Chinatown After Pagoda Street

Chinatown MRT's Exit A brings you up on Pagoda Street, into a lane of lanterns and fridge magnets. Walk it once, past the stalls of the night market, to where it meets South Bridge Road, and Chinatown starts to open out. We'd see the temples first, since the Hindu one closes from noon until the evening, then eat at Maxwell before the lunch queue builds. The old streets to the south can wait for dark, when their small bars and serious kitchens come into their own.

Temples on South Bridge Road

Sri Mariamman at 244 South Bridge Road is Singapore's oldest Hindu temple, and like most South Indian temples it rests through the middle of the day. It's open 6am to noon and 6pm to 9pm, staying open until 9.15pm on Fridays. Leave your shoes at the entrance and keep your shoulders covered. Before you go in, give the gopuram, the tiered tower over the entrance, 10 minutes of looking from across the road.

A short walk along South Bridge Road, the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple at 288 South Bridge Road is built in Tang-dynasty style and free to enter from 7am to 5pm. Inside there's a relic chamber and a hall of 10,000 Buddhas, and at the very top a rooftop orchid garden that plenty of visitors miss because they stop at the gift shop. Keep climbing. Also on South Bridge Road, Jamae Chulia is a working mosque that most walking tours pass by, and the modest dress you wore for the temples suits it too.

Chicken rice at Maxwell

Maxwell Food Centre is four minutes on foot from Sri Mariamman, six from Tanjong Pagar MRT and a few from Maxwell MRT. It's a hawker centre, which here means rows of small stalls, each cooking its own few dishes, and tables that everyone shares. Tian Tian, at #01-10/11, has been selling chicken rice since 1986 and is the stall everyone photographs. It usually opens from about 10am and is typically closed on Mondays. Join the line before 11.30am, when it's a fraction of the one that forms by 12.15pm.

If the wait looks long, Loy Kee does chicken rice too, and China Street Fritters and the oyster cake stall are what locals come back for when they've had enough of queues. When you've finished, take your tray back to the return point so the next person has a table.

Walk off lunch at Singapore City Gallery, 45 Maxwell Road. It's free, open Monday to Saturday 9am to 5pm, and closed on Sundays and public holidays. The draw is a room-sized model of the whole island, with a three-minute projection every 20 minutes. Food and luggage stay outside, and so does bottled water, so finish your drink before you go in.

Chinatown Complex, upstairs and down

Chinatown Complex is the bigger hawker centre, two floors of stalls above a wet market. Upstairs you'll find Hawker Chan, the original Liao Fan stall and its soya sauce chicken; the mall branches came later. Past that queue, the rest of the floor deserves a slow lap. There's zi char up here too, the cook-to-order dishes that arrive on big plates for the table to share, and it's the food this neighbourhood still eats.

Downstairs, the wet market is the fresh-food floor, named for its wet, hosed-down floors, and it's liveliest early in the morning, when live frogs sit a few stalls from the greens. The Chinatown Complex food tour takes three hours over the whole building, with someone explaining what you're eating as you go.

Two more hawker centres are within walking distance. Amoy Street Food Centre sits on the CBD side of Chinatown, and Hong Lim Food Centre has chicken rice fans of its own if you'd like a second opinion on Tian Tian.

Two stalls repay a detour from those halls. A Noodle Story at Amoy Street Food Centre serves Singapore-style ramen, a cross between wanton mee and Japanese ramen, and Outram Park Fried Kway Teow at Hong Lim has a Bib Gourmand for its wet, eggy char kway teow. The queue there forms from 7.30am and the plates sell out by mid-afternoon.

Along Telok Ayer Street

Telok Ayer Street is the part of Chinatown that still feels like a street, and Telok Ayer MRT sits right on it. Thian Hock Keng is the oldest Hokkien temple in the country, built by seafarers giving thanks for surviving the South China Sea and put together without nails. It's free and usually quiet. Along the same street, Fuk Tak Chi at 76 Telok Ayer Street is a Hakka and Cantonese temple, built in 1824, that's become a small street museum. It's free, open daily 10am to 10pm, and 10 minutes covers it.

On the same stretch at 192 Telok Ayer Street, Masjid Al-Abrar is a Chulia mosque known as Kucha Palli, the small mosque. It's been a National Monument since 1974 and is still a working mosque, so dress modestly and leave your shoes at the door. A few doors from Thian Hock Keng, the Musical Box Museum at 168 Telok Ayer Street is about two minutes from Exit A of Telok Ayer station. It works by reservation only, with no walk-ins: every visit is a guided listen of about an hour for up to eight guests, in English or Japanese, at S$20 for adults or S$18 for residents.

The Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church at 235 Telok Ayer Street is a National Monument and the first church built for Singapore's Chinese Methodist community. Its Heritage Space is open to explore on your own, and everyone is welcome at the Sunday services.

At 98 Telok Ayer Street, Ying Fo Fui Kun is the first Hakka clan association in Singapore, founded in 1822. It's open Monday to Friday from 8am to 4pm, so come on a weekday, and visitors on peak days such as the Qingming period may need an appointment.

A street over from Thian Hock Keng, Yueh Hai Ching on Philip Street is a quieter temple, where 10 minutes gets you the incense without the tour groups. Hong San See, a Hokkien temple and National Monument on Mohamed Sultan Road, is calmer still, though it's up by the river and makes a separate outing.

The free walking tour

Monster Day Tours runs a free Chinatown walking tour of about two and a half hours that explains the history as you go, taking in Sri Mariamman, Buddha Tooth, Thian Hock Keng, Fuk Tak Chi and Sago Lane. It runs on Tuesdays from 10am to 12.30pm, and on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays from 4pm to 6.30pm. Book a slot before you come. Meet at street level outside Exit B of Telok Ayer station and look for the purple-and-yellow shirt.

Arrive 15 minutes early, because latecomers can't join once it's moving. The tour goes ahead rain or shine and isn't suited to wheelchairs or strollers. It finishes at Chinatown Complex, which makes it an easy place to eat afterwards. There's no fee, and if you enjoyed it, they ask for a tip of S$20 to S$30.

Cubicle life on Pagoda Street

Back on Pagoda Street, the Chinatown Heritage Centre at number 48 is the indoor version of all this. Its restored shophouse, the narrow terrace with a shop below and rooms above, shows the cramped rented cubicles people once lived in. It's two minutes from Exit A, open daily 10am to 8pm with last entry at 7.15pm, Mondays included, and it closes for maintenance on 13 October. Book a timeslot, though the counter still sells tickets if you haven't. Under-3s go free, children under 12 need an adult with them, and strollers are parked on the first floor.

Over on Eu Tong Sen Street, Yue Hwa is a Chinese department store that still sells silk and traditional medicine, and 20 minutes there is time well spent. When your feet start to complain, People's Park has a row of reflexology shops. Pick one with a queue and agree the price before your shoes come off. Say no to the package deals.

People's Park Food Centre, at Block 32 New Market Road, is a separate building from the complex. It began in 1923 as a municipal shelter for street hawkers, and fixed tables only arrived in 1992, before which each stallholder brought their own.

For something to take home, KOBO Jewellery runs guided sessions on New Bridge Road where you design and make a silver ring, necklace or bangle, by appointment only. If the medicine counters at Yue Hwa have made you curious, a TCM consultation has a physician read your pulse and tongue and send you off with herbs to brew.

Lanterns and the Nine Emperor Gods

Chinatown's festivals follow the lunar calendar. Around Mid-Autumn, in September or early October, the neighbourhood hangs its lanterns. The Nine Emperor Gods festival follows in the ninth lunar month, usually in October, with processions and vegetarian observances. It's a working religious festival rather than a light-up, so take photos only from outside the halls.

Tea on Neil Road

When the afternoon heat peaks, head for Tea Chapter at 9A Neil Road, a teahouse since 1989. You sit on the floor, brew your own pot and let the afternoon stop being an itinerary. Queen Elizabeth II took tea here in 1989. Born, a Michelin-starred dining room in the old Jinrikisha Station at 1 Neil Road, is priced for a birthday or an anniversary and built around a long evening, so book ahead.

Further along at 157 Neil Road, Baba House is a Peranakan terrace, Peranakan being the Straits-born Chinese culture. NUS has stopped its heritage tours and the house is closed for restoration until 2027, though NUS has a virtual tour of the interior online. If a house museum is what you're after, book The Intan in Joo Chiat instead.

Keong Saik and Duxton Hill

The shophouse streets off Telok Ayer are closer together than the map makes them look. From Thian Hock Keng it's four minutes to Ann Siang Hill, five more to Keong Saik and another five to Blair Plain. Outram Park MRT is about 10 minutes' walk from Blair Plain, and it's the easier station when you're heading straight there. Tiong Bahru is 20 to 25 minutes' walk from Chinatown, uphill, and better kept for a morning of its own.

Keong Saik is three blocks of restaurants in shophouses that once made up a red-light district. The street is free to wander, but book the table if you want to eat there. Duxton Hill is quieter still, and Blair Plain feels about as far from Pagoda Street as Chinatown gets.

Book ahead for the long dinners. Meta is our Keong Saik pick for a slow evening, a Korean-leaning tasting menu that holds one Michelin star, and Esquina is a long-running tapas bar where the counter seats are the ones to get.

Up on Bukit Pasoh, Zén is Björn Frantzén's Singapore restaurant, a long set menu at lunch or dinner that holds three Michelin stars. Tables go early, so book far ahead.

The Pinnacle@Duxton skybridge

Pinnacle@Duxton at 1G Cantonment Road has the view. It's an HDB block, public housing built by the Housing and Development Board, with a skybridge on the 50th storey that's open to visitors. Tickets are S$6 from the kiosk on Level 1 of Block 1G, sold from 9am until last admission at 9pm. There's a daily quota of 150, with 50 people on the bridge at a time. The 26th-storey bridge is for residents only.

Outram Park is six to eight minutes' walk away towards Cantonment Road, and Tanjong Pagar works as well. The quota fills at weekends, so come early to be sure of a ticket. Tras Link Park, a small green by Tanjong Pagar station, has benches and colourful garden swings for a short sit-down on the way.

Pearl's Hill City Park is the 8.5-hectare hill above Outram, open 24 hours, where the CBD towers show through the tembusu trees. The paths have no wheelchair access. Hong Lim Park is the small, flat alternative, the lawn that holds Speakers' Corner.

A rainy hour indoors

Storms here are short, but it helps to have an indoor stop ready. Singapore Art Museum has moved from its old Queen Street building to Tanjong Pagar Distripark, and the nearest station is Cantonment MRT, Exit 1. It's open daily 10am to 7pm with last entry at 6.30pm, and it pairs well with tea on Neil Road. Library@Chinatown is free and air-conditioned, and fine for sitting out a short storm.

The Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre at 1 Straits Boulevard has SINGAPO人, a free exhibition on Level 2, open Monday 2pm to 8pm and Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 8pm. Until 13 December its roof garden also holds Bit Bit Forest, a free garden of inflatable rabbits, open 10am to 10pm, and it's the nearest big photo stop to Chinatown.

Club Street after six

Ann Siang Hill and Club Street wake up at about 6pm, and Telok Ayer MRT is the nearest station for Amoy Street and Club Street. The Chinatown cocktail crawl meets at 8pm at Exit A of Chinatown MRT and walks from Amoy Street to Bukit Pasoh, taking in three shophouse bars with a signature drink at each. 28 HongKong Street runs a cocktail masterclass for anyone who'd rather shake than hop.

Dinner can be the secret chef's table, nine courses of modern Singaporean food in a 1920s Blair Plain shophouse from 7pm, and you'll get the address once you've booked. Chinatown Food Street on Smith Street is quicker. It gets going after 6pm and is set up for visitors, which makes it a good fallback when Maxwell's stalls are shut. Later still, Smith Street's zi char stalls keep cooking.

Amoy Street holds two more tables worth planning a night around. Nouri cooks a tasting menu in a no-waste kitchen that holds one Michelin star, and Cloudstreet serves modern Australian cooking with two Michelin stars, our pick for a special-occasion dinner around Tanjong Pagar.

Late satay at Lau Pa Sat

The last stop is a five-minute walk away at Lau Pa Sat, the Victorian iron market that's technically in the Civic District. The satay is the reason to go after 7pm. We'd pick it over Clarke Quay, a 10-minute walk away, unless you're set on the river and the neon.

Out on Satay Street, the grills run weekdays 7pm to 3am and weekends 3pm to 3am, and you pay at each stall. Pagoda Street will be selling fridge magnets again by morning, and you'll know to keep walking.