The plan: Enjoy riding the Singapore MRT North East Line to see how Singapore changes from one stop to the next. The rules: Get out at every stop and spend ten to fifteen minutes wandering around (no more than fifteen unless there’s food involved). Walk up all escalators. Stop only for photos and snacks.

This post was the first in my Singapore by MRT and LRT series. Looking for more rail adventures? Check out Singapore by MRT and LRT, where you’ll find every line and every stop.

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HarbourFront

This is the southern terminus of the North East Line. The MRT here sits underneath VivoCity, a giant shopping mall that has a lot of stores and not a lot of character (this describes most malls in Singapore). The highlight involves going upstairs and outside, where you can look out over the sea to the island of Sentosa, Singapore’s self-proclaimed State of Fun:

HarbourFront is an intermodal transportation hub; from here, you can hop on a ferry (it’ll likely take you to Indonesia), ride the Sentosa Express train, or enjoy a gondola ride to either Mt. Faber or Sentosa. If you’re hungry, you don’t have to go anywhere — you can eat at any number of restaurants, including one that features this camel:

Every MRT stop has some sort of station art, and HarbourFront is no exception. For reasons I cannot explain, it hosts this giant foot:

Outram Park

Sitting at the southern edge of Chinatown, Outram Park is home to hipster cafes, a police complex, the sprawling Singapore General Hospital, and the occasional impressive condo.

Walk past the blockier buildings, and you’ll be rewarded with all sorts of fun things, from murals …

… to traditional five-foot-way floor tiles …

… to 1920s architecture.

The Outram Park station is large, clean, and neat:

It’s bare as many stations go, but they’ve added art, including Memories III: Medallions, by Wang Lu Sheng…

… these pressed into the wall …

… and this giant kimono:

Many Singapore MRT stations have some mix of advertising and public service announcements. When I visited, this one caught my eye, mostly because I loved the text that accompanied it: “A handsome man you met online declares his love for you, then asks for money to help him out. Don’t fall for his love trap…. Since 2017, internet love scammers have cold-heartedly crushed lovelorn dreams, stealing about $49 million.” That’s quite a warning:

Chinatown

This is by far the most touristy of the stops on the North East Line (though a few of the others that follow come close). It’s very active and lively. Just outside the station, you can see all the way to downtown:

The streets in Chinatown are lined with restaurants, renovated shophouses …

… and stores (most of which sell low-quality souvenirs, but a few of which offer exciting goods like Chinese tea and traditional pots):

Chinatown is one of my favorite places in Singapore to explore tea culture — here are a few places you can find taste and buy it.

You’ll find wonderful murals if you sneak through the alleyways (for more Chinatown murals, check out this post).

There are two great hawker centers in Chinatown, and the one closest to the station — in the Chinatown Complex — is among my favorites. It’s more of a walk to the even-more-famous Maxwell Food Centre, but well worth it. And you can enjoy the poetry in the Chinatown station upon your return.

Clarke Quay

There’s not much to see when you exit the station…

… but walk just a block, and you’ll find yourself at the Singapore River:

From here, you can take a very long walk up to Robertson Quay, down to Boat Quay, or all the way to Marina Bay. If you want, you can stop at a pricey, heavily touristed riverside restaurants for a quick snack.

I like that this Clarke Quay station entrance echoes the prows of the traditional sampan boats that once crowded the nearby docks.

The station floor continues the theme.

If you take exit A out of the Clarke Quay station, you will find yourself at Speaker’s Corner, the only place in Singapore where citizens can hold demonstrations and make speeches without a permit (under a whole bunch of restrictive conditions). It’s basically a large patch of grass where large groups of people can (but rarely do) gather.

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Dhoby Ghaut

This is where you go if you want to shop all day, every day. Dhoby Ghaut station leads you straight up to the southern end of the famous Orchard Road …

… home to one shopping mall after another:

My notes from this stop say, “So many shops! So many escalators!”

Three MRT lines meet up here — the North South (Red), the Circle (Yellow), and the North East (Purple) — making Dhoby Ghaut one of the craziest stations on this particular venture. And Dhoby Ghaut is the largest MRT station in all of Singapore, so it’s no surprise that the whole thing feels a little overwhelming.

Little India

The scene changes significantly in Little India — here you find more color, more scents, more crowds, and more grit (not a lot — this is Singapore after all — but it’s a marked difference from the shiny cleanliness of Orchard Road). It always feels a little more crowded and a little louder than the rest of the island.

The streets here are crammed with people and items for sale that spill out right onto the sidewalks, from electronics and toys to elaborate flower garlands …

… to bins of colorful fruits and vegetables …

Little India is great for wandering — and, of course, for eating. The art in the station recalls India’s agricultural roots:

Farrer Park

You can think of this as “Little India North” — it’s still very Indian, but it’s mellower and easier to get around. This is where you get off if you want to visit the Mustafa Center (which some say is the largest store in the world under a single roof). This area also has wonderful old shophouses and excellent vegetarian restaurants, should you find yourself getting peckish. Or you can pay a visit to the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple:

This south Indian temple boasts a range of wonderful statuary — few cultures can beat the south Indians for elaborate and brightly-colored deities.

Boon Keng

Home to Bendeemer Market & Food Centre, this bustling area just north of Little India has an entirely different flavor. You can buy groceries here …

… or stop for a juice at a hawker stall …

… but everything is under one giant covered roof …

… because you’ve now entered the land of HDBs:

The enormous blocky structures are a sign that you’ve left the older parts of Singapore, which hug the south-central coast, and have now reached the suburbs. But these aren’t the suburbs of the US — you won’t find picket fences and green lawns — rather, these are the suburbs as envisioned by the Singaporean government of the mid-twentieth century. The country’s Housing and Development Board (HDB) eventually built thousands of apartment buildings all over the island. And while they often look very similar, they’re not without a certain beauty:

Back at Boon Keng Station, the loose, cheerful art makes me smile:

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Potong Pasir

This is the first place where the suburbs start to feel truly suburban, where the streets are wide and everything feels just a little bit empty.

You’ll find a mixture of condos …

… and HDBs:

I warmed to Potong Pasir as I walked around, largely because the food stalls at the edge of the HDB complex were crowded and interesting. I’m not sure I will make a return trip (the notes from my visit say, “not super fun”), but it made for a good bit of exploring.

Woodleigh

Once cemetery land as far as the eye could see, Woodleigh now presents a relentless march of condos and HDBs.

There’s a mall as well, and at first glance, it looks like there isn’t much else. But if you follow the signs through the mall, you’ll find yourself in lovely Bidadari Park.

This park isn’t very big, but it’s teeming with wildlife. I sat in a blind and watched a little heron search for fish as yellow-vented bulbuls and a pink-necked green pigeon flew through the branches overhead.

Part of the reason this park is so successful is that Singapore is encouraging actual wilderness (as wild as you’ll get by Singapore standards). The National Parks Board has focused on wetlands restoration and the revival of Alkaff Lake, which the government once filled in so that they could build a secondary school. They have also installed everything from raptor perches to tree snags to encourage habitats for birds, insects, mosses and fungi.

Enjoy a quick walk here — it’s a lovely respite. And don’t miss this mural near the start.

Serangoon

HDBs stretch out in every direction here, packed so closely together that it is impossible to see anything else.

I walked around for ten minutes and saw nothing — nothing — but HDB flats. This was probably my second-least-favorite stop on the line, though at least you can look up and see laundry waving from the balconies above.

Serangoon also provides a connection to the Circle Line and the giant NEX mall, should you be looking to do any shopping.

Kovan

This was the biggest surprise of the trip, the first place in the suburbs where HDBs gave way to two- and three-story landed houses.

I found a mix of single-family homes and HDBs and condos, traditional eating houses and cute cafes (Lola’s was packed, with a line out the door).

You can wander up to the Phoh Kiu Siang T’ng temple, which pops up in the middle of a random side street.

This temple sits in the midst of a fairly wealthy group of houses. I loved their plantings — especially this succulent that appears to have little leaves growing out of big ones:

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Hougang

Now you’re back to the world of HDBs, but with a twist: in addition to the traditional food stalls at the town center, there’s a small mall tucked in behind the Hougang community hub:

But it’s mostly HDBs, both right in front of the station …

… and far out across this oddly empty field:

During durian season, stalls brim with this controversial fruit (I’m in the small camp of people who love the smell but are iffy about actually eating it).

Buangkok

This stop offered its own surprises. First of all, the HDBs here look newer, which means that the architects have been a bit more creative with shapes …

… and with painting:

You can take a short walk from the station to Punggol Park (this was the one time when I broke my no-longer-than-fifteen-minutes-per-stop rule). Punggol Park runs alongside the Punggol River …

… and includes a small, manmade lake …

Along my walk, I stumbled on the Puti Buddhist Temple (stumbling on temples is easy to do in Singapore):

Buangkok’s station art features hornbills, which I liked:

Sengkang

Everyone piled off of the train at Sengkang Station, and I had no idea why. But when we got upstairs, the reason was clear: we were in a giant shopping mall:

This was the biggest mall I’d seen since Dhoby Ghaut Station (though I suspect the NEX mall at Serangoon is larger). Shopping is a favorite Sunday activity in Singapore, and this place was packed. Sengkang Station is also a hub for one of Singapore’s light rail transit (LRT) systems, so I’m sure that people were also getting off of our train to transfer to other nearby locations.

Outside of the station, you once again walk into a world of HDBs:

Punggol

The end of the line! Just outside of Punggol Station, you’ll find a large bus depot, which is crowded with both people and multiple forms of transport.

Other than that, Punggol Station leads you up to a sea of HDBs stretching out in every direction.

You can also walk to Punggol Waterway Park from here …

… or take rides on the Punggol LRT, a small but delightful light rail.

Punggol Coast

When I first hopped off the train, I wrote this note: “Awesome station. I’m obsessed.” Great colors, graphic lines, wide-open spaces … it’s just fantastic. You can tell immediately that the Punggol Coast MRT station opened over ten years later than any of its predecessors. A multi-story artwork greets you the minute you step onto the platform.

The station takes you out into a cavernous, open-air atrium that connects to the Punggol Coast Mall and the tall buildings of the Punggol Digital District, including the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) campus.

This is a land of modern structures, green walls, and elevated bridges.

Punggol Coast is a busy spot, complete with a bus interchange, hawker centre, and access to the Teck Lee and Punggol Point LRT stations. You can also walk over to the Punggol Heritage Trail — it’s short, but it’s lovely to wander through some greenery and hear birds singing after so much concrete and glass.

As a bonus, if you read the signs, you’ll learn that this area once boasted Singapore’s first public zoo and bird park., which opened in 1928. It may be hard to believe, but this rainforest was once home to tigers, lions, crocodiles, and even polar bears.

On a sunny day, a twelve-minute walk from the Punggol Coast station will bring you to both Singapore’s Coast-to-Coast Trail and Coney Island, a rustic nature reserve.

Final Reflections on Riding the Singapore MRT North East Line

I loved my day on the MRT, though it was exhausting — I walked 24,000 steps, climbed 54 floors, and spent nearly seven hours on the adventure. But it was fascinating to see Singapore evolve and to experience the MRT itself over an entire line (as a side note, if you want to read some MRT fun facts, this page is great).

If you want to try this sort of adventure, the North East Line is a good place to start — at just seventeen stops, it’s one of the shortest in Singapore.