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Free booking and cancellationFree payment tour, no set price, booking and cancellation are free
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I am Singaporean and love to travel and learn about the history and people of each place I visit. I guide at museums and heritage trails. It is my pleasure to meet people and show them around my city.
Discover how modern Singapore began at the Singapore River and see how we live and conserve our heritage.
From our starting point at Empress Place (now the Asian Civilizations Museum), we will proceed to the landing site of Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of modern Singapore in 1819. We head south across the Singapore River to Chinatown one of the first ethnic quarters, visiting temples along Telok Ayer (Malay for Water Bay) the ancient coastline before land reclamation filled it and allowed the rise of the present financial district. We will then head to the City Gallery to see the city model of modern Singapore. Then we will gaze at Sri Mariaman, a Hindu temple in the heart of Chinatown beside a mosque, before ending at Chinatown Complex where locals live, work and play. There, I will also point out some of Singapore’s world famous hawker food from around 200 hawker stalls in the complex, part of the hawker culture that made the UNESCO intangible heritage list in 2020.
I will be at the front steps of Empress Place with my blue backpack.
We will start the tour here and learn about rise of the civic district from the Raffles town plan.
Learn about Sir Stamford Raffles and his role in founding modern Singapore as well as the rise of the commercial heart of the port along the Singapore River.
Visit a restored temple that is now part of the Amoy Hotel. View a model of what life was like in early Chinatown.
Visit Thian Hock Keng temple, built in the 1840s, one of the oldest and best preserved Chinese temples in Singapore that still serves the community as a place of worship.
View the impressive architectural model of central Singapore at a scale of 1:400. Trace the rise of Chinatown from Telok Ayer and the conservation program for heritage buildings in the Chinatown conservation area. We will have a short break here to use the restrooms.
Gaze at the tiered gate of the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore and find out why it is in the heart of Chinatown.
Learn about public housing in modern Singapore. Then get a glimpse of the hawker culture that has been listed in 2020 on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Free tours do not have a set price, instead, each person gives the guru at the end of the tour the amount that he or she considers appropriate (these usually range from €10 to $50 depending on satisfaction with the tour).