Singapore Tour Packages from Nepal

Three nights is enough for the city tour, Gardens by the Bay and an afternoon on Sentosa, and with the non-stop flight from Kathmandu that fits into four days of leave. Four nights adds a full day at Universal Studios and an evening at the Night Safari. Five nights leaves room for the zoo and the aquarium with children, or for two nights in a resort on Sentosa.

Singapore is small. Changi Airport is about half an hour from the centre, Sentosa about twenty minutes, and the zoo and Night Safari in the north about forty. Every outing is a day trip from one hotel, and the only reason to change hotels is to spend nights on Sentosa.

Nepal is not on the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority's list of countries whose citizens need a visa, so a Nepali passport holder on holiday applies for nothing before the trip. There is no visa fee.

At the checkpoint the officer grants a visit pass. It is not stamped in the passport; ICA sends it to you by email, and it states the last day you may stay. How many days you are given is the officer's decision. ICA's entry page asks every visitor for a passport valid for at least six months, and you should be ready to show a return or onward ticket, your hotel booking and enough money for the stay.

Every foreign visitor submits the SG Arrival Card within the three days before arriving, the day of arrival included, on ICA's website or in the MyICA app. It includes a health declaration. It is not a visa, and each traveller, children included, needs their own.

The arrival card is free. ICA says so on the same page, and says it has nothing to do with the commercial sites that charge for filling it in. If a site asks you to pay, you are not on ICA's site.

Kathmandu has non-stop flights to Changi, which take about five hours. The main one leaves late at night and lands early in the morning. Hotel rooms in Singapore are usually ready from 3 pm, so we plan the first day around that, and an early check-in, if you want one, is booked and paid for separately.

Flights that change planes in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok are often cheaper. Buy both legs on one ticket, so that your bags go through and you stay in the transit area. With two separate tickets you would have to collect your bags and check in again, which means entering Malaysia or Thailand, and both ask a Nepali passport for a visa.

Before you leave Nepal, the immigration office at Tribhuvan airport checks that a traveller on a visit is a tourist. It lists what it asks for: your passport, a two-way ticket, a hotel booking, and USD 500 or its equivalent with the stamp of the bank that sold it. Carry all four in your hand luggage.

Singapore and Malaysia make an easy pair, joined by a coach of five or six hours or a flight of one. The rule that shapes the route is Malaysia's. Its eVISA allows a Nepali passport one entry, used up when you leave Malaysia, so a second entry needs a second application and a second fee. Singapore needs no visa, so entering it twice costs nothing but a new arrival card.

So fly into one country and home from the other. Into Singapore and home from Kuala Lumpur works, and so does the reverse. A route that starts and ends in Kuala Lumpur with Singapore in the middle needs two Malaysian visas. Our Malaysia page explains the eVISA itself.

Singapore's customs rules are stricter than those of its neighbours. Singapore Customs prohibits chewing gum, other than gum for dental or medical use. Vapes and e-cigarettes are illegal to bring in, to own and to use, and so are chewing tobacco, including gutkha, khaini and zarda, and shisha. These are taken at the checkpoint and the traveller is fined.

There is no duty-free allowance for cigarettes or any other tobacco: every packet must be declared at the red channel and the tax paid, and packets without Singapore's plain packaging are not allowed in at all. Alcohol has an allowance of up to two litres, with no more than one litre of spirits, for travellers who have been out of Singapore for at least 48 hours, but not for anyone arriving from Malaysia. The customs allowance page sets out the combinations.

The drug laws are among the harshest in the world. If you take prescription medicine, carry it in its packaging with the doctor's prescription. Cash above SGD 20,000, or its equivalent, must be declared on entry, which no holiday budget comes near.

Take US dollars, which a bank in Nepal sells you against your passport and ticket, and change them at a licensed money changer in Singapore; those in Little India and the malls give better rates than the airport. Nepal Rastra Bank's exchange rate list puts one Singapore dollar at about NPR 119, so SGD 10 is roughly NPR 1,190. Cards and contactless payment are taken almost everywhere, including on the metro and buses, but Nepal Rastra Bank caps what a Nepali card can spend abroad, so ask your bank how much of the limit you have.

Two charges surprise visitors. Prices in restaurants and hotels marked with two plus signs, ++, add a 10 percent service charge and then 9 percent GST on top, about 20 percent in all. Because of the service charge, tipping is not expected. Hawker centres and shops show the full price.

Shops in the Tourist Refund Scheme give back most of the GST on goods worth at least SGD 100 from one shop. Show your passport when you pay, and claim the refund at the kiosks at Changi before you leave.

The domes at Gardens by the Bay, the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest, each close for maintenance on one weekday a month, never both on the same day. The free light show in the Supertree Grove runs every evening at 7:45 and 8:45 pm. The Night Safari opens in the evening on timed entry, and Universal Studios is busiest at weekends and in school holidays. We plan the days around all of these.

Singapore fines for things that pass elsewhere: littering, eating or drinking on the metro, crossing the road away from a crossing, and smoking outside marked areas. Temples in Little India and Chinatown ask you to cover your shoulders and knees and to take off your shoes. Sockets take the three-pin British plug, which Nepali chargers do not fit, so bring an adapter.

Jewel, with the Rain Vortex waterfall, is on the public side of Changi Airport beside Terminal 1. Visit it on arrival or before you check in for your flight home; a passenger only changing planes cannot reach it without passing immigration.

The police number in Singapore is 999, and the ambulance and fire service 995. Hotels have staff on duty around the clock, and your first call for a problem on tour is our WhatsApp number, which we answer around the clock while you are away.

Nepal has no embassy in Singapore. The Embassy of Nepal in Bangkok covers it, as Nepal's foreign ministry lists, so for a lost passport or anything else that needs your own government, contact Bangkok. Save the number before you fly, along with ours, and keep a photo of your passport and visit pass email on your phone.