Singapore 2010: Planning The Trip

Lakbay Asia's first featured destination is Singapore.

Singapore is a city-state in Southeast Asia located at the southern tip of Malaysia.  It is a very modern city and is considered one of the top 5 financial centres in the world, the others being New York, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

The name Singapore was derived from its Malay name "Singapura" which literally means Lion City.  The national symbol for this island-country is the Merlion, an imaginary creature with the head of a lion and body of a fish.

The Singapore Skyline and Marina Bay Sands (left) as viewed from the Singapore Flyer capsule

This trip was special since: it was our first trip abroad with mom & dad, it was our kids' first trip abroad, it was the first time my mom was celebrating her birthday in another country and lastly it was the first and i guess last time that we'll be celebrating 10/10/10 (october 10, 2010) anywhere in our lifetime. I'd be flabbergasted if i'd still be around to blog about October 10, 2110, much more if you were still around to read about it too.

Our travel date was October 6-10 but as early as July we've already booked our airfare tickets with Cebu Pacific. In hindsight i think we should have waited for a promo fare since Cebu Pacific always do come up with different promotions even weeks leading to your chosen dates.

We were also able to book with Agoda for our accomodations and i found their service top-notch. Revisions to bookings were handled professionally and effortlessly with not much hassle to customer.

I accidentally stumbled upon www.onemap.sg and i found it very useful (especially if used in partnership with www.sbstransit.com) as it gave me an idea on how far destinations were to each other, that way i was able to plan out whether to take buses or taxis between destinations.

Listed below are the rest of the websites that i used and found useful for the planning stage of our trip to Singapore:
Tourism Board - www.yoursingapore.com
Road Maps - www.onemap.sg
Bus Transport - www.sbstransit.com
Airline Tickets - www.cebupacificair.com
Hotel Accomodations - www.agoda.com
Marina Bay Sands - www.marinabaysands.com
Universal Studios Singapore - www.rwsentosa.com
Hostel World - www.hostelworld.com
Rucksack Inn (accomodation) - www.rucksackinn.com
Singapore Flyer - www.singaporeflyer.com
Bugis Street Shopping - www.bugis-street.com
Duck Tours - www.ducktours.com.sg
Sentosa Island - www.sentosa.com.sg
Photo References - www.flickr.com

As early as 2003, i've already been taking advantage of the power of the internet in planning out my trips. To maximize your trip, i suggest that you really plan it out so that unnecessary waste of money and time can be avoided. And in this time and age, internet is the king. Hope the links mentioned above will be of great help in planning your next Singapore trip.