Singapore has a reputation as a city of attractions: a theme park, a cable car, rooftop bars with a cover charge. Those are all here. But the places you are still talking about after your trip usually cost nothing: a table in a hawker centre, a light show you watch lying on the ground, a cycle track across an island where the wooden houses are still standing.
That makes choosing easy. Put one or two paid outings on your list and fill the rest of your days with everything the city gives away for free. The one thing you really have to watch is the clock: the shows run at fixed times, the boats leave when they are full and the afternoon downpour turns up in every month of the year.
So which places deserve a slot in your day, and when should you go?
Where to sleep, how to get there and how many days to give it are all on our Singapore page.
Eating in the hawker centres
This is where Singapore eats, and where you will be at least once a day. A hawker centre is a covered hall full of stalls, and behind every hatch is someone who has spent years perfecting one or two dishes. Put a packet of tissues on a table to claim it, walk along the stalls and join the longest queue. Singaporeans do not queue for nothing.
Start the day with kaya toast, toast with coconut jam and butter, plus two soft boiled eggs and a kopi. Have Hainanese chicken rice for lunch at Maxwell Food Centre or Chinatown Complex, eat roti prata and banana leaf rice at Tekka Centre in Little India, and head to Lau Pa Sat in the evening. After dark the road at Satay Street closes for the grills, and you eat your satay between the office towers.
A dish costs about €3 to €4, a glass of fresh lime juice a euro. Some stalls close one day a week, so if you have your heart set on one particular stall and the hatch is shut, just go back another day. And take your tray back to the rack yourself when you are done.
Our verdict: the best food in the city is also the cheapest, and that is no coincidence
An evening under the Supertrees and on Marina Bay
By day the Supertrees are just very tall planters: eighteen steel frames from 25 to 50 metres high, wrapped in ferns and orchids. At 7.45pm and 8.45pm they start glowing in time to the music, for fifteen minutes, and everyone lies down on the ground to look up. Just join them: from the paving stones you see the most.
Then walk through the tunnel to the bay. At 9pm Marina Bay Sands puts on Spectra, its light and water show over the bay, and the Merlion, the Helix Bridge and the lotus shaped ArtScience Museum are all on your loop. Spectra also runs at 8pm, and once more at 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays.
Take the MRT to Gardens by the Bay or Bayfront. The gardens, both shows and the whole loop around the bay cost nothing.
Our verdict: two shows in one night, and you do not spend a dollar
Cycling on Pulau Ubin
Ten minutes on a boat from Changi and you step into a different Singapore. The houses are wooden, the roads are sand and there are wild boar rooting along the verge. This is what the whole of Singapore used to look like.
The bumboat leaves from Changi Point Ferry Terminal, which you reach by bus from Tanah Merah. It costs S$4 per person (about €3), cash, and goes as soon as it is full. At the jetty you hire a bike for about €6 to €10 for the day, then pedal out to Chek Jawa, where a boardwalk takes you across the wetland and a lookout tower gives you the view.
Go early, before the heat, and have Singapore dollars in your pocket: the boatmen and the bike stalls work mostly in cash. Back at the jetty, fresh seafood is waiting.
Our verdict: the best day out of the city, and it costs you less than a beer
Chinatown, Little India and Kampong Glam
A Chinese, an Indian and a Malay neighbourhood, and from the first incense stick to the last is an hour’s walk at most. Start the morning in Chinatown with two temples a few minutes apart: the red Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and the Sri Mariamman, its tower a riot of colour. Lunch is in Little India, where Serangoon Road is lined with sari shops and the Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple smells of incense. And finish in Kampong Glam, where the golden dome of the Sultan Mosque rises above Arab Street.
The temples and the mosque are free. Cover your shoulders and knees and take your shoes off where you are asked to. At the Sultan Mosque you can borrow a robe if your clothes are too short.
Come on a Sunday if you want to see Little India at its busiest, and save Haji Lane for the evening. That is when the narrow alley with its murals really comes alive, with a drink in one of the tiny bars.
Our verdict: one walk shows you why this city eats so well
The Night Safari
The world’s first night zoo. After dark you ride a tram first and then carry on on foot through grounds that look like rainforest, past tigers, rhinos, tapirs and fruit bats. Everything you would see asleep in a corner at a normal zoo is up and about here.
It is open every evening from 7.15pm until midnight, and the tram is included in the entry of about €40. Getting there takes a while: it is up in the north, about an hour from the centre by MRT plus a bus.
The tram queue is shortest right at opening or late in the evening, so aim for one of the two. And plan it for a different night from the Supertrees, because both need a whole evening.
Our verdict: the biggest spend of your week, and the night you will be describing to everyone back home
Jewel and the Rain Vortex
Jewel is the glass building opposite Terminal 1, and you do not need a flight to walk in. Under the glass roof the Rain Vortex drops forty metres straight down the middle, with five floors of tropical forest growing around it. No indoor waterfall in the world is taller.
Walking round it costs nothing; you only pay for the Canopy Park up top. After dark the falling water gets its own show of light and sound.
The smart move is to plan it before your flight. Check your backpack into the baggage storage, have one last meal and watch the show before you check in.
Our verdict: the only airport where you want to be early
Got time to spare in Singapore?
The domes at Gardens by the Bay
If you want to go inside once, make it the two domes next to the Supertrees, about €32 for both. The Cloud Forest is a 35 metre mountain dressed in ferns and orchids, with a waterfall tumbling out of the mist and a path spiralling round it. The Flower Dome next door holds the record as the world’s largest greenhouse without pillars. Go in the afternoon, when it is hottest outside, and for about €10 add a walk along the OCBC Skyway between the trees.
Breakfast in Tiong Bahru
Ten minutes from Chinatown is a neighbourhood of white art deco flats from the 1930s, all rounded balconies, plus bookshops and coffee bars. Come in the morning and grab a seat at Tiong Bahru Market, where the locals queue for chwee kueh and kopi.
Laksa in Joo Chiat and Katong
Out east, the Peranakan houses stand in rows of mint green, pink and yellow. Wander round for an afternoon, eat a bowl of Katong laksa and then cycle the path along the sea in East Coast Park.
A day of green or beach
Walk the Southern Ridges over the wave shaped Henderson Waves bridge, or the TreeTop Walk through the MacRitchie rainforest (closed on Mondays). Rather have sand? Walk the Sentosa Boardwalk from VivoCity to the free beaches at Siloso, Palawan and Tanjong. Cross the suspension bridge at Palawan Beach and you are standing on the southernmost point of continental Asia.
Our top five in Singapore
Only got a few days? Out of everything the city has to offer, these are our five:
- A different hawker centre every day, from kaya toast to satay at Lau Pa Sat
- An evening on the ground under the Supertrees, then Spectra on the bay
- Cycling across Pulau Ubin to the Chek Jawa boardwalk
- A day on foot through Chinatown, Little India and Kampong Glam
- The Night Safari, right at opening
Still got time after that? Save the Rain Vortex at Jewel for your last evening, or give a morning to Tiong Bahru.
So what do you really have to do in Singapore?
Honestly? You can blow your whole budget on attractions here, but then you miss the Singapore you actually remember. That lives in the food halls and on the street, and most of it is free.
If we had to pick one thing, it is the food. Claim a table with a packet of tissues, join the longest queue and order from two stalls at once. It costs you a few euros, and it is the moment you get why Singaporeans talk about food the way the rest of us talk about the weather.
And give one evening to the Supertrees. Lie down on the ground at 7.45pm, look up, and then walk on to the bay for Spectra. Free does not get any better in this city.
