Heading to Singapore? You might want to know what "choping" is first (2024)

Whether it’s hotels tucked into heritage buildings or Michelin-starred Singaporean chefs serving up dishes inspired by their childhood, it’s never been easier to swerve the tourist traps and experience the city like a local. Here’s how, writes Tamara Hinson

I’ve never been a fan of afternoon teas, which rarely offer any meaningful insight into the destination in question, and usually leave me wondering why I’ve paid over the odds for pastries I’d find in my local supermarket. Until, that is, I came across the one served at Pan Pacific Singapore, where visitors can chow down on an afternoon tea paying homage to local flavours. The result is one which is equally popular with locals and tourists. Delicacies on offer include a salted egg yolk yam puff, a bun stuffed with chili crab meat and a crispy pork lobak (a sausage roll-like dish).

The best bit? The Pan Pacific Singapore isn’t alone in its determination to showcase the country’s best bits, revealing sides of the country usually overlooked by tourists. Take Udders, a Singaporean icecream brand that can now be found throughout Asia. At the brand’s branch in Novena, I sample a delicious Kueh Salat flavour inspired by the sweet, rice-based cakes found throughout Singapore, the ridiculously moreish Muah Chee (made with mochi chunks and peanuts) and the Singapore Chendol, an icecream version of the frozen dessert which combines a pandan leaf jelly with sweet red beans.

And then there’s chef LG Han, head chef and founder of the Michelin-starred Labyrinth restaurant. Han’s beautiful dishes are inspired by his childhood, which also shaped the décor – the pots and pans carefully fixed to the restaurant’s walls belonged to his grandmother. He describes his cuisine as modern Singaporean, and highlights of the tasting menu include the chili crab, made with a chili tomato icecream, and the Hainanese chicken rice, which features grandmother’s chili sauce. There’s plenty of humour, too – for example, the first dish, which honours the Newton Food Centre (one of Han’s favourite street-food spots) is served on a board resembling a hawker centre table, complete with the obligatory sticker reminding visitors to return their trays. The dish is served with a Labyrinth-branded packet of tissues – a nod to locals’ habit of placing tissue packets on empty tables to reserve spots at hawker centres (a practice known as “choping”).

Over in Chinatown, Singaporean artist Yip Yew Chong pays homage to his homeland in another way. Many of its oldest buildings might have gone, but his detailed murals, commissioned by local authorities, depict scenes from Chinatown’s past and can be seen throughout the neighbourhood. One of my favourites shows Yip’s childhood home. It’s incredibly detailed, with depictions of his grandmother, a seamstress, sewing a blanket, and his mother cooking traditional cakes. “Now my old home is a car park,” says Yip when we meet for a teh tarik (pulled milk tea). “This is why I wanted to capture these places – so many are gone.” He smiles as he recalls one of his earliest memories of Chinatown. “There was a street corner I’d walk past as a child – I’d freak out because there was this guy who’d slaughter snakes at his market stall. He’s depicted in one of my murals.”

Yip points out that visitors willing to do as locals do and explore its often-overlooked rural areas will find further reminders of its past. “Much of the primary jungle has remained unchanged,” says Yip, flagging Bukit Timah Hill (Singapore’s highest point) as a favourite spot. “When we were young we’d trek up it, although there weren’t any footpaths back then.”

Yip tells me that another favourite hangout is the Singaporean island of Pulau Ubin, a 15-minute ferry journey from the Changi Point Ferry Terminal. It’s a popular weekend destination for locals, many of whom stay on its campsites. Once dotted with quarries, Pulau Ubin was an active granite mining site until 2000, and the quarries are now nature reserves. When I visit on a weekend, I pass groups of local hikers marching across the island. At campsites, teenagers gather around barbecues to a soundtrack of K-Pop. I hire a bike and pedal along deserted trails to the eastern tip, where I find the Chek Jawa wetlands. Here, six ecosystems – including seagrass lagoons and mangroves – meet, and visitors can hike along a boardwalk and climb a 21m observation tower.

Not that you have to leave Singapore’s mainland to take a walk on the wild side. One day, I hop on the bus to the MacRitchie Reservoir, a forested park that has Singapore’s last remaining tracts of primary rainforest. A missed bus stop means I end up in Bukit Brown cemetery, instead.

Here, I discover a sprawling, incense-scented resting place that opened in 1922 and was the first Chinese municipal cemetery in Singapore, open to anyone from the Chinese community, irrespective of connections with certain clans or families. Its occupants include revolutionaries and writers, and its tombs and graves offer a fascinating insight into Singapore’s history, whether it’s the simple headstones erected during the Japanese occupation, or the grandiose tombs built for Chinese traders who struck it rich in Singapore. Keep an eye out for the final resting place of Peranakan businessman Ong Sam Leong. Said to be Singapore’s most grandiose gravesite, it’s guarded by statues of Indian watchmen.

If solo explorations (or missed bus stops) don’t do it for you, consider a guided tour such as the ones offered by Wok n’ Stroll, founded by Karni Tomer, who fell in love with the country’s food scene after moving here. Karni wanted to create a food-themed tour that delved into lesser-known aspects of the country’s food scene while showcasing the spots locals love but that tourists seldom visit.

My tour begins in Geylang Serai, once one of the oldest Malay settlements in Singapore. It rarely registers on visitors’ radars, typically overlooked in favour of crowd-pleasers such as Clarke Quay, a magnet for tourists who head there to sip overpriced beers, then moan about Singapore’s high prices. My Singaporean Wok n’ Stroll guide, Jan, starts the tour at the Geylang Serai’s wet market, leading me past gaggles of discerning locals appraising still-twitching fish before heading upstairs to its food stalls. The place is heaving and I end up sharing a table with a local couple. Within minutes they’ve reeled off their favourite local hangouts and we’ve discussed everything from which hawker centre serves the best seafood to whether a promised Singapore to Malaysia railway will ever materialise.

The tour includes a visit to Joo Chiat. This neighbourhood’s pastel-hued shophouses have always attracted gaggles of selfie-snapping Instagrammers, but it remains a popular hangout for locals, too. I feel somewhat smug passing an Instagrammer striking a pose in front of a shophouse, knowing she’ll almost certainly never make it to under-the-radar spots like Joo Chiat Kim Choo, where Jan explains that the speciality is rice dumplings (I recommend the Hokkien ones made with braised pork belly), or Birds of Paradise, famous for its botanically-themed gelato, made with Southeast Asian flavours such as osmanthus and spiced pear.

Jan also takes me to Straits Enclave, a tiny private museum founded by Clarence, a proud Peranakan (people of mixed Malay and Chinese descent born to Singapore’s earliest settlers), who’s amassed a huge collection of Peranakan artefacts. When Clarence ran out of space in his home, he stuffed them into this Joo Chiat shophouse and opened it to the public (visits can be arranged via the Straits Enclave’s Facebook site). Items on display provide a wonderful insight into all aspects of Peranakan culture. A Mercedes typewriter, numerous gramophones and antique desks offer reminders that the Peranakans were keen travellers who’d return to Singapore with treasures purchased abroad. A narrow staircase is lined with ornately painted spittoons, and larger items on display include a beautifully carved wedding chamber - the bed in which newly-married couples would spend their first night, typically supervised by the bride’s mother-in-law.

It looks ridiculously cosy, although I remind myself I’m lucky enough to have the next best thing – a room in a hotel tucked inside a historic former shophouse. At the Duxton Reserve Singapore, Autograph Collection hotel, various areas honour the history of Chinatown and its shophouse architecture. Framed calligraphy prints and ornate fans hang from the walls, and my ornately carved four-poster wooden bed reminds me of the wedding chamber at Straits Enclave. Minus, that is, the overbearing mother-in-law. Which, let’s face it, is one tradition I suspect might be best left in the past.

Checklist

SINGAPORE

GETTING THERE

Fly non-stop from Auckland to Singapore with Singapore Airlines in 11 hours.

DETAILS

visitsingapore.com/en