eating, drinking and Canto-pop ballads

Even if you’re well acquainted with the flavours of the East, it’s sometimes more polite to play the ignorant foreigner and defer to the expertise of your local companions. Although expensive Western meals are available in abundance, and most people have cosmopolitan tastes, rather than trying to impress at a flash restaurant, it’s worth asking your hosts to recommend somewhere.

They may even suggest an eatery tour, allowing you to experience different dishes and cuisines reflecting the city-state’s myriad cultural influences. Chinese food—Cantonese, Szechuan and Teochew—merges with the spicy influence of Malay to produce the unique fusion of Peranakan, while Little India and Arab Street boast ‘local’ specialities of their own.

Apart from eating and talking about eating, other popular pastimes include karaoke. But one should be prepared for the various interpretations of ‘karaoke lounge’. Forget connotations of bad pub-singing type affairs, actual karaoke singing is taken quite seriously, with grown men launching into heart-felt Canto-pop ballads, usually in private rooms to suit the size of your party. It can be a popular family outing or in honour of a birthday, but there are also karaoke lounges definitely unsuitable for granny’s evening out.

Bottles of expensive liquor to share will sometimes be accompanied by ‘karaoke hostesses’ (offering to hold more than just your microphone), but establishments do vary and it should not be assumed that all hostesses offer personal services. A word of warning: sexual harassment and ‘outrage of modesty’ allegations have been on the rise—often due to the mistaken assumption that all local girls are ‘fair game’. In some cases, however, drunken visiting gentlemen have been the victims of false allegations from girls, often in cahoots with club bouncers claiming to have witnessed the offending incident.

Singaporeans are extremely proud of their city and food is indeed the universal language, so if you happen to find yourself flying in at some ungodly hour or feeling jet-lagged, a knowledgeable taxi- or trishaw-driver is the perfect antidote. The low crime rate means you can even stroll out for a drink, a dance, a bite to eat, or just to enjoy the cityscape at night, whatever the hour.