Singaporean travel writer Jaclynn Seah has been published in The Culture Trip, South China Morning Post, Tripadvisor, Skyscanner and The Straits Times. She started her blog, The Occasional Traveller, in 2010 to inspire busy people to travel more. We invited her to give us a window into life in her home city, Singapore.
My Blog
How I started my blog, The Occasional Traveller
I was working in advertising back in 2010 and at the end of the year I had a lot
of annual leave days that hadn’t been utilized. I realized that I somehow had forgotten to
travel that year because I was so busy. I started the blog as a way to remind myself of my
past trips and inspire myself to travel more. But along the way it also became a useful way
to give people tips on places I had been before, without having to repeat myself.
I first realised I had something big when…
My blog started to get more popular around 2013-2015 when the blog was nominated for some awards and I also started writing for other travel websites. Quite honestly, I’ve never written the blog purely for traffic or revenue, but It was doing pretty well. Then COVID struck, and my traffic plummeted. It has still not regained its original numbers.
To aspiring bloggers, who want to earn from their writing while travelling the world, I would say…
If you want your blog to be a business from the start, then you have to treat it as such,
picking topics that will bring you traffic and investing in your blog and manpower to run it. I
decided quite early on that while I’m happy to get any side income or opportunities from my
blog, it’s not my main source of income so I have more leeway to pick and choose
partnerships accordingly. But I was freelancing for a couple of years and a bit more
dependent on my blog. Even then I had to seriously consider taking on offers I wasn’t so
keen on but paid well.
My City, My Love
Hi, I am Jac, a travel lover born and brought up in Singapore. I wake up daily to:
My darling cat demanding some attention.
A local favourite breakfast is:
Kaya toast dipped in soft boiled eggs mixed with a dash of soya sauce and pepper and washed down with some milk tea, which I like to enjoy at Ya Kun or Toast Box when I have the time .
TS Adds: From its humble beginnings as a modest coffee stall in the 1940s, the name of Ya Kun has become synonymous with unparalleled kaya toast and irresistibly fragrant coffee and tea, enjoyed amidst a cosy atmosphere.
Established in October 2005, Toast Box is a Singaporean contemporary coffee chain rooted in the recreation of Nanyang coffee and toast culture popular during the 1960s and 70s.
Kaya Toast is goes very well with a cup of local kopi (coffee) or teh (tea)—charcoal-grilled or toasted slices of bread enveloping slivers of cold butter and a generous spread of kaya (a traditional jam made from coconut and eggs).
Singapore’s most popular lunchtime dishes include:
Hainanese Chicken Rice, Bak Kut Teh and Laksa , but being a local, I suggest you try these lesser-known delights like Rojak, Frog Porridge and Nasi Padang.
If you were a first-time visitor to my city, I would take you to lunch at :
A Hawker Centre like Old Airport Road Food Centre or Chinatown Complex Food Centre
Singaporeans love coffee. Here’s how we take ours:
Our kopi is best enjoyed in old-school open air coffee shop, with the acrid scent of Robusta beans filling the air as the steaming liquid is strained in a netted sock. Typical kopi is black with condensed milk, but with the right lingo you can replace the latter with sugar, evaporated milk or even add some butter.
Singapore is fantastic for shopping, and here are my favourite shops for:
Shoes: Anothersole
Dresses: Reckless Ericka
Evenings in Singapore are for chilling out with friends. While the city is peppered with incredible bars and pubs, my favourites are as follows:
Brewerkz, Druggists and Smith Street Taps. On weekends, I sometimes head to the offshore islands for a break from the city, for its lack of tall buildings nearby.
When I am low, my city cheers me up with :
A cool drizzly morning where I can laze around in bed.
My city is at its most beautiful when:
The building lights are ablaze in the evening on a cool breezy night. There’s a reason the Formula 1 in Singapore is a night race.
An Interesting local trait about us is:
We Singaporeans are not the most chatty or friendly at first but are usually quite willing to
help when asked.
One Singapore secret very few might know….and that is my special travel secret for your readers!
Don’t limit yourself to Singapore’s big name attractions. There is a surprising amount of
nature in Singapore despite how built up it is. It might not be as spectacular or as vast as
wild regions in other parts of the world, but there is still some space where you can soak in nature for a bit if you want. Pulau Ubin’s Chek Jawa Wetland Reserve or Sungei Buloh
Nature Reserve are great for nature lovers and bird watchers, as well as those curious about
mangrove swamps.
