Chinatown

Singapore's Chinatown sits in Outram, southwest of the central business district, an ethnic enclave with deeply Chinese character. The quarter traces back to Stamford Raffles's 1822 town plan, which assigned the area to Chinese arrivals from Fujian, Guangdong and Hainan, whose dialect groups still echo in street names like Telok Ayer, Pagoda Street and Sago Lane. Pastel Peranakan shophouses, the four-storey roof pavilion of the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and the south Indian Sri Mariamman Temple make clear the district was never purely Chinese. The Chinatown Complex Hawker Centre gathers some 260 stalls under one roof, including Hawker Chan, the first street food vendor in the world to win a Michelin star. After dark the narrow lanes of Smith Street fill with open kitchens, red lanterns and karaoke bars.