Tiong Bahru

Tiong Bahru is the neighbourhood that locals point to when visitors ask where to have a slow morning. It is the oldest public housing estate in Singapore, built from the 1930s by the colonial Singapore Improvement Trust, and its low-rise blocks are a gem of tropical Art Deco: rounded corners, spiral back staircases, ribbon windows, flat roofs and open courtyards, all painted white and laid out in a calm grid of streets named after early Chinese community leaders. The estate was designed as modern homes for the working families of a crowded city, and it remains mostly residential, which gives it a lived-in charm that no restored shophouse quarter can quite match. Over the past fifteen years or so the ground floors have filled with bakeries, specialty coffee shops, small restaurants, design and book shops and boutiques, without pushing out the old coffee shops, hardware stores and neighbourhood life. At its heart is Tiong Bahru Market, a two-storey building with a wet market downstairs and a large hawker centre upstairs, beloved for breakfast dishes such as chwee kueh (steamed rice cakes with preserved radish), pau, fishball noodles and lor mee. The ideal visit is an unhurried morning: breakfast at the market, a coffee and a pastry, a wander through the blocks to look at the architecture and the murals, and an hour browsing the shops. It is a twenty-minute walk or one MRT stop from Chinatown, and it shows a side of Singapore that is neither monument nor mall.

Look up as you walk. The prewar blocks, mostly along Eng Watt, Moh Guan, Guan Chuan and Seng Poh roads, are conservation buildings, and their curved balconies and spiral staircases are the classic photographs; please remember they are people's homes, so keep voices down and do not enter private stairwells. Murals around the estate depict the area's past, including old market life and bird singing, a tradition that once filled the area with caged songbirds. The newer postwar blocks, built in the 1950s, continue the style in a simpler form. The Monkey God Temple on Eng Hoon Street, dedicated to the Monkey King, is a small, atmospheric stop.

Food is the main event. The hawker centre upstairs at Tiong Bahru Market is busiest from early morning to lunch on weekends, and many of the best stalls sell out or close by early afternoon, so go hungry and go early. Afterwards, the cafes and bakeries along Yong Siak Street, Eng Hoon Street and Seng Poh Road make the perfect second breakfast. Many independent shops open from late morning and some close on Mondays, so mid-morning on a weekday from Tuesday onwards is the sweet spot for browsing.

Getting there: Tiong Bahru MRT on the East-West Line is about a five-minute walk from the estate, and Outram Park and Havelock stations are close too. The neighbourhood combines well with Chinatown (walk east via Outram) or with Robertson Quay on the river, about fifteen minutes north, for a riverside lunch or drink. It is easy, flat and safe to explore with children, and couples love its cafe-and-browse pace.