Walking tours are a great way to experience a city. Unfortunately, many “walking tours”, as the name suggests, aren’t accessible for people with wheelchairs due to tours having steps, rough terrain, or the assumption that wheelchairs aren’t able to cover the distances.
We found a fantastic walking tour of Singapore that was 100% wheelchair accessible, that shows how easy it is to create great accessible walking tour experience. Our 8-hour Singapore tour covered over 10 km and allowed us to experience incredible neighbourhoods, food, and cultural experiences.
Read on to find out about our walking tour and the best places to visit in Singapore!
Ludas Lab Tours
We booked our walking tour with Ludas Lab, a company led by guides with disability that aims to “power inclusive adventures” through providing accessible travel experiences, training programs, and information via the Accessible Singapore Website.
What I love about Ludas Lab is that they are looking for innovative ways to make travel accessible, from 3D printed replicas of buildings for people with vision impairments to have tactile experiences, to incorporating sensory experiences for neurodiverse travellers.
We booked an 8-hour customised private walking tour as we only had one day to see the highlights of Singapore. We opted for the walking + public transport tour over the private taxi tour option for a couple of reasons:
- The walking tour was a cheaper option.
- Most wheelchair taxis have low windows, so if you are in a tall power wheelchair like me, all you can see out of windows is bottom half of foot paths and roads. Walking and public transport would allow me to see so much more.
- Singapore has exceptional accessible public transport. Check out my post on Singapore public transport here.
Our guide was Yock Song (nickname “YS”) who met us at our hotel (check out my review of the VOCO Orchard Hotel here). To save us needing to stop regularly for YS to point out and explain landmarks, YS equipped us with wireless earpieces. This allowed us to fit more in to the day and also gave us the “secret spy” experience with our hidden earpieces.
Orchard Road
Our walk started along the wide pavements of Orchard Road. Once lined with fruit orchards, Orchard Road is now a famous shopping street lined with mega expensive designer shopping malls. Along the way, YS pointed out some cool architecture and told us about schemes to create green spaces on top of and on the sides of buildings, and why most Singaporeans use public transport due to tariffs making car ownership expensive to reduce congestion and carbon emissions.
Maxwell Food Centre
We took the subway (see my post on Singapore transport) from Orchard MRT to Maxwell MRT. Right next door to the MRT station, is the Maxwell Food Centre. The Maxwell Food Centre is arguably one of the most popular Hawker Centres in Singapore. This open-air food hall contains over 100 food stalls that serve affordable, authentic food.
Arriving right on lunchtime, the food hall was bustling! The first thing we noticed was the huge line up of people waiting for Tian Tian, known for its Hainese chicken and rice.
Hot tip: skip the lineup and go to the nearby Ah Tai stall, run by a former chef at Tian Tian. They sell an almost identical version which YS tells us tastes just as good. It’s also featured in Netflix’s “Somebody Feed Phil” so you know it’s good!
There are hundreds of fixed tables and stools, some of which had spaces for wheelchairs at the end or between seats. I found it easy enough to weave through the tables and lineups of people in my wheelchair. People were also friendly and made room for me to get past. There are toilets at the Maxwell centre, but no accessible toilets. However, there are accessible toilets next door at the MRT station.
YS tasked us with “choping” a table while he went to order food for us. In Singapore, chope is slang for reserving a table by placing a napkin or tissue scrunched up in the centre while you go order your food.
YS returned with a smorgasbord of food and drink. He did a great job of accommodating our vegetarian, onion free, low wheat requests. Some of the food we ate included:
- chicken and rice,
- black and white carrot cake (more like a frittata made of radish and egg rather than the sweet carrot cake you get in Australia),
- popiah (spring rolls filled with vegetables),
- oyster omelette,
- roti prata (an Indian flatbread filled with sugar, spice, and coconut),
- Kiuh Malayan pastries,
- and refreshing palm sugar drinks.
We ate so much food we nearly burst!
roti prata, cane sugar drinks, and our table “chope”.
Chinatown
The Maxwell Food Centre lies right in the centre of Singapore’s Chinatown. Unlike the Chinatowns in other cities, this Chinatown is lined with old two-storey shop houses. At street level, we passed shops and cafés, poking our heads down alleyways to view colourful murals. Above street level, the shop houses have shutters painted in pretty yellows, pinks, and purples.
In addition to the shop houses, there are 2 large temples. We strolled past the relatively new (built in 2007) Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, but didn’t go in.
Instead, we visited the Sri Mariamman Hindu temple. This temple has ramp entry through the large timber doors, where we were met with vibrantly coloured sculptures and wall carvings of Hindu gods and goddesses. Open corridors and tiled courtyards provided a nice breeze, with the scent of incense wafting through the air. Shawls are provided inside if you don’t have your own, for modesty purposes.
Meandering through the streets of Chinatown, we stopped to examine some of the products at a traditional Chinese medicine store… Dried bats and snakes.
YS also made sure we sampled some local delicacies. First was pandan chiffon cake. The green colour was a little off-putting, but it was so good! – like eating a sweet, fluffy cloud!
Unfortunately, our next tasting was not so delicious… Durians. These spiky, football-sized fruits filled with a soft, yellow fleshy have a smell so pungent and long lasting that they are banned from trains and hotels. Nevertheless, we put on our gloves and tasted the durian, immediately regretting our decision. It wasn’t so much the strange fruity custard x onion flavour, but more the overripe banana left at the bottom of a kid’s schoolbag texture that had our faces contorting in disgust.
Little India
Returning to the Maxwell MRT station, we took the MRT to Little India.
Little India was a completely different world, just like stepping into a mini version of India. Immediately, our senses were taken over by smells of spices, incense, and flowers. The hum of scooters, vendors selling their wares, and Bollywood music streamed through the street.
We wove our way through the bustling outdoor market, and into the narrow alleyways of the indoor market filled with stalls selling saris, elephant ornaments, and henna tattoos. To get rid of the taste of durian, we tried some Indian treats – Gooseberries at a fruit market, pani puri (fried balls of mashed potato and chickpea dough filled with a red tamarin and spicy mint liquid blast), and my new favourite, jalebi (bright orange spirals of crispy, sticky sugar syrup).
Our next stop was the Tekka Centre – part food hall, part wet market, part shopping centre full of gold jewellery and sari shops. Here, YS introduced us to Singaporean coffee (Kopi) and how to order using the local lingo. While the food looked and smelled amazing here, we had already eaten so much food we could not fit in another bite!
Kampong Glam
Next, we took a bus to another completely different district, Kampong Glam a.k.a. the Arab quarter. In this area there were some cute little bars and lots of Middle Eastern restaurants. We walked along Arab Street: a street lined with palm trees with the gold-domed Sultan Mosque at the end of the street. This wide, paved pedestrian walkway was a smooth ride for the wheelchair, although I had to dodge several Instagrammers posing in the the street.
Speaking of Instagram-worthy locations, we headed into Haji Lane, with its colourful street art and trendy boutiques. Just like Harajuku in Tokyo, this street is lined with quirky vintage shops and unusual photo booths (think washing machine themed backdrops).
Some narrow lanes in this area were a little bumpier and I had to drive on the road rather than on the sidewalk. As this area was mostly pedestrian areas, it was fine to get around.
Marina Bay
As the sun began to set, we jumped on a bus to the Marina Bay area. Crossing the Jubilee bridge, we looked across the bay to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, with its world-famous surfboard shaped rooftop sky bar. It is quite a long way around from this side of the bay to the hotel, so would recommend using the MRT to get over there.
The Marina area has a wide, smooth, promenade leading down to the Merlion, Singapore’s most iconic fountain statue. We got our Merlion + Marina Bay Sands sunset and lights group selfie, strategically angling to cut out the other hundred people in the background doing the same thing as us.
It was time to head back towards our hotel. We strolled along the Marina waterfront restaurants, through the glamorous chandelier foyer of the Fullerton hotel, and passed Raffles Hotel, home of the Singapore Sling cocktail.
Catching the MRT back to Orchard Road, we grabbed a light dinner in a food hall in one of the Orchard Road shopping malls. I cannot tell you which building it was, only that it was one of the many underground, interconnected, malls full of Gucci and Cartier. These underground malls are designed for you to get lost. In a wheelchair, while you might be able to see an exit, it is hard to find your way out due to sub- levels with steps and hidden elevators with not so great signage. Wheelchair or no wheelchair, I recommend factoring in at least 15 minutes to find your way out of these shopping centres.
Overall impressions
I was so impressed with the accessibility of our tour. From the outset with booking, everything was easy and accessible. YS asked all the right questions about my accessibility and dietary requirements, and on the tour listened and observed make sure we were comfortable. It turns out that this wasn’t just a “walking” tour Singapore, but more of an “everyone” tour of Singapore.
Ratings
Wow Factor: 5/5 Amazing. Definitely want to return and see more of Singapore.
Cobble index: 4/5 Gentle. 99% very smooth, 1% bumpy side streets.
Barrier free barometer: 5/5 Exceptional. All our accessibility requirements were met.
Want more?
Check out the Accessible Singapore website for more information about Singapore.
You can also check out my other blogs about Singapore:
Getting around Singapore in a wheelchair
How to find wheelchair accessible accommodation in Singapore
Disclaimer
All opinions expressed in this blog are my own and all reviews are non-solicited. I understand that every disability is different, and what works for me may not work for everyone – it’s important to do your own research on any destination or accommodation to make sure that it meets your accessibility requirements.