or three trays piled with satay, wings, fried rice, carrot cake, and cold, crisp beer to wash it all down. Fun fact: if you are a fan of Crazy Rich Asians, like we are, this is the hawker center they go to when they arrive in Singapore—which may or may not be the reason we made this our first stop on the island.
Over the next two days, we visited a few more hawker centers, including Maxwell Food Center (apparently Dua Lipa’s favorite from her tour stop in Singapore) for Hainanese chicken rice and fried dumplings, and Chinatown Complex for xiao long bao, wontons in chili oil, popiah and fried pork buns. To cool down, we tried chendol, a type of iced sweet dessert, and fruit juices that were available at every other stall. There were many other centers we wanted to try but there simply aren’t enough meals in the day: Tiong Bahru Market, Tekka Center, Amoy Street Food Center… the list goes on. An excuse to return one day soon!
Find your inner child at the ArtScience Museum
The next morning, we crossed the pedestrian-only Helix Bridge to get to the flower-shaped ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. We weren’t sure what to expect at the museum, but figured it would be a fun way to escape the sticky Singapore heat for a few hours. Little did we know, this would become a highlight of our trip.
Our favorite exhibition was Future World: Where Art Meets Science, a collection of digital interactive installations created in collaboration with teamLab. The rooms have unique light features that move with you, mixed with hands-on installations that could entertain both kids and adults for hours. The best part? In one of the rooms, you can pick a sea creature to color in with crayons, then watch as it comes to life on the walls around you. I was giddy watching my spotted seahorse follow me around the room, chasing it with child-like wonder alongside five and six-year-olds excitedly pointing out their creations. A multi-generational hit!
Stroll through Gardens by the Bay
After a morning well spent at the ArtScience Museum, we ventured back out into the humidity to see the famous Gardens by the Bay, situated behind Marina Bay Sands. You could get lost winding through the many garden paths, so we armed ourselves with water bottles and headed straight for the Supertree Grove in the center of the park. Here, visitors can walk the OCBC Skyway to see the gardens from above—it started to rain, so we snapped photos from below and then hopped in a cab to Maxwell Food Centre for lunch (see above).
Check out the fine dining scene
While the majority of our meals were eaten at hawker centers, we did spend New Year’s Eve dining at the world’s first Michelin-starred Peranakan restaurant, Candlenut. Since we knew we’d only have one fine-dining experience during our stay, we did extensive research on Singapore’s 51 Michelin-starred restaurants—and we chose Candlenut for their contemporary yet authentic approach to traditional Straits-Chinese cuisine, which is native to this part of the world and something we had never tried before. We were impressed by the Ah-Ma-Kase tasting menu, a multi-course meal with elevated takes on dishes we’d discovered at stalls around the city, plus some new-to-us flavors that we made a note to seek out when we returned home to New York City.
See the city from the top of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel
On New Year’s Eve in Singapore, there is only one place to be: the top of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. From here, you can see the stunning fireworks show over the water with the city skyline in the background and be among the first people in the world to ring in the new year. We attended a buzzy rooftop viewing party with live music and Champagne to toast the first moments of 2025.
As someone who usually spends New Year’s Eve on her couch with takeout and board games, I was excited to get dressed up and celebrate a new year with hundreds of strangers cheering at every firework pop and shower of sparks. As we made our way down from the roof after midnight, I remembered why I don’t usually leave my apartment on this particular evening—the crowds trying to leave and the traffic building up around the hotel are what I imagine leaving Times Square after watching the ball drop must be like. One look at the mess outside the lobby doors, and we’d turned on our heels—and headed back inside for another drink.
Stop and smell the flowers at the Botanic Gardens
We had a bit of a slow start on New Year’s Day, but after a leisurely breakfast at the hotel’s buffet we made our way to the Botanic Gardens for an afternoon stroll. Singapore is already known as “a city in a garden” so we were curious to see what a garden in a city in a garden would be like. The Botanic Gardens are free to enter, but we paid an extra fee to visit the National Orchid Garden where there are over 1,000 species and 2,000 hybrids on display. The flowers were fragrant and beautiful, and we took our time winding through the gardens admiring each unique color and shape.
Bar and restaurant hop through Chinatown
To kill time between hawker centers, we wandered around the historic streets of Chinatown. The colors and architecture are a stark contrast to the highrise buildings elsewhere in the city, and the street art and decor stand out against the steely skyline. There are many fun restaurants and bars to discover along the colorful streets, our favorite of which was a speakeasy called Night Hawk—an unassuming bar tucked into a boxcar-like space with innovative cocktails and friendly service. Here we toasted to our last night in this enchanting city.
Go on a self-guided tour of the ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ filming locations
If, like us, Crazy Rich Asians is one of your favorite movies (so much so that I’ve already mentioned it twice), you’ll want to spend some time visiting the filming locations in Singapore. I referenced this Vogue article from 2018 to seek out all the spots from our favorite scenes—Raffles Hotel, Newton Food Center, Chijmes, Marina Bay Sands, Gardens by the Bay… sound familiar?
Shop your way along Orchard Road
On our last morning, we headed to the Fifth Avenue-like Orchard Road in the heart of the city for some souvenirs to bring home. We filled our suitcases to the brim, mostly with hard-to-find sneakers from Adidas and Onitsuka Tiger (watching us cram these last-minute purchases into our already bursting-at-the-seams bags must have been a sight to behold). Pro tip: Bring your passport shopping with you so you can get the tax refund before you leave the country.
Spend extra time at the airport (yes, really!)
Our flight back home was scheduled for 10:30 pm, so we headed to the airport early to experience the indoor waterfall and other spectacles that the Singapore Changi Airport has to offer. Unfortunately, the infamous Butterfly Garden was not located in our terminal, but we did have one of the best bowls of congee paired with warm Chinese donuts before departing on our 24-hour journey home. Usually we try to spend as little time as possible at the airport, but in Singapore, the airport is an attraction in and of itself, and one that we plan to return to very soon (hopefully for more than 72 hours next time).