Travel bubble: explore Singapore’s red light district, war bunkers and heritage hotspots on alternative tours of the city

Will it or won’t it open in May? The Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble has long been discussed – and last November was just hours from being opened, before Covid-19 snatched it away – and there’s no harm in hoping that, this time, it will inflate.

To whet your appetite for what’s likely to be Hong Kong’s first getaway, here’s a rundown of the best the Lion City has to offer in unusual guided tours.

Exploring the Abandoned World War II Marsiling Bunkers

“Trust me, this tree root will support you as you climb down,” explains our guide, Scott Tay, as he tugs at a tangled creeper to show it will take his weight. Surrounded by thick jungle foliage, Tay is standing at the lip of an overgrown and very slippery-looking hole: the entrance to a disused World War II bunker.

It’s the second, and larger, of the bunkers we visit. Both are part of the former Marsiling fuel depot and the basis for a quirky new tour by Tay’s Beyond Expeditions, which aims to help people experience “a wilder side of Singapore”.

Tay is true to his word – both in terms of the wildness and the root, which easily supports my weight as I use it to keep upright while slithering down the greasy slope. At the bottom, I find myself standing in a muddy puddle, the head torches of the other group members bouncing off the walls of the narrow tunnel that leads deeper into the complex.

Constructed before World War II to fuel British Royal Air Force planes, these bunkers have been abandoned and mostly forgotten for decades, hidden away in a patch of jungle in northern Singapore overlooking the causeway to Malaysia. This is no carefully curated heritage tour, but rather a mini-adventure that has participants hiking through the jungle before battling mud and ankle-deep water to explore the partially derelict bunkers.