I woke up at 6:18 like clockwork and had a coffee as I wrote in my book. We went down to breakfast at 8am. Breakfast was slightly different this morning, I had noodles and soft boiled eggs. We set out on our adventure to the Gardens by the Bay at around 9am. We walked to Kallang station and took the train to Bugis station where we transferred and went to the Bay front stop. In the metro Jives played the piano, he loves playing the public pianos when we travel!

We entered the Gardens by the Bay via the Dragonfly bridge which brings you right to the giant trees. First we explored the Chinese gardens and walked along a pond where we saw so many blooming flowers (I took sooo many photos of plants to show my mom…and for me, let’s be fair.) 

We then decided to go to the Cloud Garden before it got too busy. Thai was about 9:30am, and I think it was honestly pretty good timing. We got tickets to the Cloud Garden and the Flower Garden, as the Cloud Garden was $45 and both combined were $53.

We started at the Cloud Garden, which is definitely the more popular of the two gardens. You’ve probably seen photos of the Cloud Garden online already, it’s pretty popular…it’s a huge mountain of gardens weaving up to the top of the glass greenhouse ceiling. As we walked into the greenhouse, it was watering time and the entire greenhouse was in mist and it really added to the jungle feeling of the place. I could hardly see a few metres ahead of me.

When you first enter you are greeted by a huge waterfall cascading from the ceiling down to the ground you are standing on. We then slowly wound our way up to the top of the “canopy” or glass ceiling and back down again. I was intrigued by all the orchids I had never seen before!

One orchid in particular was white and brown speckled like coffee beans on cream. I took too many photos… The current theme of the Cloud Forest is “Avatar”. I found it a bit tacky, but Jives liked it. We spent well over an hour in the Cloud Forest before heading to the flower garden.

The Flower Garden was much less impressive, arranged by geographical location mostly ie. Mediterranean gardens, american.. I found the cactus and succulent garden to be the most interesting. They also had a temporary exhibit of Chrysanthemums which are my birth flower, but not my favourite by a long shot.

We then wandered in the regular gardens by the bay (the part you don’t have to pay to see) before going up to the OCBC SkyWay with tickets we had purchased online a few weeks before for $12 each.

These tickets allow you to ascend one of the iconic trees and walkalong a narrow canopy bridge among the treetops. You are only allowed 15 minutes up on the bridge, but my thought is that they are only strict about it when it is busy, which in the heat of the day it was not.

The view of the bay from up top is worth $12 for sure! It was pretty windy when we were up there though, so we timed that poorly. We then walked through the Marina Bay Sands Hotel on the way to the metro. The hotel is very impressive, as it better be at $5000 a night!