Singapore, past the Merlion

Singapore is one city on one island, about fifty kilometres across, with roughly six million people on it. Old shophouses stand in the shadow of towers. A hawker stall selling chicken rice for a few dollars sits a block from a dining room with a Michelin star, and people take both seriously. Below are the places to go, the restaurants worth booking, and a few facts that explain how the place works.

Places to Go

• Marina Bay Sands: Three towers with a boat-shaped deck laid across the top of them, fifty-seven floors up. The infinity pool belongs to the hotel guests; the observation deck does not.
  The SkyPark has restaurants and the clearest view back over the bay, best about half an hour after sunset.
• Gardens by the Bay: Steel Supertrees up to fifty metres tall, planted with ferns and orchids, plus two cooled glasshouses: the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest, which has a waterfall running down the middle of it.
  Come back after dark, ideally with a jacket for the cold glasshouses, for Garden Rhapsody, when the Supertrees light up and run a short show set to music.
• Chinatown Heritage Centre: Three restored shophouses on Pagoda Street, fitted out as the cramped rented cubicles that early Chinese migrants actually lived in, down to the washing lines.
  Give the rest of the afternoon to Chinatown itself: the temples, the wet market, and the food stalls on Smith Street.
• Sentosa Island Adventure: A resort island off the south coast, reached by cable car, monorail or a boardwalk you can simply walk across.
  Universal Studios, Adventure Cove and the S.E.A. Aquarium are all found here, alongside three beaches and plenty of shady boardwalk for the middle of the day.
• Hawker Centre Culinary Safari: Open-sided food courts with dozens of stalls, most plates well under ten dollars. Lau Pa Sat and the Maxwell Food Centre are the simplest places to begin.
  Order Hainanese chicken rice, laksa, char kway teow, and the fried carrot cake, which is made from radish and contains no carrot.
• The Night Safari: The first zoo in the world built to be visited after dark, sitting beside the main Singapore Zoo and lit to look like moonlight.
  An open tram runs through the habitats, and four walking trails let you take your time with animals that are actually awake.

Restaurants Worth Booking

• Restaurant André: Short French menus built around whatever is best that week, cooked by a small team and awarded a Michelin star, so the dishes change with the market.
• Odette: French fine dining inside the National Gallery, named after the chef's grandmother and cooked with the same restraint.
• Les Amis: Classic French cooking and one of the deepest wine cellars in the city, in a quiet, hushed room just off Orchard Road, well suited to a long celebratory dinner.
• Burnt Ends: Modern Australian barbecue cooked over wood in an open kitchen. You sit at the counter and watch the fire do the work, smoke and sparks included.
• Waku Ghin: Tetsuya Wakuda's counter at Marina Bay Sands: Japanese technique, European ingredients, a handful of seats per sitting.
• Jaan by Kirk Westaway: British cooking on the seventieth floor of Swissôtel The Stamford, with the whole island laid out below the windows.
• Labyrinth: Hawker flavours rebuilt as a tasting menu, sourced from local farms and fishermen and holding a Michelin star.
• Corner House: French cooking in a colonial bungalow inside the Botanic Gardens, with something growing on almost every plate.
• Shinji by Kanesaka: Edomae sushi served omakase at a small wooden counter, one piece at a time, in near silence.
• Jaan Grill: A grill menu built on aged beef and whole fish, cooked plainly and brought to the table hot.

How Singapore Works

• Multicultural Melting Pot: Chinese, Malay, Indian and Eurasian communities share the island, and four languages are official: English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil. You see it most plainly in the food and in a public holiday calendar that covers Chinese New Year, Hari Raya, Deepavali and Christmas.
• Garden City: Around half the island sits under green cover, which is the result of a planting programme begun in the 1960s rather than an accident of geography. Trees line the expressways and canals, blocks of flats carry gardens on their roofs, and Gardens by the Bay was built on reclaimed land.
• Strict Laws and Cleanliness: Littering, jaywalking and eating on the train all carry fines, and chewing gum cannot be sold except through a pharmacy. The rules strike most visitors as unusual and the streets are noticeably clean. The two things are related.