Katong

The pastel row everyone photographs is this one row and no more. No two doors carry the same fretwork or tiles, and nobody stops you sitting on the front steps. Cars use the road, so the whole row only fits from the far pavement.

One person's lifetime of collecting, left in the house and shown as it stands. Beaded slippers, wedding embroidery and porcelain stack to the ceiling, which leaves the aisles narrow. The owner talks you through it, so a quiet look round is not on offer.

15km of shore park laid on land that was all reclaimed. Cycle path and footpath run separately and the barbecue pits have to be booked ahead, while anchored cargo ships line the water so the horizon is never empty.

The elephant-headed Ganesha is the deity here. Granite shipped from India covers the inner floor and walls and the thirty-two forms of Ganesha are carved one to a pillar, and shoes come off at the left doorway, which is the way in.

A coconut planter's name ended up on the street sign. Cafes, noodle shops and barbers share the ground floors of the shophouses while the storeys above stay residential. It goes quiet at night, so anyone arriving for bars has come to the wrong road.

A hawker centre you walk into straight off the sand. Satay, fried noodle and crab stalls share one open-sided shed, and with no windows the breeze goes through. Parking is tight, so on weekend evenings a space is harder to find than a table.

The market where Malay household life sits in one place. Vegetables and fish fill the ground floor, cloth and perfume the one above, and in Ramadan a night bazaar takes the forecourt overnight. It follows the lunar calendar, so the dates shift earlier yearly.

Walk south off East Coast Road and the ground drops once. That step is where the water reached before the 1970s reclamation, and the old seaside villas above it still face the direction the sea used to be. What those windows look at now is flats.

One of the earliest malls in the country. It opened in 1973 and now karaoke rooms, travel agents and maid agencies fill the floors, with almost nothing in it for a visitor to buy. Weak cooling and low lighting change the decade the moment you step in.

Five minutes' walk from the Hindu temple stands a Catholic church. The parish of 1902 lost its original building, and the present one dates from 1999, though the old bell and font were carried into it.

A glass-domed mall from 2019 facing the Changi terminals, with a 40m indoor waterfall through its centre. The forest round the falls and the ground floor are free to enter. At night light and music play over the water, a popular last stop before flying out.

An island reached by small bumboat from Changi Point, where an old kampong village and flooded quarries survive. Boats keep no timetable and leave once full. Bikes are rented by the jetty for the ride out to the Chek Jawa wetland boardwalk at the eastern tip.

A museum of records left by POWs and civilians interned at Changi under Japanese occupation. In the courtyard stands a rebuilt copy of the chapel the prisoners made. The galleries also cover the biblical murals a prisoner painted in a camp chapel.