When searching for our flights to Singapore, we discovered the best deal and times to be on the ANA flight from Los Angelos, stopping in Tokyo for several hours and then continuing on to Singapore. Since this meant purchasing a separate ticket to get to LA and back, we made sure this time that we had extra time in LA in case of any delays. Everything went on time and since we weren't checking bags, we were able to walk straight from our gate at United all the way inside the airport following signs for the international terminal! No going outside and re-entering security. When we arrived at the Star Alliance lounge they were a little confused about how we got in without checking in yet or having a boarding pass but luckily they were able to help out.

Our flight from LA to Tokyo went by quickly and we got a decent amount of sleep. In Tokyo, we switch terminals by bus which took a while. We arrived at our terminal food court just in time to purchase some fresh tuna sushi assortment to enjoy with Japanese beer. Shortly after, most of the restaurants closed and we spent the rest of our time in the ANA lounge waiting for our next flight.

The flight to Singapore departed at almost 1am, and was only about 7 hours long, so we needed to try to sleep as much as we could before landing in Singapore at 7am. Luckily, we were tired and before long, we were landing in Singapore. We took the train from the airport to the city center, with only a short walk to the hotel. We stayed at the JW Mariott which had upgraded us and had a room available to go to right away! We dropped our stuff and got ready to spend the day exploring the city.

Gardens By the Bay - Cloud Forest, Flower Dome, and Sky Bridge in SuperTree Grove

Certainly one of the biggest attractions in Singapore, the botanical Gardens By the Bay area had a number of paid entry tickets to choose from. There is also a large amount of space including walking under the "super trees" that is free of charge. We decided to pay the ~$50 USD to get tickets for 3 things: the cloud forest, the flower dome, and the skywalk.

First up, the cloud forest - set in a huge many-story dome you enter as a giant waterfall towers in front of you. From there, you circle around and then wait in line to take an elevator up to the top where you gradually make your way down the path. It was definitely impressive, especially during misting time, which happened while we were there. There are so many differnt plants to look at and feels like you're truly walking in a cloud forest.

From there, we entered the flower dome which had much more than just flowers. Another entire botanical garden inside a large dome, there was an impressive succulent garden and many plants, trees, and flowers unique to different parts of the world such as the baobobs from Africa.

Finally, we walked over to the Super trees grove where we had to wait in line to take the elevator up to the sky bridge. It offered a unique view of the trees, and views of the trees with the marina bay hotel in the background. By this time, we had spent several hours in this area, so make sure you plan at least a half day to enjoy this fully and wear comfortable shoes! We ended up taking the metro out of there, which was a bit of a walk from the attractions.

Maxwell Food Hawker Center

Singapore is known for having many food centers where there are aisles of food stalls each run by a different owner, serving different types of cuisine. Sometimes, they even serve only 1 dish that they specialize in. Even more impressive, there are a large number of them that are on the Michelin Bib Gourmand list! We had looked up some of these places beforehand, and headed to the Maxwell Food Center for a late lunch. The famous stall there was the "chicken rice" at Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice. It looked like other people knew about this as well because there was a very long line! We decided to wait and got the medium chicken rice for S$9. The chicken was tender and the sauce and rice was flavored well, very garlicy. After that, we tried a variety of different BBQ porks from another stall selling mostly duck and pork meats. Finally, our surprising favorite dessert chendol, which looked too intruiging not to try. It was like shaved coconut ice with coconut milk, sugary syrup and green "noodles" made with rice flour.

Chinatown

Right around the corner from the Maxwell food center is Chinatown. Here, you can find streets lined with a ton of shopping and restaurants. There were many souvenier shops, most of them with Chinese looking gift items or Lunar New Year items, which is going on right now from Jan 29th - Feb 12th, and it's now the year of the Snake! There was also a lot of fresh fruit and we bought a bag of mangosteens that were perfectly ripe and delicious! Lots of durians for sale as well, which if you haven't heard of it, is a local fruit with an extremely pungent smell. They are actually banned on the Singapore metros for this reason!

Little India Food Center

After waiting out the rain in our hotel, we were starting to crash from our many miles of travel and sightseeing today. We had to force ourselves to take the metro one more time out to Little India, where there is the Tekka Center, another food hawker center worth checking out. Unfortunately, many of the food stalls were closed for the night, we're not sure if that is always the case at 8pm or if it was because of Sunday. But the Michelin listed Delhi Lahore was among the open. We had the chicken tikka and the butter chicken with some freshly made garlic naan and it hit the spot. It would be fun to come back to this center when more stalls are open.

We had a mid-day flight on Air Asia, which seems to be the major local airline in this vicinity. We were able to book 4 flights on Air Asia, with checked bags, to exactly the destinations that we wanted, all for about $350pp. We found the airport process for Air Asia to be easy and streamlined. We spent the morning having breakfast at our hotel, which was a fairly large buffet, before heading to the airport. We hired a Grab (like Uber in Asia) instead of taking the metro, as it was about half the time and only S$20.

In Kuala Lumpur, the airport is actually quite far from the city center. We took the express train from the airport, which was about $10pp and not crowded at all. It took about 35 minutes and then we were able to switch to the local metro for another couple stops to get us close to our hotel. The metro uses a token system so you do have to stop off and get your token at the kiosks, or load up a reusable card before getting on. Prices were cheap at about 50 cents USD per person.

We're staying 2 nights at the Hotel Stripes Autograph Collection and find the hotel to be friendly, quiet and in a good location. The rooftop pool and bar / restaurant area has a great view overlooking the Menara Tower, the world's 7th tallest communications tower. We went out and found some authentic Thai food for lunch, as we were pretty hungry. It was in a large and busy shopping mall, which there seem to be a lot of here. Read more below to see what we did in our short time in KL!

Petronas Twin Towers

You can't picture the skyline in Kuala Lumpur without thinking of the Petronas Towers. They were once the tallest buildings in the world from 1996-2004 and still remain the tallest twin skyscrapers. They are lit up at night and we decided to take the "short" ~30 minute walk to catch the 8pm sound and light show at KLCC park. The show features some water fountains over a small lake with the towers set in the background of the park. We wouldn't say the light show was a must see, but the views of the towers were worth going to in the evening when they are all lit up.

Jalan Alor Food Street

One of the other popular things to do in the evening is visit the Jalan Alor food street, and this was our dinner plan. We decided to walk there from the towers, which turned out to be a bit longer than we would have liked. Around the corner from this street is a very crowded bar and restaurant scene. The food street was also crowded with large outdoor restaurants lining one side, and smaller street vendors on the other side. It is a little overwhelming to try to choose where to eat, but they all seemed popular and fairly similar. Most had a large selection of seafood - prawns, crab or fish, and everyone had a huge menu with tons of other selections as well. We picked one and ordered a black pepper crab, 10 pieces of chicken satay, and some garlic prawns with rice plus large beer to share. All were extremely tasty! This meal was our most expensive at $50 US only because of the crab, which was the majority of that cost.

Batu Caves

Batu Caves is a must see when in Kuala Lumpur. Situated just out of town, it's really only about 6 miles away and we took a Grab there for only a few dollars. As we approached, there were more and more cars parked on the side of the road, and people walking. It was then that we realized TODAY was the Thaipusam festival day, a very holy festival for Hindu people to visit this temple. On this day the Hindus come out in the thousands, bringing offerings and visiting the Batu Cave, where there is a very large statue for the deity Murugan.

At this festival, you also see some people carrying heavy looking portable altars on their backs adorned with peacock feathers. Others carrying silver pots with milk on their heads. And a few participated in the piercing of skin with hooks, another form of sacrifice. Many more had shaved their heads and painted with yellow powder. We stood in the crowd for hours, making our way up the steps to the cave temple. only moving a few inches at a time, which you had to take, otherwise someone else would cut in front of you. The heat was in the 90's and we were drenched in sweat when we finally reached the cave.

At least inside the cave, it was a bit cooler, but stil crowded. The limestone cave was really large inside, housing several shrines and more stairs in the back, where there was actually an opening to the sky. Being there on the day of the festival added to the experience, but it also would have been nice to see it with less people. There are brightly colored stairs leading up to the temple that we couldn't even see because of the mass of people.

After getting back outside, we sat down for a fresh chilled coconut which was SO refreshing! We purchased some indian snacks, and then briefly stopped at the train station where there were crowds up people pushing to get in. We decided to walk until we could find a taxi, which we eventually did, and had to pay extra (about $12). Back at the hotel, we rested up by the pool and caught up on some website stuff for a few hours, then went to dinner at nearby local Malaysian restaurant, Budaya, where we tried 3 dishes and all of them were incredible. We had a chicken yellow curry, a Tom Sum seafood soup, and a pumpkin in coconut milk. We would definitley recommend trying out this restaurant!

We had a fairly early flight from KL to Penang, again on Air Asia at 10:45am. With the KL airport being an hour+ away, we ate breakfast and then headed out to the metro / express train to the airport. We checked our bags and had a bit of time to spend in the lounge before boarding our short flight. Penang is famous for its UNESCO town Georgetown, where they also have a excellent reputation for FOOD! When researching Georgetown, you will come across everyone mentioning it's a foodie paradise. After flying, taking the Grab to our hotel, where we arrived too early to check in, we dropped our bags and were ready for lunch.

We tried to see as much as we could in the 1 afternoon and evening that we had there before taking another early flight the next day. Overall, Georgetown is a nice place to visit for a day or two. If you have more time, there are things further away on the island such as beaches or heading up to the top of Penang Hill for a view. We found Georgetown to be MUCH more Chinese influenced than the other parts of Malaysia that we visited, with a larger number of Chinese tourists, shops, temples and restaurants. Walking around town was easy, although we found it to be extremely hot and humid, so be prepared to sweat while exploring this unique town!

The Blue Mansion Tour / Hotel

We opted to stay at the famous Blue Mansion, a UNESCO rated hotel near the old town. The rooms were large and well appointed with Chinese style furniture. The mansion has been restored to its original glory without losing contemporary amenities such as A/C. It was nice to be a guest and have unlimited access to the mansion, including a free tour, instead of having to sign up for a tour and then leave. Breakfast is included and had a good variety of choices, although we were a bit rushed to catch our flight. The tour covered the history of the mansion owned by Chinese Cheong Fatt Tze, once considered the "Rockefeller of China", and talked about its restoration into a world heritage site. The staff was extremely helpful and friendly and we'd recommend this as a great place to stay.

Street Art

Georgetown is also known for it's interesting street art, which is even marked on Google maps in some cases. When walking through the old town, you can find many unique art that incorporate real objcets such as a motorcycle or swings, making them 3 dimensional in some cases. It's kind of a fun scavenger hunt, to walk and find the street art.

The Clan Jetties

The clan jetties in Georgetown are small communities that live above the water in the town facing the mainland. They are named for 7 clans of Chinese that came to the area back in the late 1800's to mid 1900's. They are comprised of small houses lining docks that go out over the water. These days, visiting the jetties is a popular tourist thing to do. We visited 3 jetties and each had a different feel to them. The first was very quiet with mostly houses and very few tourists. The second was the most touristy with lots of shopping and some food being sold, while on the third, we were able to walk out on the end and watch the sunset.

Georgetown Food

During our short time in Georgetown, we wanted to try as many foods as possible, so we mostly shared a single item at each place. There are actually so many Michelin rated (including two 1 star michelin) restaurants in Penang, more than we realized at first. The places we stopped at came from a combination of word of mouth recommendation, wandering around, and the michelin app. We hope you can visit some of these places in Penang, all of which we recommend!

Laksalicious - Recommended by our friendly hotel staff at the Blue Mansion, we walked here for lunch, as we had experienced Laksa at our Singapore hotel, and wanted to have more. This laksa was indeed very tasty! Laksa is a rich and spicy coconut curry soup with thick rice noodles and usually a seafood such as prawns. We didn't even realize until we were leaving that this place was on the Michelin Bib Gourmand list! Well deserved.

Restoran Kapitan - We were walking down the street when we smelled delicious cooking and it turned out to be an Indian tandoori restaurant. So we decided to stop and have some tandoori chicken with fresh garlic naan. It ended up being a great snack!

Ah Lan Cafe at corner of Chew Jetty - After walking all around town and looking for street art and then over to the jetties, we stopped when we found a asian style street food corner selling a few dishes made fresh on cart with offering of cold beer. Being in Malaysia, it had actually been fairly difficult to find places that offer beer, so we jumped on the chance to sit down and relax and had a dish very similar to Pad thai, called Char Koay Toew in Malay, and it really hit the spot!

Thara - Thai restaurant on the Michelin Bib Gourmand list, we visited here for dinner after sunset on the jetties. We ordered a green curry with chicken and pad kapow with rice, both very delicious!

Langkawi Island is a popular beach destination for both locals and international tourists. We had decided to splurge on our accomodations, and had reservations at the Four Seasons for 3 nights. After all the miles of walking around the cities, it was nice to get a break and relax for a few days. Langkawi Island is fairly small, with most points on the island taking only 25 minutes to get to from wherever you are. We got a Grab from the airport to our hotel, checked in, and picked up bicycles to use, as the resort is spread over 40 acres! We also contacted a guy renting scooters at the Red Coral Cottages not too far away (we actually were able to walk there along the beach) and rented one for 50RM, or about $12, per day, to make exploring the island easier. We always prefer to have transportation as opposed to being trapped at the resort, no matter how nice it is!

We basically covered the whole island over the next few days, while fitting in time to relax at the Four Seasons pool in between. We had a nice buffet breakfast included every morning and we tried 3 of the restaurants while there as well. We found the dinner restaurants at Ikan Ikan and Hava to be excellent with really tasty Malaysian and Indian food. The lunch place at Kelapa Grill was definitely not as good but we tried it once on our first day and then went out to lunch the other days for about 1/10th of the price (or less!). The roads were in very good condition and it was easy to get around on the scooter. For lunch one day, we stopped at a local Thai place in the main town of Kuah where we shared a meal and 2 waters for about $3. We also visited Bellis Spa and had a 60 min massage, 30 min body scrub and 20 min foot scrub for about $40pp. We always recommend trying the massages when in Asia because of the price and quality!

Overall, we enjoyed our time in Langkawi and were glad to have added it to our itinerary. There are many beaches, and the water is warm to swim in, which is much needed because of the heat and humidity. Read on to see some of the other things we did while on the island!

The Sky Cab / Sky Bridge

One of the 2 big attractions on the island is to take the sky cab cable car up the steep limestone cliff into the geoforest. We took the scooter there and purchased tickets to go up the cable car and walk on the skybridge for about $18pp. There are different options you can choose for slightly different prices. The views after the HOT ride in the gondola were impressive, being at over 2,000 ft above sea level. You could enjoy views of the surrounding islands and views of the Langkawi limestone formations, which are said to be the oldest geological formations in Malaysia at 550 million years old, the "birthplace of Malaysia".

We were surprised that the skybridge seemed a lot smaller than we had pictured, and overall, being on the bridge itself was not that exciting. They tout it as famous because it's the "longest single pylon curved skybridge". We had more fun taking pictures of the monkeys waiting on the other side. We definitely recommend going up there for the view, but if you're short on time or money, you could skip the skybridge part. Besides, it's a hot walk down (and then back up) steep steps to get to the bridge, unless you pay another additional fee for the sky glider, which is a very small tram that will bring you down and back up. We didn't know about that part, so had to expend the extra energy and sweat to take the path.

Friday Night Market

Langkawi Island has different night markets for each day of the week, scattered around the island in different locations. We got lucky to discover that the Friday night market was being held only about a 5 minute drive from our hotel. The market was much bigger than we had expected and we highly recommend visiting one or more of these markets during a stay on Langkawi.

We enjoyed walking up and down the aisles of stalls, and had dinner and dessert for less than $10 total, trying anything we thought looked good. Some of the items we bought included fried chicken, som tum freshly made spicy papaya salad, chicken curry roti, spicy fried crabs, beef sausage, crunchy cooked crepe with peanuts, more chicken with chili sauce, sweet potato doughnuts, caramel flan, and we brought back a bunch of dragon eye fruit for later. The market was crowded with both locals and tourists and should not be missed!

The Kilim Geoforest boat tour

Another very popular thing to do on the island is to go out on a boat tour of the Kilim Geoforest. A lot of people purchase tickets ahead of time, but you can really just show up and you will be on a boat in no time. You can start from two locations, the Tanjung Rhu jetty or the Kilim River Tourism jetty, but all of the tours are pretty much identical. We had a private boat for just us for 350RM or about $37pp (set price list). I'm sure you could also have negotiated a little but we didn't try.

During the 2 hour tour, we made a big loop around the limestone geoforest and back through the open sea, and everyone stops at the same places. First, you stop to see the eagles, both Brahminy kite eagles and white bellied sea eagles, where they have been trained to swoop down because the boats feed them chicken skin in the water. Not sure how ethical this practice is.. Then you continue on where you can also feed the long-tailed macaque monkeys some peanuts or bananas. You boat through a large mangrove forest, stop and walk through a cave with bats, and stop at a "fish farm" with VERY few and sad looking fish where they also offer lunch. We got a small plate of chili prawns and fried rice, which were tasty but overpriced.

Overall, we still think this tour is worth doing if you have a few extra hours to spend. Definitely get a private boat, as we also saw a lot of boats that were large groups on the same size boat as ours. If you've been to other parts of the world with these type of limestone formations or mangroves, don't expect to be super impressed. However, being out on the water with the breeze of the speed boat was certainly nice and refreshing!

We took our final Air Asia flight back to Singapore, directly from Langkawi island. We were familiar with the whole Singapore process, and so everything was quick and this time we took a Grab from the airport to our hotel at the Westin Singapore. We wanted to stay a bit closer to the Garden by the Bay area, and also try a new hotel. We were surprised when the lobby of the Westin was on floor 31, with an amazing view over the harbor. The Westin also had a very nice happy hour in their executive lounge appetizers, drinks and more great views.

We only had a few short hours left in Singapore and wanted to visit a few things during the evening, before we had to head back to the airport for the long trip home in the morning. Our return flight would take the same path from Singapore, through Tokyo, on to LA and then home to Denver. With the time change, we ended up leaving Singapore around 11am on Monday and landed in Denver at 7pm the same day! We had good flights, and tried to sleep and get ready to adjust back to freezing temps in Colorado.

Supertree grove at night

Something we skipped doing on our first night in Singapore (due to tiredness) was to see the light show at the supertree grove in the evening. The show begins at either 7:45pm or 8:45pm and lasts only about 10 minutes and is free. It draws a big crowd and everyone finds a seat to watch the trees as the lights change with the music. They have different themes, but ours happened to be opera music. It was worth the walk to see the show, and experience the trees being lit up at night. We also walked through the Marina Bay Sands hotel on our way there, which was impressive in its grand scale interior. Singapore is a lively place to experience at night and it was a great way to end our trip.

Lau Pa Sat Food center

We discovered another enormous food center right around the corner from our hotel, called the Lau Pa Sat. This center had larger and a bit nicer looking food stalls where they offered a huge array of choices. It was a bit overwhelming to try to choose where to eat. Right outside the center there were tons of satay places, cooking on grills, all of which looked good. We chose some prawn satay with peanut sauce for an appetizer. Later, we tried food from several of the other stalls, while meeting up with our friend, Kevin, who happened to be in Singapore for work! We definitely recommend giving this food center a try!