Singapore MRT Sightseeing: from Changi to Tuas

I always describe my home country Singapore as a very small place;: just about 50km in width, it takes you less than an hour if you drove from east to west, or about 1.5 hours if you hopped onto our Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) trains instead.

For the budget traveller looking to see as much of Singapore in the easiest way possible, here’s my take on how you can do a little Singapore MRT sightseeing and take in the local culture and sights just by hopping onto our longest MRT route, the green East-West Line that takes you from Singapore’s Changi Airport to Tuas Link in the far west.

Cover photo of MRT by awee_19 via Flickr CC

About Singapore’s MRT system

A bit of an introduction to Singapore’s MRT – this is our version of the subway or metro, and usually our most reliable form of public transport in Singapore. It is not infallible, especially in recent years where there have been some crazy breakdowns, but usually it’s by far the most convenient way to get around Singapore.

When I was growing up, I remember just 2 MRT lines (red North-South, green East-West). I wrote this article back when there 4 MRT lines (purple NorthEast, yellow Circle), and currently as of this update there are 6 MRT lines (blue Downtown, brown Thomson-EastCoast).

This article focuses on the Green East-West Line that spans from Changi Airport in the east All the way to the far west close to the link bridge to Malaysia. Most of the line is above ground except for the bits between Lavender to Tiong Bahru.

How to ride the MRT in Singapore

Singapore’s MRT works via a gantry system which is distance based. What that means is that you have to use your travel card and tap in to enter, and tap out to exit. The price you pay depends on the distance travelled, which usually ranges from about $1-$3.

For tourists, I recommend using your own contactless credit card which is the easiest way to ride the MRT as there is no need to purchase any separate transport cards. There is a small daily fee of 60 cents for foreign currency conversions, but I think it’s a very small price to pay for the convenience. Read more about contactless bank card use.

You could buy an EZ Link Card which you can top up with cash, but these things expire and you have to pay to purchase the card. You could also consider the Singapore Tourist Pass which gives you unlimited rides from 1-3 days, but honestly unless you’re travelling quite extensively out of the main downtown area, I don’t think it’s worth it for most tourists.

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Singapore MRT Sightseeing: Journey to the West

Let us now embark on an epic Journey to the West as we go across Singapore’s width and see the sights it has to offer along its green East-West MRT line.

CG2 Changi Airport: Starting point

Your journey starts right when your plane lands at the international airport located in the eastern end of the island. Singapore’s Changi Airport is a destination in itself, world renowned as one of the airports travelers love passing through and sometimes their only contact with Singapore. How many airports have multiple gardens, a free cinema and even a swimming pool for their visitors? It’s hard to leave such a mini paradise.

But your real foray into Singapore begins by hopping onto the green East-West line that connects the airport to the rest of Singapore. This section of the MRT is above ground and lets you take in the view of Singaporean life around you.

Tall buildings surround the train tracks that you zip down, painted in all colours of the rainbow. These are Singapore’s Housing Development Board (HDB) flats – public housing blocks that over 80% of Singaporeans live in today. Land-scarce Singapore built these flats in the 1960s and transplanted its village-dwelling citizens from their kampong village huts to these space-saving apartments in the sky.

EW4 Tanah Merah: Island escapades

If you want to see a side of Singapore beyond the city, make Tanah Merah your first stop. Singapore actually consists of not just one island, but over 60 smaller ones scattered around the mainland, mostly accessible by ferry. Take a bus from here to Changi Point Ferry Terminal to get to Pulau Ubin, one of the larger and more popular islands, for an outdoor adventure away from the city, cycling in the forest, and scouting for crabs in the wetlands of Chek Jawa natural reserve.

As you continue your ride, you might notice that many of the MRT stations are located right next to large shopping malls. Fully air-conditioned and stocked with Singaporeans’ favorite retail shops, we are a nation obsessed with shopping malls and they make a perfect hideout for nearby residents on swelteringly hot days and lazy weekends when you would rather not venture into the crowded downtown area.

EW8 Paya Lebar: Malay Heritage and Peranakan Culture

The next stop you can check out is Paya Lebar Station, an interchange with the newly built yellow Circle Line that connects to all the other MRT lines.

Paya Lebar is now connected to a huge mall complex that consists of Paya Lebar Quarter (PLQ), Paya Lebar Square and Singpost Centre. A short walk away is Geylang Serai Market, best known for its wet market and food centre and home to many favourite Malay food stalls. This area is a well-known district where the local Malay people live and frequent. It’s especially vibrant during Malay celebrations like Hari Raya Puasa and Hari Raya Haji.

You are also close to the Joo Chiat district, an area famous for a unique ethnic group called the Peranakans, descended from the unions of Chinese immigrants and Malays from the surrounding region. Since many of the old Peranakan shop houses have been preserved, you can find traces of this local culture in the area.

EW12 Bugis: Art and heritage district

As you approach the central area, the view disappears as the MRT heads underground. The next stop of note is Bugis, and, if you wanted to, you could spend a few days just checking out the sights in this area.

It is close to one of Singapore’s ethnic neighbourhoods, Kampong Gelam – my personal favorite hangout. This is the original Malay heritage area, and home to the beautiful Sultan Mosque, a bevy of independent boutiques and cafés as well as some of Singapore’s most colourful street art amidst fabric shops and Middle Eastern cuisine.

EW13 City Hall: Central Business District

The next stops, namely City Hall and Raffles Place, are officially downtown Singapore and interchanges to the other MRT lines. Here is where you will encounter your fellow tourists who will spend most of their time in Singapore exploring this zone.

The port city of Singapore sprung up in this area, where the trading ships landed and the first immigrants set foot on a new land. The borders of Singapore have expanded since then thanks to land reclamation, and the city has grown exponentially, now home to over 5.6 million people.

The City Hall stop is where architecture lovers should disembark, with various unusual shaped landmarks that make up the Singapore skyline within walking distance. The spiky domes of the Esplanade Theatre are said to resemble two durians, a beloved local fruit; the three towers of the Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort stand proudly on the bay, connected by a long, boat-like shape on top; and Singapore’s famous half-lion and half-fish symbol, the Merlion, always draws a large crowd of selfie-taking tourists eager to prove that they have visited Singapore.

EW16 Outram Park: Chinese Heritage

From Outram Park, you could take a detour to Bukit Pasoh where Keong Saik Street is located. Once a notorious red light district, it’s now a pretty hipster lane, especially after being highlighted as one of the top places in the world on Lonely Planet some years back. There are some spots around here and Chinatown where the movie Crazy Rich Asians were filmed as well.

Walk a bit further to get to Chinatown, a microcosm of the diversity to be found in Singapore: religious buildings of various faiths sit side by side on the same street, elderly men play chess while sharing tables with fashionably dressed entrepreneurs in the hawker center, and historical shophouses lie just around the corner from tall modern offices.

EW17 Tiong Bahru: hip hood and architecture

As the train heads west, your next stop is Tiong Bahru. This estate is unique for its low pre-war flats with architecture that cannot be found anywhere else in Singapore, and is also a well-known hipster haven with indie boutiques and cute cafes galore. Make time for the Tiong Bahru hawker centre where you can sample some cheap and good local food the quintessentially Singaporean way.

EW19 Queenstown: Singapore’s oldest public housing estate

Or go a little further on to Queenstown, another local neighbourhood worth exploring as one of Singapore’s oldest public housing estates and the blueprint for many that followed. Follow any of the self-guided walking tours to learn some of this estate’s secrets: butterfly-shaped blocks of flats and even a hidden bunker or two from the war. Locals know it as the place to get cheap sports gear from the old Queensway Shopping Centre.

EW25 Chinese Garden: Landscaping amidst industry

Stop at the Chinese Garden stop for a little greenery and fresh air at the Jurong Lake Gardens. It’s not as fanciful as the alien- like tree towers and pods of Gardens by the Bay or the flower haven that is the Singapore Botanic Gardens downtown, but it has been refurbished very recently and has very new and interesting park landscapes worth checking out, especially if you have children who need to run around for a bit. The Singapore Science Centre is also not too far away.

If you head over to the next stop Lakeside on the other side of the Jurong Lake Gardens, you can make a bit of a walk to Taman Jurong and check out the murals in this very local residential district.

EW33 Tuas Link: End of the line

In my university days, Boon Lay used to be the last stop and an eclectic area with a mix of university students and industrial workers from the nearby Nanyang Technological University and the surrounding factories.

The line has since been extended a little further and your last stop is now Tuas Link Station which stops right outside Raffles Marina. This is mostly where yachts and boats are parked, but there is a lovely little lighthouse located here, along with a view of the 2nd Link Causeway that bridges between Singapore and Malaysia.

Congratulations, you’ve mostly made it across Singapore. Take out that passport and cross the Tuas Second Link into Malaysia by bus, or get back onto the MRT and find your way onto any of the other MRT lines to continue your explorations.

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Some Behind the Scenes thoughts

This article was first published in Turkish Airlines inflight magazine Skylife in May 2017 and reproduced here with permission and some tweaks. See the online version here. The print version in PDF with Turkish translations can be seen here. Pictures here are my own.

I was asked to write a personal narrative piece about spending a week in my home country Singapore for Turkish Airline’s inflight magazine Skylife, my first ever print travel piece and I thought I’d give you guys a bit more insight as to how this piece came together.

You would think a piece about Singapore would be easy for me to write since it’s my home, I’m pretty decent at recommending less touristy places but I was definitely tearing my hair out at points because I couldn’t get started right. It felt like I had so much to say, but I couldn’t find a coherent or interesting way to say it.

It probably didn’t help that I had to write while embarking on the South America leg of my Career Break – I think I wrote bits and pieces of this while travelling around Vancouver, Colombia and Ecuador! Writing while travelling is hard, which is kinda why this blog slowed down a fair bit in the last year while I was busy traipsing around.

I thought about how I always tell people in hostels that Singapore is ‘very small’ and to give some context, ‘that it takes under an hour to go from east to west’. That was the basis for how this article ended up morphing into what I’ve taken to calling my ‘Journey to the West’ piece, where I take the reader on a journey across the sights of Singapore through our MRT line. I feel like I need to spend an actual week doing all the things in this article to see whether I’ve done it justice.

Overall I’m pretty proud of how this piece turned out. The article has been edited quite a fair bit from my original submission as the MRT lines in Singapore have grown

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