Singapore Discovery Guide

Singapore is a city, an island and a country at once, and it is the easiest place in Asia to travel in — which is either the point or the problem, depending on what you came for.

The case for it is food and greenery. Hawker centres serve some of the best cheap eating anywhere, a culture UNESCO-listed in 2020, where a stall can hold a Michelin star and charge a few dollars. And the city has committed to plants at a scale nothing else has: Gardens by the Bay with its supertrees and conservatories, the UNESCO-listed Botanic Gardens, and a canopy of street trees planted deliberately since the 1960s.

Then the neighbourhoods — the Chinese quarter, Little India, Kampong Glam, Katong — where the Chinese, Malay, Indian and Peranakan threads are still distinct, and the shophouses have been kept.

It is also a superb stopover: a world-class airport, and a country you can cross in an hour.

If you have a stopover

Gardens by the Bay and the Marina Bay waterfront, then a hawker centre — Maxwell or Lau Pa Sat — and the shophouses of Pagoda Street and Smith Street. Changi itself is worth arriving early for, with the Jewel waterfall and its indoor forest.

If you have a few days

Add the National Gallery in the old Supreme Court and City Hall, the Asian Civilisations Museum, Little India and the Sri Veeramakaliamman temple, Kampong Glam around the Sultan Mosque, and Katong for Peranakan shophouses and laksa.

If you want green

The Botanic Gardens, UNESCO-listed and free, with the National Orchid Garden inside it. The Southern Ridges walk on elevated boardwalks, MacRitchie Reservoir’s treetop bridge with long-tailed macaques, and Pulau Ubin, an island kept deliberately as it was, reached by bumboat and best seen by bicycle.

If you want the built version

Sentosa for the resorts and the theme park, the Marina Bay Sands observation deck, and the shops of Orchard Road.

If you want history

The Battlebox and Fort Canning, Changi Chapel and Museum, and the Peranakan Museum.

Singapore was a trading port that became an independent country almost by accident in 1965, and much of its culture is the result of deliberate state construction since.

Four communities

Chinese, Malay, Indian and a category the state calls Others. Multiracialism is official policy rather than an accident — public housing estates have ethnic quotas to prevent enclaves forming, and there are four official languages. It has produced a genuinely mixed society and also a rather managed one.

The Peranakan

Descendants of early Chinese traders who married Malay women, with their own creole, beadwork, brightly tiled shophouses and one of the great hybrid cuisines. It is the most distinctively Singaporean and Malayan thing here.

Rules, and the reputation for them

The chewing gum ban is real though narrower than the joke suggests, and littering, jaywalking and eating on the MRT all carry fines. Singaporeans discuss this with a mixture of pride and irony — the country calls itself a fine city on souvenir shirts.

Kiasu

A Hokkien word for the fear of losing out, invoked constantly and self-deprecatingly to explain queueing early and reserving a hawker table with a packet of tissues — which is a real and respected convention.

Singlish

The English creole, with Hokkien, Malay and Tamil grammar and particles. Officially discouraged, universally spoken.

Singapore is efficient rather than low-impact: its per-head emissions are high, almost all its food is imported, and the air conditioning never stops. The meaningful choices here are small ones.

Eat at hawker centres. It is cheaper, better, supports stallholders directly, and the trade is genuinely threatened — the median hawker is ageing and few children take over the stall. Bring your own container where you can and return your tray, which is now required.

Use public transport. The MRT reaches nearly everything and car ownership here is deliberately priced out of reach.

Water is imported and desalinated in part, and the country treats supply as a strategic issue; do not leave taps running.

Skip captive-animal attractions that offer photographs or rides. The zoo and the bird park are well regarded on welfare, but the distinction is worth making yourself.

Spend beyond Marina Bay — Katong, Tiong Bahru, Geylang Serai and the heartland estates are where most Singaporeans actually live.

Singapore sits just north of the equator, so there is no real seasonal variation: every month is hot, humid and around 31°C by day, and any month works.

February to April is marginally the driest and sunniest stretch, and is the most comfortable window if you are walking a lot.

November to January is the north-east monsoon, with the heaviest and most frequent rain — usually short violent downpours rather than all-day grey, so it rarely ruins a trip.

Plan around events rather than weather. Chinese New Year in January or February fills the Chinese quarter and closes many small businesses for days. Hari Raya, Deepavali and the Hungry Ghost Festival each transform a different quarter. The Formula One night race in September fills every hotel and raises rates sharply, and the Great Singapore Sale runs in June and July.

The regional haze from forest fires in Indonesia can affect air quality between June and October in some years.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost across the country

Singapore is expensive for accommodation, alcohol and anything imported — a beer can cost more than a meal — while food and transport are remarkable value. The gap between those two facts is wider here than almost anywhere.