Eats: For French food, nothing beats the recently reopened Les Amis (lesamis.com.sg), although the soon to be opened Les Saveurs at the St Regis hotel, where I recently ate at a “preview lunch”, will be a strong competitor. I highly recommend the duck-leg-confit wrap and grebiche sauce and the wild mushroom veloutee with baby scallops and green apple. These two dishes had an entire table of journalists raving about them! For Italian food, Garibaldi (garibaldi.com.sg) offers some delicious fare in an unpretentious, simple décor with its friendly chef Roberto Galetti, who is generous with his white truffles while in season. For Chinese dumplings, the always busy Tai Din Fung at the Paragon on Orchard Road is still the best place in town. Be ready to queue!
Sleeps: For all the new luxury hotels in town that offer more up-to-date rooms with the latest trendy furnishings, there is still something to be said for staying at the Raffles Hotel (raffles.com), a beacon of colonial traditions. While the pool of the hotel is small, the rooms, which are full of history, are worth it, at least once, if your budget permits.
Arts: Museums here have the great advantage for visitors of being poorly attended by locals so there is no worrying about queuing for great exhibits. My favorite museum is the Asian Civilisations Museum (acm.org.sg), which houses an impressive collection of Southeast Asian artifacts. It’s even a great place to take young children again and again as they never fail to be fascinated by the Malay Kris (small dagger), the Indonesian gamelan instruments or the wooden hornbill birds by the Dayaks of Borneo. The museum also has excellent, albeit small, rotating exhibits (right now there is a collection of Buddhist artifacts from the region).
Sights: Singapore is definitely short of awe-inspiring architectural monuments found in its Thai and Indonesian neighbors. But even for nature lovers this city-state offers enough variety. The Botanic Garden (sbg.org.sg) is a huge green lung in the city. It includes several interesting gardens; for adults, there is the famed National Orchid Garden, for young, adventurous children the small Evolution Garden retraces the earth’s evolution - chasing the ‘dinosaur footprints’ on the paths is always a great hit! While the Singapore Zoo and the Night Safari (zoo.com.sg) are world-famous for good reasons, the Jurong Bird Park (birdpark.com.sg) also has its own charm and is a little more unusual with several walk-through aviaries that will delight all age groups.
Festivities: The great thing about living in a multi-cultural city is that there is always a festival of sorts for one of the various ethnic communities. Given the even sunshine throughout the year, timing a holiday here around the Chinese New Year is really a must. During those few weeks (in February or March depending on the year), parts of the city get decked-out in rich color and animal decoration (for that year’s zodiac sign). The Chinatown market becomes a hive of unusual fare with all sorts of delicacies and even plants that symbolize good wealth and health for the new year grabbing your attention.
