Singapore
and Bali

Chicken rice at Maxwell, then a rooftop sunset

• The overnight from San Francisco is about 17 hours and lands at 6:45 AM. A taxi or Grab from Changi takes about 20 minutes; the MRT takes about 40. We dropped our bags at Andaz Singapore and went straight out to eat.
• Lunch at Maxwell Food Centre in Chinatown. Tian Tian chicken rice was just as good as I remembered (it's closed on Mondays). We added fishball soup and bak chor mee from a Teochew noodle stall, and appam from Mr. Appam: lacy, crispy rice pancakes, on the sweet side, that we'd still order again.
• Right next door, the free Singapore City Gallery walks you through how Singapore was planned and what's coming next. I learned a lot, and it made the rest of the trip more interesting. Open Monday to Saturday, 9 AM to 5 PM.
• Sunset drinks at Mr Stork, the rooftop bar on the 39th floor of the Andaz. The view is great. The food was small, not that good and expensive, so come for a drink, not dinner. It's reservations only on TableCheck, in 90-minute slots, and there's no indoor backup if it rains.

Order at Maxwell like a local: put a packet of tissues on a free seat to save it, then go queue.

Roti prata, biryani and Katong laksa

• Breakfast at Tekka Centre, the hawker centre at the top of Little India. We came for roti prata, and Prata Saga Sambal Berlada was exactly the flaky, crispy prata with curry we were after.
• Then biryani at Mr Biryani, a highly rated dum biryani shop with two branches in Little India. Every dish was really good. A warning, though: after this day my stomach never fully recovered for the rest of the trip, so maybe don't stack it with prata and laksa like we did.
• In the afternoon we headed east to Katong. i12 Katong is a fun mall with cute, unusual shops and a good food court for small bites.
• Across the road, 328 Katong Laksa, famous for beating Gordon Ramsay in a laksa cook-off. It was the laksa I remembered and had been craving, and Anne's first.
• We had planned the TreeTop Walk at MacRitchie Reservoir (allow four to five hours and bring water) and chili crab at Mellben, and skipped both.

Kaya toast, and an easy day

• Breakfast at Ya Kun Kaya Toast: thin crispy toast with kaya (coconut and egg jam) and slabs of cold butter, soft-boiled eggs you season with soy sauce and white pepper, and coffee. It's a chain, and it's still one of our favourite things we ate. I don't usually like toast, and I loved it.
• Buy a jar of their kaya to take home. We kept putting it off and never did.
• With my stomach still recovering, we kept the rest of the day light and stayed close to the hotel.

Toast Box, the Cloud Forest and chili crab

• Breakfast at Toast Box, the other big kaya toast chain. Its toast wasn't as good as Ya Kun's, but it has more savory dishes, which we'd try next time.
• A late morning playing drum games in an arcade in the Bugis malls, then a Japanese rice bowl for lunch.
• Over to Marina Bay Sands for one night. The mall underneath is fun to wander, and we'd come back just to eat our way through it.
• Late afternoon in the Cloud Forest at Gardens by the Bay, a cool, misty glasshouse built around a huge indoor waterfall. It's about a 15-minute walk from the hotel. That spring it also had an Avatar exhibit inside.
• Dinner at HolyCrab at Capitol Arcade. Anne's first Singapore chili crab: a big crab, and the sauce tasted exactly how I remembered. It's on the pricey side, so next time we'd try other crab places too.
• We finished the night in the infinity pool on the 57th floor, looking back at the lit-up skyline. The pool is for hotel guests only.

A short hop to Bali and the cliffs of Uluwatu

• AirAsia from Changi to Bali is 2 hours 50 minutes, with no time change. We pre-booked a 20 kg checked bag each.
• With an e-VOA already approved online, you walk past the visa payment counter straight to immigration. Have your return ticket ready to show.
• Get rupiah from the airport ATMs. The first ones on the left after customs didn't work for us (one charged my card, then refunded it) and another traveller's card got eaten. The second set, next to a staffed exchange desk, worked fine with a decent rate.
• A Grab to Uluwatu is roughly Rp 85,000; we took the hotel's car instead. Alila Villas Uluwatu sits on the clifftop at the southern tip of Bali, and every villa has its own pool.
• Dinner at the hotel. We ate Mediterranean food every night here and it was great each time.

A slow day on the cliffs

• We barely left the villa. Morning stretches in the clifftop pavilion, matcha and green juice at breakfast, then the pool.
• Try snake fruit (salak) if you see it: scaly brown skin that peels off like a shell, and crunchy, sweet and slightly sour inside.
• Overall we loved it here. It's a big splurge at cash rates, so it's best on hotel points if you have them. The one regret is that we never tried the Balinese restaurant, The Warung.

Breakfast with a view, then a Grab to Ubud

• One last breakfast looking out over the Indian Ocean, then lunch by the pool before checkout.
• Uluwatu to Ubud by Grab cost Rp 341,000, about $23, and takes anywhere from 1½ to 3 hours with traffic. We got lucky: our driver was heading to Ubud anyway. He talked us into a stop at a coffee plantation, which wasn't impressive and was full of bugs, but the ride itself was cheap and easy. You can always say no to the detour.
• Check-in at Kamandalu Ubud, in a jungle valley just east of town. It runs a free shuttle to Ubud Palace through the day.
• Dinner in central Ubud with friends who'd flown in for the wedding, then gelato on the walk back.

Wedding, day one

• The first day was a traditional East Asian ceremony from 1 to 7 PM, with afternoon high tea. Guests were asked to wear traditional East Asian clothes or their own cultural dress, and to avoid red and white.
• If you're a guest at a destination wedding in Bali, pack light fabrics. It was in the low 80s and humid all afternoon.

Rice terraces, a massage and the second wedding

• Late morning at Tegallalang Rice Terrace, 20 minutes north of Kamandalu. Expect small entry and donation fees at the paths, and paid swings over the valley. Go early: by midday it's hot and busy.
• A massage at Putri Ubud Spa 2, recommended by a friend. The best spa for the price we found in Ubud.
• The second day was a Western wedding, 3:30 PM to midnight, in light suits and long dresses.

Back through Changi, and the Jewel

• A shuttle to the airport, then AirAsia back to Singapore for the long flight home.
• With a few hours at Changi, walk over to Jewel to see the Rain Vortex, the world's tallest indoor waterfall. It's free, connected to Terminals 1 to 3 and open to anyone.
• Changi is also the last chance to shop: kaya jam, and Hainanese chicken rice and chili crab sauce kits. There's even a Tian Tian chicken rice in Jewel, open daily.