Chinatown

A Hindu temple in the middle of Chinatown. Figures of people, cattle and gods are stacked up the gate tower. Shoes come off and are left at the door. In October or November a fire-walking rite fills it, and the queue starts before dawn.

A gilded five-storey building, temple all the way up. The relic hall on level 4 holds the stupa with the tooth and bars cameras, while the roof carries a hand-turned prayer wheel and an orchid garden. A drum sounds downstairs at the morning offering.

The sea once came up to this door. Hokkien arrivals raised it in the 1840s in thanks for a safe crossing, and the timber frame holds together without a single iron nail. Reclamation has since pushed the water several blocks away.

The hawker centre with the most stalls in Singapore. A wet market fills the basement and the food floor sits above it, so vegetables and fish are what you walk past on the way to lunch. A few of the busiest stalls sell out by two or three in the afternoon.

Three shophouses knocked together hold rebuilt 1950s lodgings. Cubicles where several families shared one floor, a communal kitchen and an opium smoking room are all reconstructed. Steep stairs, and no lift.

Stall awnings meet over the lane, so it stays shaded even at midday. Nearly everything on the tables is souvenir stock, and the side lanes repay you better than shopping here does.

It is a hill, and where cars cannot climb it turns into steps. The shophouses stand as they were but hold bars and offices now, so it is quiet by day and fills after dark.

Window frames differ from door to door. This is a conservation area, so wall shades and shutter shapes cannot simply be altered, and the Peranakan houses carry different tilework on each storey. Traffic runs through, so photographs get taken from the kerb.

By day it looks as though nothing has opened. It was a brothel street once, and now every narrow shophouse holds a restaurant or a bar, with the signs coming on after six in the evening.

A scale model of the whole island fills one room. Colour separates what was cleared from what was filled in, so the land gained from the sea reads at a glance. Entry is free, and the air conditioning is fierce enough to make it a midday stop.

More than a hundred stalls under one roof, filled at lunch by office workers from Tanjong Pagar. The queue at the famous chicken rice stall is longest at noon. After 2pm a seat is far easier to find.

A mosque raised in the 1830s by Chulia Muslims from the Tamil coast of south India. The twin towers over the gate resemble a Hindu temple gateway, so newcomers often mistake it for one. Along South Bridge Road a Hindu and a Buddhist temple stand steps away.

An Islamic shrine on Telok Ayer Street raised to honour a saint from Nagore in south India. A row of small minarets crowns its palace-like front. Thian Hock Keng is a short stroll along the same road, and one walk covers the pair.

The top-floor bridge joining seven 50-storey public housing blocks admits outsiders. Tickets are bought at the management office in Block 1G, and the gates accept only an EZ-Link card. Daily entries are capped, and by late afternoon the quota may be gone.

Opened in 1973, this shops-and-flats block was the country's first mall built round an open central space. The flats above are painted in bands of green, red and yellow, visible from far off. Money changers, tailors and herbal shops crowd the lower floors.

A temple founded by the Teochew community, wedged into Phillip Street between the towers of Raffles Place. The roof ridges are crowded with figures and dragons made of ceramic shards. At lunchtime people in suits come in to light incense.