Stepping into the malls of Singapore is like entering the gates of hell

Sydney Morning Herald

07-07-2025

Getting to Raffles is bad enough. It should have taken 15 minutes if I had walked outside but it takes an hour going the subterranean route. I ask five people for directions, which roughly amounted every time to 'if you go straight in this direction, it's just there'. It never is.
Eventually, I venture outside and find a girl organising tourist buses who gives clear instructions. A delightful afternoon tea at Raffles lures me into thinking I have the logistics down pat. I need to retrace my steps, right?
Not so easy. Everything looks different from another direction. There are signs, but only for places I don't need to find.
After two hours of going back and forward along long corridors with no distinct landmarks – there are at least five Ecco Shoes stores by my count – I start having a total meltdown. There are multiple food halls. Multiple pharmacies. All start to look the same.
Two helpful women at the reception desks of two separate tower buildings look the hotel up on their computers - and still send me in the wrong direction. Or what I think is the wrong direction. But maybe it's the right one, I just need to walk further?
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GPS is no use. On an upper level, I look out the window of whatever mall I am in now and can see my hotel in the distance, across the freeway. I need to find the bridge that gets me across the road.
There is a French guy outside a cosmetics store who tries to give me a free sample of something the first time I go past his shop. I wave him away, but I will go past him four more times, by which time this becomes embarrassing. Finally, I admit I'm lost, and he points in one direction. He thinks it's that way.
This time, I'm smarter. I can see out the window that my hotel is definitely north (or south, who knows?) but he is pointing south. I go in exactly the opposite direction to what he suggests, and end up taking escalators down to the street, where I see a traffic guy.
He points to a tall escalator. Go up there. Do a little dogleg and I'll find a smaller escalator that will take me to a bridge (I can see it) which will take me across the road towards the hotels.
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There's no small escalator that I can see, of course. Finally, I co-opt the help of a woman in an elevator. I know I look as exhausted and distressed as I feel, so she kindly shows me the way to the walkway.
Five minutes later, I'm in Marina Square. I can see signs to Millenia Walk, which I think is also near my hotel. Success!
I have been in those malls for three hours.
Singaporeans love their old shopping centres, I hear. They remind them of a time when Singapore was slower – and lower.
But I'm convinced none of them knows how to get around them.