Exploring Singapore: Our First Day Adventures with Grab and the Metro

Arriving in a new city always brings a mix of excitement and a bit of anxiety, maybe 80:20 - especially when you're fighting off jet lag. Our first day in Singapore had both. We were eager to dive into exploring a new city, and knew we needed to get on top of how Grab and the Metro worked. Who'd have known it was as simple as Uber and the Tube is. Doh!

TL;DR

Once you realise everyone, and I mean everyone in Singapore appears to speak English, the concerns of getting from A to B simply go away.

Arrival at Changi Airport

Changi Airport is a pretty cool place in a visual sense, and really efficient, so we quickly founds ourselves in arrivals. I had a plan of how to get from the airport to the hotel via a taxi, as I'd previously read that getting a Grab or similar might mean a long walk to beyond the taxi queue. That plan changed once I saw all the QR codes for the different ride share companies, and the very clear instructions on where they could be picked up from. It was just so easy, and in no time at all we were in the hotel bar having a drink before venturing out for an evening walk.

Navigating the Metro System - MRT

Buoyed from success of the previous day we decided to take the MRT into the city centre. I took one look at the complicated ticket machine, and decided to check with the ticket office whether tapping our bank card at the ticket gate would work - just like the Tube. We got the thumbs up from the ticket office - simples.

Isn't technology great. I wish every city that we travel to was as simple as Singapore.

Conquering Jet Lag

We had a good sleep overnight and we appear to have gotten away with it - let's see what happens though when the excitment of exploring a new city starts to wear off.