A city, an island and a country all at once, where a Michelin-starred meal costs €5 at a hawker centre and the transport works better than anywhere on earth.
Singapore is a city-state of 730 square kilometres, which means the whole country is smaller than most capital regions and you can cross it by metro in about an hour. That compactness is the appeal: three or four days is genuinely enough to see it properly.
It also means the country divides by neighbourhood rather than by city. Chinatown, Little India and Kampong Glam each have their own food, temples and character; the Colonial District has the museums; Marina Bay has the skyline, the Gardens by the Bay supertrees and the hotel with the boat on top.
The reputation for expense is half true. Accommodation and alcohol are genuinely costly. Food is not — hawker centres serve some of the best food in Asia for €3 to €6, and two hawker stalls here have held Michelin stars. Eat like a local and Singapore is affordable; eat like a tourist and it is not.
Singapore is a city-state — one city, crossed end to end in under an hour on the MRT.
A city, an island and a country at once: hawker centres, four cultures, and a national park's worth of green in the middle of it.
Im in love with Singapore. I will definitely be back with friends and family. Clean, organised, easy to travel around , good food and friendly people.
A traveller, on Hostelworld
Singapore is a short, dense city trip, and eating is the main event.
The best value eating in any expensive city.
Three or four days, all on the metro.
Four cultures sharing one small island.
More green space than the skyline suggests.
Sentosa and East Coast, and they are fine rather than great.
Rooftops, shophouse bars, and very expensive drinks.
Gardens by the Bay is the signature, and the Supertree light show in the evening is free — the conservatories cost extra and are worth it for the cloud forest dome. Marina Bay Sands' observation deck gives the view; the rooftop bar at the same height costs about the same once you have bought a drink.
The three cultural quarters are the better half of the city. Chinatown, Little India and Kampong Glam are each about an hour's walk and are best combined with eating your way through them.
For green space, MacRitchie Reservoir has a treetop suspension bridge and monkeys twenty minutes from the centre, and Pulau Ubin, a boat ride away, is an island of dirt tracks and old kampong houses that shows what Singapore looked like fifty years ago.
Hawker centres are the reason to come. They are covered food courts of individual stalls, government-run and hygiene-graded, where a plate of Hainanese chicken rice, char kway teow, laksa or roti prata costs €3 to €6. Two stalls in the city have held Michelin stars.
The four food cultures — Chinese, Malay, Indian and Peranakan — overlap constantly, which is why breakfast might be kaya toast with soft eggs and lunch a banana leaf curry.
Chilli crab is the famous dish and the one exception on price, at €40 to €70 at a seafood restaurant. Most people do it once. Drinks are where budgets break: a beer is €8 to €12 in a bar, which is more than most meals.
Singapore's nightlife is polished and expensive. Rooftop bars around Marina Bay charge €18 to €25 for a cocktail and give you one of the great city views in return. Shophouse bars in Chinatown and Keong Saik are better value and considerably more interesting, and Singapore's bar scene regularly places several venues in Asia's best lists.
Clarke Quay is the tourist strip and behaves like one. Haji Lane and the Kampong Glam side streets are where younger locals drink.
The cheapest evening is a hawker centre with large bottles of beer at €6 to €8, which is what many Singaporeans actually do. Alcohol sales in shops stop at 10.30pm, and public drinking after that is restricted, which surprises people.
The MRT is among the best metro systems in the world: clean, cheap, air-conditioned and covering essentially everywhere including the airport. Contactless bank cards work directly at the gates, so there is no need for a transit card at all.
Buses fill the gaps and take the same payment. Grab handles taxis.
Changi airport is worth arriving early for — it has a waterfall, gardens and a cinema, and is consistently rated the best airport in the world. And the causeway to Malaysia is an hour away, which makes Johor Bahru or even Melaka a possible day trip if you have the time.
Singapore's reputation for expense comes from beds and drinks. Dorms start around €20 and hotels are genuinely costly for what you get, and a beer at €8 to €12 in a bar is among the priciest in Asia.
Everything else is reasonable. Hawker meals are €3 to €6, MRT rides about a euro, and many of the best things — Gardens by the Bay's outdoor areas and light show, the cultural quarters, MacRitchie, the Southern Ridges walk — are free.
A careful day is €45 to €65. Two rooftop cocktails and a chilli crab dinner will double that in an evening, which is the choice the city puts in front of you.
Singapore is among the safest countries in the world. Street crime is very rare, walking alone at night is unremarkable anywhere in the city, and people leave belongings unattended in cafés to reserve tables.
What requires attention is the law rather than crime. Fines apply to littering, eating or drinking on the MRT, jaywalking and smoking outside designated areas, and they are enforced. Chewing gum cannot be imported for sale. Vaping is banned entirely, including possession, and the penalties are real.
Drug laws carry the death penalty for trafficking, and quantities that would be treated as possession elsewhere can meet that threshold. Singapore also tests arriving travellers in some circumstances for drugs consumed abroad, which is unusual and worth knowing.
Most nationalities enter visa-free for 30 to 90 days, and entry is quick and efficient.
An SG Arrival Card must be submitted online within three days before arrival, and there is no paper alternative — this is the one piece of admin that catches people out.
Passports need six months' validity from entry. Note the customs rules: vaping devices, chewing gum for sale and e-cigarettes are prohibited, and duty-free allowances on alcohol are enforced.
One degree north of the equator, so it is hot, humid and about 31°C every single day. The variable is rain and events rather than season.
Average highs barely move — it is around 31°C year-round with high humidity. The northeast monsoon from November to January is the wettest period, and the Formula 1 weekend in September or October is when hotel prices peak.
Pick how you travel and how long for. Per night, for one person, in euro equivalents of Singapore dollars.
Drinks are the variable that breaks budgets here — a beer is €8–12 in a bar and rooftop cocktails €18–25, which is more than a day of hawker food.
Four cultures means a lot of festivals, and the Formula 1 weekend is when the city is at its most expensive.
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