Lazarus, St John’s and Kusu: The Boat You Book Decides the Day

1. Two operators, and they do not agree with each other

Singapore Island Cruise and Marina South Ferries both sail to these islands, and they publish different routes. This is the first thing to settle, because it decides which crossings exist for you.

The sharpest difference is a crossing that one says is impossible. Island Cruise states in its own service notes that there is no ferry from Kusu back to St John’s or Lazarus. Marina South Ferries lists exactly that crossing, both in its afternoon loop and as an inter island shuttle.

So decide the shape of the day before you buy. If you want to finish on St John’s rather than Kusu, one operator supports it and the other does not. Booking on price alone is how people end up stranded on the wrong island watching a boat go the other way.

Marina South Pier itself sits at the end of a North South line branch, which makes getting there straightforward. Parking is limited enough that the operator recommends against driving.

2. The boat no longer lands where the old advice says

The main jetty at St John’s is closed for repair works, so ferries are rerouted to the Pulau Seringat jetty on Lazarus. The operator puts the walk from there across to St John’s at 15 to 20 minutes.

This quietly inverts most of what has been written about these islands. The familiar description has you landing at St John’s and strolling over the causeway to Lazarus for the beach. At present it runs the other way: you land on Lazarus, and St John’s is the one you walk to.

It matters more than a detour usually would, because the two islands hold different things. The toilets, changing rooms and showers are on St John’s. The beach and lagoon are on Lazarus. If you land on Lazarus, change and shower before you sail, and someone in the group cannot manage the walk, that is a problem you want to know about on the pier rather than on the sand.

It also stretches every walking figure written for the old arrangement. The marine park gallery on St John’s, for instance, is described as a 30 to 40 minute walk from the St John’s jetty. Landing at Seringat instead adds the causeway crossing to the front of that.

One caution. This is a temporary arrangement tied to the works, and one operator’s printed timetable still carries a note about returning from St John’s main jetty. Take the service notice over the timetable image, and confirm when you book.

3. The timetable, and what it does to your day

The last boat back leaves Kusu at 16:15 on a weekday. On weekends and public holidays there is one more at 18:15. Everything else follows from those two numbers.

Singapore Island Cruise runs the loop hourly through the middle of the day. Sailings out to Lazarus start at 09:00 and the last one leaves at 15:00, with the onward legs timed so that each boat feeds the next.

Read the last full row across and the trap shows itself. Take the 15:00 out and you have 50 minutes on Lazarus before the onward boat, then 25 minutes on Kusu before the final one. That is not a day at the beach, it is a tour of two jetties.

Which is why the operator advises against arriving after 15:00 at weekends, on top of the crowding it warns about. On a weekday the squeeze is worse still, because the 17:50 and 18:15 sailings are not running and 16:15 is the end of the line.

The Sisters add a further constraint. The shuttle from Lazarus goes at 10:00, 12:00 and 14:00 and returns at 11:15, 13:15 and 15:15, so each visit is a fixed 75 minutes. Take the 14:00 and you return at 15:15, which still connects to the 15:50 onward to Kusu, but nothing after that.

Also worth knowing: the operator asks you to be at the jetty 15 minutes before departure, and the Sisters service is suspended on weekdays other than public holidays, with maintenance closures on the first and third Wednesday of the month.

4. What you pay depends on what you leave out

The cheapest ticket is S$10 return, and it buys the same three islands as the S$15 one. The difference is the Sisters.

Fares come straight from the operator’s own booking system, so these are what you pay rather than a reseller’s figure.

The family tickets are worth checking rather than assuming. Two adults and two children from the pier come to S$54 bought separately against S$50 as a family ticket, so it saves S$4. From Sentosa the same group is S$70 separately against S$64, saving S$6. Neither is dramatic, but both are free money for one extra click.

Age brackets are worth reading too, because they are not the usual ones. The other operator counts a child as 1 to 12, an adult as 13 to 59 and a senior as 60 to 99, with under ones free. A 13 year old pays adult here.

Set against the mainland, the whole thing is remarkably cheap. A day on a real beach for S$10 return is the lowest cost outing of its size in Singapore, and the cost guide puts that next to what the ticketed attractions charge.

5. There is a boat from Sentosa, but only at weekends

Marina South Ferries runs a separate service between the Sentosa jetty at the Cove and Lazarus, weekends only. Departures are at 09:00, 11:00 and 15:00, with returns at 10:30, 12:30 and 17:00.

Treat those two columns as separate lists rather than matched pairs. The useful consequence is the spread: take the first boat out and the last one back and the island is yours for most of the day, while the 15:00 out with the 17:00 back is a short evening visit.

It costs a third more than sailing from Marina South Pier, S$20 against S$15 for an adult. The case for paying it is location, not the boat. If you are already staying on Sentosa, the alternative is crossing back to the mainland and out to the pier, which costs you the better part of an hour each way.

If you are staying anywhere else in town, the pier is the obvious choice.

6. Lazarus is three islands wearing one name

The Lazarus you walk on is not one island. It is the original Lazarus, Kias and Seringat, joined into a single landmass by reclamation, and a causeway links the result to St John’s.

That is worth knowing because it explains the shape of a visit. The reclaimed ground gave the island its long curved bay and the shallow lagoon behind it, which is why the swimming here is better than anywhere else in the group. It is also why the walk between the jetty and the beach feels longer than the map suggests: you are crossing what used to be open water.

The beach is the reason most people come, and it earns the reputation on a weekday. On a Saturday the same sand carries the crowd from every boat that came out that morning.

Two practical points that the postcard never mentions. There are no toilets on the beach itself and no bins anywhere on Lazarus, so whatever you carry on comes back off with you. And the island holds one of the few natural rocky shores left in Singapore along with the largest tract of mature native coastal forest in the Southern Islands, which is exactly the sort of thing that gets fenced off once a marine park designation lands nearby.

7. St John’s was a quarantine station, then a prison, then a laboratory

The island you now walk to for the toilets held one of the largest quarantine stations in the world. It could take 6,000 people at a time.

It began with cholera. An outbreak in the 1870s led to an attap roofed lazaretto being built here in 1874, and in the same year the SS Milton arrived carrying around 1,300 cholera stricken Chinese labourers. For decades afterwards this was the gate every arriving migrant and pilgrim passed through before being allowed onto the main island.

The 1948 line is the one that surprises people. Among those held in the detention barracks were Devan Nair, who later became Singapore’s third president, and the unionists Lim Chin Siong and James Puthucheary. A short ferry ride from the city centre, on an island now sold as a beach day, is where a good deal of Singapore’s political argument was physically parked.

The research came last. The Tropical Marine Science Institute was set up in 1998 and the marine laboratory here launched in 2002, which is why the low buildings scattered across the island look institutional rather than recreational. They are still working buildings, so the island reads as a place of work with a beach attached rather than the other way round.

8. The free gallery on St John’s is the one indoor thing out here

The marine park runs a Public Gallery at its outreach and education centre on St John’s, admission is free, and it is air conditioned. On these islands that combination exists nowhere else.

Inside are aquarium tanks, a viewing pool holding sea cucumbers and anemones, and coral pieces you are allowed to pick up and handle. It is small, and it is aimed at explaining what is in the water you have just been swimming in rather than at filling an afternoon.

So the gallery is the first thing on the islands to close, and on a weekday it closes early. It opens at 10:00 every day, which on a weekday leaves a window of four and a half hours from a boat that lands at the earliest around 09:35.

The walk is the other constraint. The gallery sits among the research buildings and is described as a 30 to 40 minute walk from the St John’s jetty. With boats currently landing at Seringat instead, add the causeway crossing to the start of that, which is the single strongest argument for taking the earliest sailing you can.

9. Kusu is shaped like the story told about it

Kusu means tortoise, and before reclamation the island actually looked like one at high tide. The rocky outcrop where the temple stands was the head; the mound where the shrines sit was the body.

The legend follows the shape rather than the other way round. A tortoise is said to have turned itself into an island to save two shipwrecked sailors, and the island had a regional reputation for holiness as far back as the 1870s. It sits about 5.6 kilometres south of the main island and carries several names, including Pulau Sakijang Pelepah and Peak Island.

Two places of worship share it. The Tua Pek Kong temple on the outcrop was built in 1923 by a businessman named Chia Cheng Ho, and it is the one every photograph shows. Up a steep flight of 152 steps on the hill above are three Malay shrines, or keramats, commemorating a pious man called Syed Abdul Rahman, his mother Nenek Ghalib and his sister Puteri Fatimah, all of whom lived in the nineteenth century.

Those 152 steps are the part people underestimate. There is no shade worth the name on the climb and no water on the island, and the visit is usually squeezed into the 25 to 60 minutes your boat allows before it leaves. If the shrines are the reason you came, take an earlier sailing rather than the last loop.

The beaches are the surprise. Kusu has a lagoon and a crescent of sand on its north side, and because most visitors head straight for the temple, they stay quieter than Lazarus does on the same day.

10. For one month a year, Kusu runs on different rules

During the pilgrimage season the land authority appoints a single ferry operator, sailings go hourly, and a surcharge applies. Your choice of boat disappears for the duration.

It falls in the ninth lunar month, which normally puts it in October or November and which is also the birthday month of the deity the temple is dedicated to. Devotees come to the temple and the hilltop shrines, and the numbers are large enough that the ordinary timetable could not carry them.

The replacement service is longer at both ends. The first sailing leaves the pier at 07:00 and the last one leaves Kusu at 19:00, which is nearly three hours beyond the usual weekday finish.

So the season cuts both ways. If you want to see the island at its most alive, this is the only time to go. If you wanted an empty beach, pick another month, and check before booking, because the lunar calendar moves the dates every year. Which months are wettest is set out in the best time to visit.

11. The Sisters’ Islands reopened with a boardwalk and a forest trail

Singapore’s first marine park closed for three years of works and reopened in late 2024 with considerably more to walk on than it had before. Most writing about the Sisters still describes the old version.

Big Sister’s Island is the public half. Small Sister’s is kept for conservation and research, holds the turtle hatchery, and is not open to visitors, so anything you read about seeing turtles hatch is not describing a trip you can book.

The marine park was designated in 2014 and covers roughly 400,000 square metres. Two dive trails run off it, a shallow one at 4 to 6 metres with giant clams, anemones and clownfish, and a deeper one at 10 to 16 metres over coral rubble and silt where sea fans and the Neptune’s cup sponge appear.

That sponge is the reason marine scientists talk about these waters at all. It was believed extinct until one was found in Singapore in 2011. Alongside it the park counts over 100 species of reef fish and over 200 species of sponge, plus fluted giant clams that reach 40 centimetres, and the occasional bamboo shark, hawksbill turtle or eagle ray.

The constraint has not changed, though. Sailings are restricted rather than frequent, the service is suspended on weekdays other than public holidays, and the islands close for maintenance on the first and third Wednesday of the month. A visit is a fixed 75 minutes on the shuttle from Lazarus, which is enough for the boardwalk and the trail and not much else.

12. A second marine park is coming, off Lazarus and Kusu

The waters off southern Lazarus and the Kusu reefs are being designated as Singapore’s second marine park. The Sisters, thirty seconds of boat ride away, are the working model for what that means.

The site was picked on evidence rather than convenience. A national ecological survey identified the eastern foreshore of Lazarus South and the Kusu reefs as exceptionally biodiverse, and the reasoning is specific: the Lazarus reefs act as a sink for coral larvae drifting from the Sisters, while the Kusu reefs are extensive and well consolidated enough to suit coral transplanting. A programme to plant 100,000 corals in Singapore waters over ten years runs alongside it.

Look at how the Sisters operate and the pattern is already visible. Service is suspended on weekdays other than public holidays, the islands close for maintenance twice a month, and the most biodiverse lagoon of the lot is shut to visitors entirely. Protection and open access pull against each other, and access is what gives.

Nothing about today’s trip changes yet. It is worth knowing because it points the same way as the jetty works and the shop: the rules on these islands are moving, so the sensible habit is to check the operator’s notices in the week you travel rather than trusting a guide written earlier.

13. What each island actually has

The facilities are split across the islands rather than repeated on each one. That is the practical reason the jetty change matters so much.

The single biggest change to how these islands are described is the shop, and it is only half a change. Lazarus now has a convenience store selling daily essentials and ready to eat meals, near the tiny house site on Seringat, open Friday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00.

The rest of the time it is exactly as strict as it ever was. The land authority still advises bringing enough food and drinking water to last the whole day, because the other islands have no retail or food outlets at all, and there are no taps or drinking fountains to fall back on.

Two gaps to plan around even on the days it opens. The first ferry reaches the island before the shop unlocks, so an early start still needs water carried in. And the shop is on Lazarus, so once you have walked over to St John’s or sailed on to Kusu, you are back to what is in your bag.

14. Both places to stay on Lazarus close at the end of January 2027

The tiny house site and the glamping tents beside it have both announced they are winding up, and the reason given is not demand.

The tiny house operator says its concession agreement carries a fixed end date, and final bookings run to the end of January 2027. The site holds five compact solar powered units with composting systems, in the region of 139 to 167 square feet each, at rates that start around S$284 a night. The glamping operation next door, nine tents split between couple and family layouts with a communal lodge, closes on the same timeline.

After that the only legal way to spend a night out here is a permit and your own tent. Camping is allowed in designated areas only, the permit goes through the land authority’s online system, and it has to be applied for at least 14 days ahead. Open fires are banned anywhere on the islands, which rules out the beach fire people tend to imagine.

Whether an overnight is worth it is a narrower question than it looks. There is no shop after Sunday, no restaurant, and the last boat leaves whether you are ready or not. What a night buys is the hour after the day trippers have gone, which on a Saturday is genuinely the only time these islands are quiet. Anywhere with a roof and room service is on Sentosa instead.

15. The rules that bite, and how to fit the day together

Open fires are banned outright, camping needs a permit applied for at least 14 days ahead, and feeding the monkeys is prohibited. These come from the land authority rather than from signage improvised on site.

Rubbish is the rule that catches day trippers. Bins exist on some islands but not on Lazarus, and the instruction is to use a bin where there is one or carry your waste back to the mainland. Barbecue pits on St John’s and Kusu are first come, first served, which is the legal way to cook.

The safety notice worth reading is about box jellyfish. Sightings have been recorded in Singapore waters and advisories are posted on the islands. There are no lifeguards on any of these beaches and no clinic on any of them, and the marine park adds its own warning about sudden strong currents in the Sisters’ lagoon. The notices at the jetty are the actual safety briefing rather than decoration.

With all of that on the table, the day assembles itself in one of three shapes.

One last practical point. There is no shelter from a squall out here beyond the odd shed, and the boats stop for lightning. If the sky turns while you are waiting, the queue for the next sailing is where everyone else will be too. For an island trip on the other side of Singapore, with bumboats that leave when they fill rather than to a timetable, see Pulau Ubin.

Frequently asked questions

Read the full Singapore planning guide

Browse all our guides →