Five tips for exchange at the National University of Singapore
By Ottilie Allen
A double degree in a Bachelor of Science and Politics, Philosophy and Economics
2023 Semester 2, Exchange at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Hello! I’m so excited that you are interested in studying abroad! It can be pretty daunting trying to work out where you want to go, so I hope that this post gives you an insight into what it feels like to live in Singapore! So, here are my top five tips for exchange at NUS!
You will experience different cultures and meet people from all over the world!
Singapore truly is an international city. It’s history as a trading port has meant that loads of different people have brought their cultures to the ‘Lion City’. There are four national languages: English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. During my time in Singapore, I was lucky enough to experience different cultural festivals including the Hungry Ghost Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and Deepavali. The cultural diversity that you will experience is enhanced by the fact that NUS students come from all around the world! As an exchange student, I not only met NUS students from the Philippines, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, I also became close friends with exchangers from the UK, the US, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, New Zealand, Lithuania, Albania and Taiwan! This was a real highlight for me! I learnt so much more about the rest of the world while also experiencing the local life of Singapore.
You will complain about the heat
No matter how many people warned me about the Singaporean humidity, I didn’t fully appreciate what I was getting myself into until I had lived in an NUS student hall with no air conditioning. Quite a lot of the NUS accommodation options don’t have air conditioning, and while I did have a ceiling fan that saved my life, lots of us exchangers struggled to adapt to the heat. For context, most of the local students have portable AC units even though these aren’t strictly allowed. So, if you don’t have air conditioning in your accommodation, make sure that you get out of your room during the middle of the day when it is the hottest (the libraries, classrooms, common spaces and canteens on campus do have AC!) and have cold showers to cool yourself down before you go to bed to help you sleep well!
Food is cheap but alcohol (and anything else that is imported) is expensive
Eating at food/hawker centres around Singapore or at any of the canteens on NUS campus is ridiculously cheap! You can get a decent meal for around $4 SGD and fresh fruit juices or iced coffee for $2 SGD. If you need to buy things from supermarkets, Fair Price and Sheng Siong both are reasonably priced for things like fruit and vegetables and you can get cheap baked goods from places like Oishii Bakery and Breadtalk that are close to campus.
However, other items can be incredibly expensive. Alcohol is one of them. NUS has introduced stricter policies around the consumption of alcohol on campus (it is widely prohibited across University events). Therefore, you could spend lots of money going out into the city! My advice is to avoid drinking in the clubs! Boat Quay has some outdoor restaurants which have reasonably priced drinks, and other bars such as Idle do special nights where they have deals. Honestly though, my best advice would be to save the drinking for your South-east Asian travels – when the beer in Vietnam is $1 SGD, it tends to taste a lot better!
You can get ridiculously cheap flights to just about everywhere in South-east Asia!
If you want to travel, take advantage of being in one of the most central destinations in South-east Asia! You can literally drive to Malaysia, and flights to Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand are pretty cheap (especially if you travel in the off-season). I travelled to Vietnam during my recess week and it was one of the best trips that I’ve been on! I also spent a long weekend in Kuala Lumpur and another weekend in Johor Bahru in Malaysia. Some exchangers did a lot more travel than me but I was on a bit of a tighter budget. So you can definitely see a lot of Asia if you save money and plan some trips!
But remember to spend time in Singapore
Some of the most memorable parts of my exchange have been staying at Singaporean friends’ houses, going on field trips to nature reserves around the island (like Mac-Ritchie reservoir, Pulau Ubin and Bukit Timah), eating lots of food at hawker centres and playing tourist by ticking off famous Singaporean sights such as Marina Bay Sans, Little India, Chinatown and Gardens By the Bay. Singapore is often dismissed as being too planned out or artificial, and while it can feel this way at times, the city has so much more to offer. The truth is, that wherever you decide to go, you will find things that you like and don’t like about the destination. And that’s a good thing, because it also teaches you about the things that you like and don’t like about your home country!
Best of luck for exchange! I hope that you have an incredible time overseas!