Discovering Singapore

[JanR]

I noticed Singapore is a frequent topic for questions on the board.  We found Singapore to be one of the safest and easiest cities to explore on our own.  There is so many interesting places and the food...wow...so many places to get fantastic food.  If it helps, here is our video we made that captured our experiences in Singapore during pre-cruise before our Oceania Regatta cruise from Singapore to Sydney.

 

[madera1]

Thanks for the video. We are scheduled to be on Regatta in 2025 from Sydney to Singapore! 

[travellovers2]

Hi JanR, we watched your video on youtube and really enjoyed it. Took a lot of notes of the Michellin star restaurants you went to. 

 

We're looking for a cruise out of Singapore after we spend 3-4 nights there, but we don't want to disembark in Hong Kong. We need one that is no more than maybe 10 days. How many days was your cruise? Did you post a video of the cruise? We would love to see it. 

 

Thank you!

[cfomac]

5 hours ago, travellovers2 said:

Hi JanR, we watched your video on youtube and really enjoyed it. Took a lot of notes of the Michellin star restaurants you went to. 

 

We're looking for a cruise out of Singapore after we spend 3-4 nights there, but we don't want to disembark in Hong Kong. We need one that is no more than maybe 10 days. How many days was your cruise? Did you post a video of the cruise? We would love to see it. 

 

Thank you!

we just booked the cruise out of Singapore disembarking to Hong Kong in 2026!  

[travellovers2]

3 hours ago, cfomac said:

we just booked the cruise out of Singapore disembarking to Hong Kong in 2026!  

 

Thank you for your reply. We looked at our options out of Singapore and since this is our first trip to Asia, we decided to cruise around Japan first. We posted a question about the three cruise lines we're considering. Would love to hear your advice on that post if you have done that route. Thank you.

[SophieM]

On 6/10/2024 at 6:16 PM, madera1 said:

Thanks for the video. We are scheduled to be on Regatta in 2025 from Sydney to Singapore! 

If you are sailing March ‘25, we’ll be on it, too!

[JanR]

On 6/15/2024 at 3:49 PM, travellovers2 said:

Hi JanR, we watched your video on youtube and really enjoyed it. Took a lot of notes of the Michelin star restaurants you went to. 

 

We're looking for a cruise out of Singapore after we spend 3-4 nights there, but we don't want to disembark in Hong Kong. We need one that is no more than maybe 10 days. How many days was your cruise? Did you post a video of the cruise? We would love to see it. 

 

Thank you!

Thanks so much.  Don't forget Spago!  We have our ship tour and boarding video up on our channel right now.  We should (knock on wood) have the review up on Sunday.  We will probably put together a few videos of a few of our port calls.  However, those will be done sporadically as we have time.  A (very fortunate) situation we have is that we are traveling so much that it's hard to get all of the content edited to a level where I feel it is worthy and published.  But stay tuned!

[JanR]

On 6/15/2024 at 8:53 PM, cfomac said:

we just booked the cruise out of Singapore disembarking to Hong Kong in 2026!  

Hong Kong is fantastic.  Enjoy!

Edited June 25 by JanR

[JanR]

On 6/10/2024 at 6:16 PM, madera1 said:

Thanks for the video. We are scheduled to be on Regatta in 2025 from Sydney to Singapore! 

Fantastic.  Have a great time.  As our review (upcoming on our channel probably this Sunday) notes, for our cruise there was something not quite right with the Regatta that impacted ship, entertainment and--to our great surprise--the food.  We had spoke with friends who had sailed before and after our cruise who did not have these issues.  So I believe that it was a one-off issue with this one cruise. 

 

I assume that your cruise will have a very similar itinerary as ours--three stops in Indonesia and then down the western and southern sides of Australia.  Very neat itinerary.  

[travellovers2]

4 hours ago, JanR said:

Thanks so much.  Don't forget Spago!  We have our ship tour and boarding video up on our channel right now.  We should (knock on wood) have the review up on Sunday.  We will probably put together a few videos of a few of our port calls.  However, those will be done sporadically as we have time.  A (very fortunate) situation we have is that we are traveling so much that it's hard to get all of the content edited to a level where I feel it is worthy and published.  But stay tuned!

 

Have you been to Japan? If yes, do you have a video on youtube? We just booked our first cruise to Japan and would love to see what you did and what you recommend. If you stayed in Kyoto, where did you stay? Thank you! 🙂

[JanR]

28 minutes ago, travellovers2 said:

 

Have you been to Japan? If yes, do you have a video on youtube? We just booked our first cruise to Japan and would love to see what you did and what you recommend. If you stayed in Kyoto, where did you stay? Thank you! 🙂

I traveled several times to Japan when I was in the Army thousands of years ago, however in 2023 DW and I went to about 7ish ports as part of our MSC World Cruise.  WE LOVED JAPAN! (Sorry for yelling at you. . .just got excited is all).  Our favorite ports were probably Tokyo (went to Disneyland Tokyo--weak, right?) and Osaka which was amazing.  Other ports we went to were Shimizu, Kyoto, Naha, Nagasaki, and I think one more which I am forgetting.  

 

We have a playlist of our world cruise.  The first five or so videos are long-form videos, but after those we did one-minute videos shorts for each day of our world cruise.  Each of the ports we went to are on that playlist--Japan starts with something like Day 65. We have been traveling so much that I suspended making the longer-form videos of the world cruise--maybe a project when/if things slow down.

 

You will love Japan.  First of all, any of the cities you can do on your own if you are mobile.  We walked something like 38K steps in Osaka.  You'll be totally safe as Japan is one of the most orderly countries we've ever been too--Singapore would probably be the other contender.  In Osaka, we tried to find at least one example of graffiti.  We finally found (after walking through the city for an entire day and evening) one single example on a wall behind a couple of garbage cans.  The biggest challenge will be language.  But Google Translate is a game changer and we had no problem getting around.  BTW, if you go to Naha and want to go up that freaking big hill to see the castle--let me give you a really great tip that we wish we would have had--the castle burned down in 2019.  I will never hear the end of that mistake from DW.

 

Anyway, Japan is a wonderful country and hope to get back there some day when we've checked off some of the places we haven't been to.

 

Jan

 

 

[travellovers2]

On 6/25/2024 at 7:17 PM, JanR said:

Anyway, Japan is a wonderful country and hope to get back there some day when we've checked off some of the places we haven't been to.

 

Jan

 

 

 

We're glad you had a wonderful world cruise. Your video looked amazing. Which one was your favorite port?

 

We have been to Madeira and would love to go back. For us it's hard to choose a world cruise because we have been to so many places already, but maybe on our 50th cruise we will book Cunard and do a transatlantic from NY to Southampton. We're still working, so our cruises are usually no longer than 14 days. Next week we go on our 43rd cruise. We love it, not as much as visiting the countries on our own, but it's more relaxing. 

 

Japan has been on our list for a long time. We finally decided to go. We already booked the cruise and two hotels pre-cruise hotels. Looking forward to it!!

 

Enjoy your travels!! 

[Happy Texans]

On 6/25/2024 at 6:17 PM, JanR said:

I traveled several times to Japan when I was in the Army thousands of years ago, however in 2023 DW and I went to about 7ish ports as part of our MSC World Cruise.  WE LOVED JAPAN! (Sorry for yelling at you. . .just got excited is all).  Our favorite ports were probably Tokyo (went to Disneyland Tokyo--weak, right?) and Osaka which was amazing.  Other ports we went to were Shimizu, Kyoto, Naha, Nagasaki, and I think one more which I am forgetting.  

 

We have a playlist of our world cruise.  The first five or so videos are long-form videos, but after those we did one-minute videos shorts for each day of our world cruise.  Each of the ports we went to are on that playlist--Japan starts with something like Day 65. We have been traveling so much that I suspended making the longer-form videos of the world cruise--maybe a project when/if things slow down.

 

You will love Japan.  First of all, any of the cities you can do on your own if you are mobile.  We walked something like 38K steps in Osaka.  You'll be totally safe as Japan is one of the most orderly countries we've ever been too--Singapore would probably be the other contender.  In Osaka, we tried to find at least one example of graffiti.  We finally found (after walking through the city for an entire day and evening) one single example on a wall behind a couple of garbage cans.  The biggest challenge will be language.  But Google Translate is a game changer and we had no problem getting around.  BTW, if you go to Naha and want to go up that freaking big hill to see the castle--let me give you a really great tip that we wish we would have had--the castle burned down in 2019.  I will never hear the end of that mistake from DW.

 

Anyway, Japan is a wonderful country and hope to get back there some day when we've checked off some of the places we haven't been to.

 

Jan

 

 

This was so cool and informative!  Thank you for taking the time to do this.

[JanR]

20 hours ago, travellovers2 said:

 

We're glad you had a wonderful world cruise. Your video looked amazing. Which one was your favorite port?

 

We have been to Madeira and would love to go back. For us it's hard to choose a world cruise because we have been to so many places already, but maybe on our 50th cruise we will book Cunard and do a transatlantic from NY to Southampton.<<SNIP>>

 

Enjoy your travels!! 

That is such a hard question, so I'm going to fudge a bit and give you list of 5 that come right to mind in no particular order:  Osaka, Apia in Samoa, Hong Kong, Aqaba, and Danang. 

 

Although our most favorite place we went to--but wasn't a port--was the five day India overland excursion.  When the ship arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka a small group of us got off the ship and the next day we flew to New Dehli.  From there we went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and then to Jaipur.  That was amazing.

 

We understand the difficulty of selecting itineraries.  I've now been to over 80 countries and DW is over 90, so it is becoming difficult to find itineraries that explore new countries.  We do have a cruise booked that will pretty much get us to the southern countries of South America.  Where we need to work on is Africa as we have only been to Kenya and Tanzania.  

 

Good travels to you as well!