The Lion City is, alongside the Vatican and Monaco, one of the last city-states left in the world. Its extremely limited space forced it to find its own path - a way not just to survive, but to thrive.
The Lion City is, alongside the Vatican and Monaco, one of the last city-states left in the world. Its extremely limited space forced it to find its own path - a way not just to survive, but to thrive. From the moment it gained independence, Singapore's economy was geared towards optimised operation: there were never any vast factories here, but rather small, specialised laboratories producing semiconductors; there was never any land-hungry agriculture - at most small but highly efficient turtle or crocodile farms. The economy flourished thanks to transport and the banking sector.
In time, however, it turned out that the 21st century would bring astonishing global growth in another sector - tourism. Singapore couldn't remain indifferent to it. In a country that spent the first 30 years of its existence looking only to the future, steadily demolishing older districts and charming colonial townhouses, people began thinking about creating tourist attractions. Attractions capable of drawing visitors from all over the world.
It worked: Singapore is a remarkable example of a country where the vast majority of the places tourists visit were designed not 200, not 100, not even 50, but less than 20 years ago.
The iconic Marina Bay Sands hotel? Completed 16 years ago, in 2010.
The world-famous Gardens by the Bay with its giant domes? Opened 14 years ago, in 2012.
The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, which looks several hundred years old? It has stood for a mere 19 years - since 2007.
There's no denying that all these places make an incredible impression on visitors. The truth, however, is that Singapore would fascinate even without them. The city positively teems with wildly interesting places you'll search for in vain in any guidebook. A curious situation arises here, where the vast majority of tourists tour Singapore without ever coming into contact with “real Singaporean life”.
The real Singapore begins where the promotional brochures end.
It's the morning kopi, toast with kaya and soft-boiled eggs served every morning at the corner shop. It's the older gentlemen playing a game of Chinese chess at the foot of a housing block. It's the scent of incense drifting from altars behind shops or from a small temple hidden among the skyscrapers. And, finally, it's the opera performances staged by retirees for... the gods.
A few minutes' walk is enough to move from a futuristic business district to a lane where time seems to have stopped in the 1960s. Singapore can be ultramodern and surprisingly nostalgic at the same time. Behind the skyscrapers lie old workshops, family bakeries and shops run by the same generation for over half a century.
After all, most residents don't live in hotels by Marina Bay. Their everyday life is the HDB estates - huge, self-sufficient districts home to over 80% of Singaporeans. That's exactly where you can understand what this country is about. How a multicultural society functions, why Chinese, Malays and Indians live side by side in a single block, and what daily life looks like in one of the best-organised countries in the world.
You also get to know the real Singapore through its food.
Tourists often ask where to find the “best restaurant”. Residents answer quite differently: they point to a specific stall in a specific hawker centre whose owner has been making just one dish for thirty years. In Singapore you can eat a Michelin-starred meal while sitting on a plastic chair under a spinning fan. You can queue for an hour for chicken rice or a bowl of laksa, because locals know that some flavours simply can't be rushed.
You also discover this city through its small rituals. Through evening walks in the seaside parks, family picnics at the weekend, morning shopping at the wet markets and temple festivals most visitors have never heard of. That's exactly when Singapore stops being a collection of attractions and becomes a place where life is truly lived.
And that, perhaps, is exactly why we love it so much.
Because the longer we live here, the more convinced we become that Singapore's greatest attraction isn't its buildings, but the people and the stories hidden among them. It's a city that rewards curiosity. Where it's worth turning down a side lane now and then, stepping into an unassuming little shop, sitting down at a table in a neighbourhood food centre and simply watching.
That's when it turns out Singapore is so much more than Marina Bay Sands and Gardens by the Bay.
The best way to get to know it is to see it through the eyes of people who live here every day - and know where its true soul lies.