Singapore

Modern Singapore traces its founding to February 6, 1819, when Stamford Raffles of the British East India Company signed a treaty with the Temenggong of Johor and established a trading post on the island's southern shore. Yet the site had been inhabited and fought over for centuries before Raffles arrived: 14th-century Malay chronicles describe a great city called Temasek — "Sea Town" — whose port was already a regional entrepôt of significant wealth. Within five years of Raffles's treaty, Singapore had attracted 10,000 inhabitants; within a century, it was the most important port in Asia. Today it handles more than 37 million container units annually and remains the world's second-busiest port by shipping tonnage.

The physical Singapore that Raffles's successors created — a city of ordered colonial districts, botanical gardens, and grand civic buildings — has given way to something altogether more extraordinary. The Marina Bay Sands resort, with its ship-deck SkyPark balanced on three towers above the bay, has become the defining image of 21st-century Singapore as emphatically as the Eiffel Tower defines Paris. Gardens by the Bay's Supertree Grove — 18 vertical gardens rising up to 50 metres, some harnessing solar energy and venting exhaust from the conservatories below — illuminates nightly in a light show of choreographed colour. The colonial heart of the city — the Padang, the National Museum, the Peranakan terraces of Emerald Hill — exists in civilised coexistence with this architectural ambition.

Singapore's hawker centre culture, inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list, represents one of Asia's great democratic food traditions: air-conditioned and open-air centres across the island serve Hokkien prawn mee, char kway teow, Hainanese chicken rice, laksa, and roti prata at prices that make the city's celebrated restaurant scene seem extravagant by comparison. Maxwell Food Centre near Chinatown is the pilgrimage site for Tian Tian chicken rice — its queue a reliable barometer of Singapore's most beloved dish. The Peranakan cuisine of Katong, with its distinctive nyonya kuih (steamed coconut cakes) and assam laksa fragrant with tamarind and galangal, represents the cultural fusion of Chinese and Malay traditions that gives Singapore its unique culinary identity.

The Southern Islands of Sentosa, Lazarus, and St John's offer beaches, cycling, and the theatrical excess of Universal Studios and S.E.A. Aquarium. Across the Causeway — 45 minutes by road — Johor Bahru in Malaysia provides a markedly different shopping and culinary experience. Batam Island in Indonesia is 45 minutes by ferry. For those with more time, Langkawi, Penang, and the jungles of Borneo are all within comfortable day-flight distance, giving Singapore an enviable position as the hub of Southeast Asian leisure travel.

Singapore is Southeast Asia's premier cruise hub, with AIDA, Aurora Expeditions, Azamara, Carnival Cruise Line, Celebrity Cruises, Costa Cruises, Crystal Cruises, Cunard, Disney Cruise Line, Explora Journeys, Explorations by Norwegian, Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, Holland America Line, MSC Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises, P&O Cruises, Paul Gauguin Cruises, Ponant, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Royal Caribbean, Seabourn, Silversea, Tauck, TUI Cruises Mein Schiff, Viking, and Windstar Cruises all homeporting or calling here on Southeast Asia, Indian Ocean, and world voyage itineraries. Singapore operates year-round, with the driest and most comfortable period running from February through early April.