Opinion Stepping into the malls of Singapore is like entering the gates of hell Lee Tulloch Travel columnist July 8, 2025 https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/re...tering-the-gates-of-hell-20250707-p5md4h.html The Health app on my phone tells me I’ve walked 14,200 steps today. That’s a pretty good tally for a day in Singapore. Except I spent all those steps in a labyrinth of shopping malls. Not shopping, mind you. Trying to get out. How do I get out of here? Singapore malls can be a maze.Credit: Alamy Singapore is hot and steamy year-round, which is why not much walking goes on above ground. But that means it’s hard to orient yourself once you descend to underground walkways, ramps and passages that connect many of the shopping malls and arcades. And for a city that is so ordered, what’s underground can be quite irrational. Singapore’s first air-conditioned mall, the Katong Shopping Centre on Mountbatten Road, opened in 1973. Dozens of malls flourished after that. Some from the 1970s and 1980s still stand, and many are linked to the newer, shinier malls of the 21st century. I’m staying in the Pan Pacific Singapore, and when I ask the concierge to direct me to a way to walk to Raffles, where I had an appointment for afternoon tea, his instructions seem simple enough. He advises me not to walk in the heat but to cut through the cooler linked malls underground. He draws a couple of arrows on the map, which take me into Suntec City, a conglomeration of shops just across the road. This turns out to be the gates to hell. 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? The Fountain of Wealth outside Suntec City.Credit: iStock 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? 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. 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. The writer was a guest of ILTM, the International Luxury Travel Market.
I really hate it when they make you walk to the other side of a section to get each up or down escalator... I've stayed a couple of nights in the old Raffles two decades ago, I'd love a high tea followed by several G&Ts, or their Singapore Slings though not too many as they are pure hangover. The advantage of pre-A/C days was you could drink anything and just sweat out the alcohol.