Gardens by the Bay
Why this is the first thing I do every time I land in Singapore.
Read MoreMaxwell Food Centre
A closer look at one of Singapore's most rewarding experiences.
Read MoreKampong Glam’s Arab Street
Where to go next once you have seen the headline sights of Singapore.
Read MoreSingapore rewards precision the way few cities do — it is genuinely, almost implausibly clean, efficient, and green, and rather than finding that sterile I’ve come to find it restful. This is a place where a hawker centre stall can hold a Michelin star and cost less than a coffee elsewhere, where Gardens by the Bay’s Supertrees light up nightly like something from a more optimistic version of the future, and where four distinct cultural quarters — Chinatown, Little India, Kampong Glam, and the colonial Civic District — sit within walking distance of one another, each fully itself. Singapore isn’t trying to be quaint, and it doesn’t need to be; it’s trying to work, beautifully, and largely succeeding. I always leave slightly envious of how well the place is run.
Chapter One
Hawker centres and heritage streets
Maxwell Food Centre’s Tian Tian chicken rice queue moves fast for the payoff — rice cooked in chicken fat and stock, chicken poached to a silken finish, chilli sauce sharp enough to cut through both. I make a point of eating there before wandering Chinatown’s narrow lanes, incense drifting from the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. Little India, a short MRT ride away, runs louder and more colourful — jasmine garlands, spice shops, and Tekka Centre’s own excellent food stalls. Kampong Glam, centred on the golden dome of Sultan Mosque, keeps its Arab Street shophouses intact, now filled with rug dealers and quietly excellent coffee bars.
“Singapore proves that a city can be entirely engineered and still leave room for wonder.”
Chapter Two
Gardens and skyline
Gardens by the Bay at night is Singapore at its most theatrical — the Supertree Grove’s light-and-sound show timed to music, walkways strung between them at canopy height. I prefer the Cloud Forest dome by day, an indoor mountain complete with the world’s tallest indoor waterfall, mist rolling off it in a way that makes the equatorial heat outside feel like a different planet entirely. Marina Bay Sands’ rooftop infinity pool is for hotel guests only, but the SkyPark observation deck sells day tickets, and the view — container ships queued in the strait, the whole downtown grid lit below — is worth the ticket on its own.
The Short List
Do not miss in Singapore
At a glance
Singapore in numbers
- Capital
- Singapore
- Language
- English, Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil
- Currency
- Singapore dollar
- Best time
- February to April, marginally drier within a consistently tropical climate
Did you know
Singapore’s Changi Airport has its own indoor waterfall, the Rain Vortex, standing over forty metres tall inside the Jewel terminal.