Many people (including a fair few Singaporeans) dismiss the island-city of Singapore as the McDonald’s of Southeast Asia-blandly efficient and safe, boringly unadventurous and overwhelmingly corporate. lt’s true that Singapore has traded in its steamy rickshaw image for towers of concrete and glass, but a sultry heart still beats beneath the big-city surface. This is an undeniably Asian city with a unique mix of Chinese, Malay and lndian traditions, where fortune tellers, calligraphers and temple worshippers are still a part of everyday life.

February to October, during the dry season

Discovering the region’s arts and culture at the Asian Civilisations Museum Exploring Littlelndia-on Sunday evening it’s like the set of a Bollywood musical Tucking into bowl of noodles or melting over a bowl of curry at a hawker-style food centre Watching the fabulously glitzy drag diva cabaret shows at the Boom Boom Room Taking in the sky-high views on the cable-car ride to the granddaddy of musement parks, Sentosa lsland Eyeballing beasties at Singapore’s excellent zoo, or after dark on the Night Safari

Read Foreign Bodies and Mammon lnc by Hwee Hwee Tan-two modern morality tales about Singaporean youth. Suchen Lim’s Fistful of Colours captures the tensions between modern and traditional Singapore

Listen to Chinese opera, or local bands the Boredphucks and Force Vomit

Watch Eric Phoo’s Mee Pok Man, internationally acclaimed as a truly Singaporean film, and Tay Lock’s Money No Enough, which was a huge local box office hit

Eat Hainanese chicken-rice (Singapore’s signature dish) or kaya toast (toast with egg and coconut topping )

Drink Tiger beer or a healing herbal tea in Chinatown

Kiasu (‘afraid to lose’-Singaporeans are very competitive)

Orchard Road shops; Changi airport; hawker-stall food; litter-free streets; Singapore Slings at Raffles Hotel’ efficient public transport; Lee Kuan Yew; rogue traders; Changi Prison; Hello Kitty

lt’s not all concrete-gardens and greenery are everywhere; despite their modernmanners many Singaporeans are deeply religious and superstitious

Feng shui, the Chinese technique of manipulating or judging the environment, dictates much of what you see in Singapore-from the five-fingered shape of the Suntec City mall to the angle of the Hyatt Regency Hotel’s front doors. Pronounced ‘fung shway,’ and literally meaning ‘wind-water,’ the art of geomancy taps into unseen currents that swirl around the surface of the earth and are caused by dragons that sleep beneath the ground.