Heartland Heritage Trails, Town by Town

The National Heritage Board maps a self-guided trail for a string of towns well outside the centre. Each one is a walk along ordinary streets and parks, so there's nothing to book and any morning will do. Every trail has a map and booklet on NHB's Roots site, usually with two or three routes of different lengths. We'd walk Ang Mo Kio first, and early, for the songbird corner and the round flats of the Clover Block. Toa Payoh has a half-hour route for something shorter, the shortest on foot of any trail here.

The routes below run from the middle of the island outwards: the north-central towns first, then the north, the east and the west. The longer routes are written for public transport, so allow for a bus between stops, and remember that temples and shops along the way keep their own hours.

Ang Mo Kio, early

The Ang Mo Kio Heritage Trail has three routes, and the 5.5 km Iconic Landmarks route starts at the town centre, where Block 710 was once the "VIP Block": visiting dignitaries, including Queen Elizabeth II and Chinese Premier Li Peng, were brought up to see early public housing from above. From there you walk through to Ang Mo Kio Town Garden West, 21 hectares laid out in 1983 and once the largest town park in Singapore. The hill forest above it has its own morning in Ang Mo Kio Town Garden.

At the western foot of the garden, Kebun Baru Birdsinging Club is the largest bird-singing and display arena in Singapore. Owners hang their songbirds in cages from poles and let them sing, with room for more than 1,000 cages and competitions held regularly. Owners usually start arriving around 5.30am, and many stay until late afternoon, but it's busiest early, so we'd go early. The garden next door is open 24 hours.

Later, a bus takes you to Block 259, the Clover Block, the only block of circular flats HDB built. It was finished in 1981 as a pilot to bring more variety to public housing. If you still have energy, the route's optional extra is one of the last dragon playgrounds left in Singapore, on Ang Mo Kio Avenue 3, followed by Pine Garden, a heartland bakery on Avenue 10 that has been baking since 1984. A different morning could start at Chu Sheng Temple, within a short walk of Yio Chu Kang MRT.

Toa Payoh's first blocks

Toa Payoh was the first town planned and built entirely by HDB, and the Toa Payoh Heritage Trail shows how its housing changed block by block. The housing route begins at Block 53 on Lorong 5, a 19-storey block from 1967 with a Y-shaped plan and a cylindrical water tower on its roof. It later became the "VIP block" for visiting prime ministers, presidents and monarchs.

Further along, Toa Payoh Town Park has a conserved 25-metre Look-Out Tower, and four point blocks of the former 1973 SEAP Games Village stand in the town centre. Athletes slept there during the Games, and the flats were later sold to the public fully furnished. Another route starts at Lian Shan Shuang Lin Monastery, which Monasteries Behind the Blocks covers in full. The dragon playground, one of the most recognisable icons of Singapore, gets its own walk in Toa Payoh Dragon.

Balestier's side roads

The Balestier Heritage Trail has three routes on foot, and they start at either Goh Chor Tua Pek Kong Temple or Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall. The temple was founded in 1847 by Hokkien workers on Joseph Balestier's sugarcane estate, and it's the area's oldest surviving landmark. Balestier Market, built in 1922, is the only rural market building left in Singapore, and it became a food centre in the 1990s, which puts lunch right on the route. Balestier: Bak Kut Teh, Rojak and a Villa says what to order.

The longest route, two hours on foot, also takes you through the old Tan Tock Seng Hospital grounds around Mandalay and Bassein Roads, where a row of pavilion wards, also called Nightingale wards, housed patients after the hospital moved here in 1909. At the corner of Boon Teck and Balestier roads, a temple keeps a water kiosk with free water and tea for passers-by. Chan Chor Min Tong's two halls are closed to the public, so you'll be looking at them from the street.

Yishun and Sembawang

Yishun's trail has two routes, and one starts at Khatib MRT. The shorter, Rockets and Reservoirs, takes an hour with public transport and begins at Heritage Garden@Yishun by the town centre, where a bronze statue of Lim Nee Soon stands. It passes the cinema that opened in 1992 as Yishun 10, Asia's first cineplex, with a spaceship-like design, and reaches Upper Seletar Reservoir, where an 18-metre Rocket Tower recalls the first Moon landing.

Gurdwara Sahib Yishun, a small neighbourhood gurdwara whose own site has a visitor guide, is also on the trail, and Places of Worship You Can Enter has its visiting details.

For a walk with more green in it, Yishun Pond and the Khoo Teck Puat Garden is the one to read.

Sembawang's trail follows the old British naval base in three routes, the shortest two hours with public transport. One starts at Holy Tree Sri Balasubramaniar Temple, across from Canberra MRT, and another at the former Admiralty House, built in 1939-40 as Navy House and a national monument since 2002. You can't go past the shipyard gate, since entry is prohibited, but the yard's King George VI Dry Dock, at 305 metres, was the world's largest when it opened in 1938. The black-and-white bungalows on Queen's Avenue are private homes, and photography is not allowed there.

The trail's last stop is Beaulieu Jetty, in front of Beaulieu House, a 1910s house conserved in 2005. It's a popular fishing spot with a view of the Johor Strait. Sembawang is also home to the only natural hot spring on mainland Singapore, a foot soak with its own story in Sembawang Hot Spring.

Woodlands and the Causeway

Woodlands has been Singapore's gateway to Johor since 1845, and its trail has 14 stops, from Marsiling Lane Market and Masjid An-Nur to the Causeway and Kranji War Cemetery. Two routes suit a half day by bus, and the 15 km loop takes 1.5 hours by bike. Hong Tho Bilw Temple, a short walk from Woodlands MRT via Exit 1, starts the shortest bus route, and the longer one starts at the south entrance of Admiralty Park, a short walk from Exit 3.

Along the way, Sri Siva-Krishna Temple, completed in 1966, is the only temple in Singapore dedicated to Lord Siva-Krishna. Marsiling Lane Market and Food Centre opened in 1975 as the first market for the Marsiling HDB estate, and the Causeway opened in 1924. For a place to look across the Strait, Woodlands Waterfront and the Long Jetty has its own story.

Pasir Ris to Changi

In the east, the Pasir Ris Heritage Trail has three routes on foot, and the coastal one takes 30 minutes by bicycle. It starts at the entrance of Pasir Ris Park, near Carpark B, and heads into the six-hectare mangrove forest. A boardwalk and a bird-watching tower let you look for grey herons and otters, and out at sea you'll see kelongs, the stilt fishing structures. Another route starts at the Adventure Playground. Pasir Ris Park's Mangrove Boardwalk has more on the park.

The Adventure Playground, from 1986, is among the biggest in Singapore, with a seven-metre netted rope pyramid and sandpits that recall the sand quarries once found here. Next to Elias Mall, the Bumboat Playground is one of HDB's 1980s mosaic playgrounds, with a bumboat, or twakow, as its centrepiece.

Changi's trail has 15 stops and three routes, Bungalows and Beaches, War and Peace, and Gateways and Communities, the shortest an hour with public transport. Changi has been a leisure destination since the mid-1840s, and the stops run from Changi Village and Changi Beach to the wartime chapel and museum and Changi Airport. Sree Ramar Temple, built in 1946 by devotees from the RAF Changi base, is one of them. Changi Point Ferry Terminal, built in 2005, is also where the bumboats for Pulau Ubin leave.

Jurong, a few stops at a time

The Jurong Heritage Trail lists 25 places, from the early-1970s food centre known as 60 Stalls to Chinese Garden, Science Centre Singapore and the Army Museum. They're spread across the town, so pick one corner and leave the rest. A few stops are only markers on the sites of places that have gone, such as the Jurong Drive-In Cinema, which opened in 1971 as the first in Singapore and closed in 1985.

One stop is still working. At 85 Lorong Tawas, TK Pottery Jungle keeps one of Singapore's last two dragon kilns. Brickworks operated in Jurong as early as the 1920s and played a critical role in building the public estates of the 1960s.

Wherever you start, the best stops are the everyday ones: a bakery that has been going since 1984 or a market that has served one estate since 1975.