Singapore Serial: Exploring Orchard Road and the Surround Areas
I believe that everybody has visited Orchard road in Singapore, especially if you have shopping as one of your hobbies. There are thousands of shopping centres along the Orchard road and you are able to choose any preferred stores based on your styles and needs. It will be a heaven for shopaholics.
In this post, I’d like to share my travel experience in Orchard road during Christmas and New Year’s eve. I went to Singapore on last December 2017 during Christmas moment. Along the Orchard road area was really happening with lots of unique and creative Christmas decoration with full of lamps and creative shape, such as Snowman, Christmas Train, Christmas Tree and others. There are lots of people capture this moment by take some photos of its decorations or themselves with their relatives. They were having fun. I believe the creator want to create the moment and be memorable for the tourists as well as locals. The decorations would light up at night with different lamp colours, which will create the uniqueness for each decoration. However, the decorations would show some uniqueness as well during the day with no light.
I stayed in Orchard road area and I can tell that this area is very crowded especially after 2pm until late at night. Based on my research, there would be different people who passed by this area in the morning, day and night. There are a lot of tourists in the morning until around 1 pm, who walked through this road to the tourism site. There were less people shopping around at that time except in the souvenir shops, which was good for me because the atmosphere quieter and more organized. They also capture the moment with the built-up decorations along the road.
When I passed the Orchard road to Bras Basah road, my eyes fixed on statue of the Star Wars characters with the Star Wars design on the main door area in one mall in Orchard road. This show was really distract my eyes and it was so interesting, which made a lot of people took some photos in that areas and the Star Wars promotion would ran well. It was like a game booth but they were stay still.
The situation was very different at night. It was changed on PM hour. The atmosphere became very crowded with most of Asian tourists were walking around, starting 2 PM onward. And most of the stores in Orchard area became full and I couldn’t walk freely. Besides the decorations light up, there were many attractions were happened in this area, such as musical attractions, acrobat, and others. Those are very attractive. There were a lot of people sitting in the stairs in front of the mall to look those attractions or just sitting around with their relatives. In terms of capturing the moment, there were more people took some photos of those attractions, decorations, atmosphere, cute booths, and most activities that happened in the area that night. Strangely, as the time went AM, the atmosphere became more crowded.
If you plan to to visit Orchard road in Singapore, there are my tips for you to avoid the inconvenient feeling that will change your mood.
- Don’t ever shop after 2 PM as it will be very crowded and it’s gonna be a long queue.
- It’d be great if you do some surveys or research at the desired stores on a day before and do shopping a day after in the morning or at least before 12 PM, when he stores just open. It will be more convenience for you.
- As it is going to be a long walk needed, just forget about wearing the high heels and be in love with sneakers and sandals. This is to avoid the sore feet because you won’t feel that you walk too far if you do shopping.
- Bring the shopping bag from home, because it will be more convenient if you bring only one large shopping bag instead of lots of plastic bags in hands.
- Do not get too excited with the sale sign at the front of the shop because they usually have the goods with less discount at the back side of the shop as well as more varieties offered.
- Bring a bottle of water.
Instead of lots of shops, there are many destinations that you may get interested to visit at, which are:
- Singapore Visitor Centre
- Foods Centre on along the way to Istana
- Istana
- Istana Garden
- Plaza Singapura
- Singapore Art Museum
- Church
I will explain about those destinations in my next posts. Thanks for reading.
Lifestyle Guidance References 