Bradt Singapore Guidebook
Singapore travel guide. Practical tips and advice for exploring Singapore plus nearby parts of Malaysia (Johor Bahru) and Indonesia (Riau archipelago). Features Singapore River, Orchard Road, Raffles District, Marina Bay, Sentosa, the southern islands, Kallang, Geylang and nature reserves. Covers where to stay, eat and drink, and how to get around.
Edition: 1
Number of pages: 280
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Bradt Singapore Guide
The new Bradt guidebook to Singapore.
About this guide to Singapore
This new Bradt Singapore guidebook is written by Daniel Robinson, a southeast Asia specialist and former Singapore resident who has written scores of travel guidebooks since 1988. Robinson shares his local expertise and insights to escort visitors, locals and expat residents off the beaten track and get the most out of this unique island-state.
Smaller than Anglesey and teetering at the Malay Peninsula’s southernmost tip, Singapore is the world’s third most densely populated country, yet doesn’t feel like that at all – partly thanks to spectacular parks and wild spaces. Singapore stands apart from many Asian capitals in being carefully planned, reassuringly safe, English-speaking, spotlessly clean and – thanks to this guidebook’s detailed advice – remarkably easy to explore on public transport, rented bicycle or foot. It abounds in eye-catching architecture, including high-end hotels, yet also hosts rainforest reserves where monkeys can be seen from a canopy walkway.
Travellers who treat Singapore merely as a brief layover en route to further-flung destinations are missing out. You can visit the world’s largest orchid garden (with 60,000 flowering plants), the world’s tallest indoor waterfall and the world’s first nocturnal zoo. Gastronomes can experience both Michelin-starred restaurants and hawker centres selling scrumptious, inexpensive street food. The longer you stay, the richer experiences you can find.
Applying a particular focus on family-friendly activities, Robinson reveals the best places to take a stroll, have a picnic and find engaging public art (including government-sponsored ‘graffiti’) – but also places that even Singaporeans seldom visit: hot springs, a ruined Japanese temple and hidden beaches on offshore islands. Moreover, Changi airport – voted the world’s best an astonishing 12 times – is a destination in its own right, with residents flocking to shops even if not flying anywhere.
A truly global city for two centuries, Singapore offers visitors an historic, cultural and culinary microcosm of south, southeast and east Asia, seasoned with its unique dynamic blend of trade, banking, innovation and cultural fusion – with a dollop of the rest of the world thrown in. This is a city-state that rewards those who give it time – provided they have this new Bradt Singapore guidebook in hand.
Contents
1 Background Information
2 Practical Information
PART TWO THE GUIDE
3 City centre
4 Sentosa and the Southern Islands
5 Eastern Singapore
6 Central & Northern Singapore
7 Western Singapore
PART THREE: EXCURSIONS FROM SINGAPORE
8 Johor Bahru (Malaysia)
9 Riau Archipelago (Indonesia)
Appendices: Language; Glossary; Further Information
Index
About the author
Daniel Robinson has been writing about travel in Southeast Asia for over three decades. His award-winning, pioneering Lonely Planet guides to Vietnam and Cambodia, the latter co-authored with Tony Wheeler, helped introduce Indochina to tourists and backpackers in the early 1990s. More recently, Daniel has covered Borneo for Lonely Planet and the New York Times. Throughout his career, Daniel has used Singapore as his regional base, a natural choice given his wife’s stint as a sociology professor at the National University of Singapore; their engagement party, complete with gamelan orchestra, was held at the HortPark.
Over the decades, Daniel has explored Singapore’s lesser-known sights – back-alleys, rain forest trails, bike paths and possibly-haunted ruins – with adventurous Singaporean friends and has had a front-row seat as the island-state has risen from the smallest of the ‘Asian Tigers’ to one of the world’s most dynamic and successful economies – and, thanks to land reclamation, has grown from 680 sq km to 734 sq km. Daniel’s travel writing has been translated into 10 languages.