21 Things to Do in Singapore Beyond Universal Studios and Gardens by the Bay
Most travelers who book Singapore tour packages from India already have two things locked in before they even pack their bags — Universal Studios and Gardens by the Bay. And honestly? Both are spectacular. But here is what 13 years of sending Indian travelers to Singapore has taught us at Dook International: the visitors who come back glowing are almost never the ones who stuck to the highlights reel.
Singapore is one of the most layered cities on earth. A place where a Michelin-starred hawker stall sits three doors down from a 400-year-old temple, where you can swim in an infinity pool above the clouds in the morning and be inside a colonial-era cemetery turned arts district by afternoon. The city rewards curiosity in a way that very few destinations do.
So if you are planning Singapore tour packages in 2026 and want to go beyond what everyone else is doing — this is your guide. Here are 21 things to do in Singapore that most tourists completely miss.
1. Eat Your Way Through a Real Hawker Centre
Let us start with the most important thing you will do in Singapore — eat. Not at a hotel buffet. Not at a mall food court. At a real hawker centre, where Singapore’s soul lives.
Maxwell Food Centre in Chinatown is the classic starting point — home to Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice, which has been drawing queues since before most travelers were born. Old Airport Road Food Centre in Geylang is what locals consider the gold standard. Lau Pa Sat in the CBD is the most atmospheric — an 1894 cast-iron Victorian market that comes alive at night when satay vendors line the closed street outside.
When you book Singapore tour packages through Dook International, our consultants always brief travelers on which hawker centres are worth the trip for their specific food preferences. It makes an enormous difference.
2. Walk the Singapore Botanic Gardens at Dawn
Yes, Gardens by the Bay is magnificent. But the Singapore Botanic Gardens — a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2015 — is something else entirely. Founded in 1859, it is one of the oldest and most significant tropical gardens in the world.
Come at 7 AM before the heat sets in. The National Orchid Garden within the complex holds over 1,000 species and 2,000 hybrids. There is an orchid named after Princess Diana. There is one named after Nelson Mandela. On a quiet Tuesday morning, with mist still sitting on the Symphony Lake, this is one of the most genuinely beautiful hours you will spend anywhere in Southeast Asia.
3. Explore Haji Lane and Kampong Glam
Haji Lane is a narrow alley in the Kampong Glam neighbourhood that looks like it was designed specifically to be photographed — and yet it never feels like a tourist trap because it is genuinely, organically alive. Independent boutiques, vintage clothing stores, Middle Eastern cafés, and murals that change seasonally.
The Sultan Mosque at the end of Arab Street anchors the neighbourhood in its Malay-Muslim heritage. The Malay Heritage Centre on Kandahar Street tells the story of Singapore’s original royal settlement. Walk the whole precinct on a Friday evening when the energy is at its peak.
4. Take the Cable Car to Mount Faber
Most travelers heading to Sentosa Island take the cable car purely for transit. Very few stop at Mount Faber Park — the hilltop departure point — and that is a mistake.
Mount Faber is one of Singapore’s oldest parks, with panoramic views over the southern harbourfront, Keppel Bay marina, and the islands of the southern archipelago. The Faber Peak complex at the summit has restaurants and a bar with unobstructed sunset views that cost nothing to access. The cable car ride across Keppel Harbour is one of the most scenic 15 minutes in Singapore — and it is included in several of Dook International’s Singapore tour packages as a standalone experience rather than just a transfer.
5. Visit the Sri Mariamman Temple in Chinatown
Singapore’s oldest Hindu temple — built in 1827 — sits on South Bridge Road in the middle of Chinatown, which is itself a statement about Singapore’s layered, non-linear identity. The gopuram (tower) at the entrance is covered in brightly painted Hindu deities and is one of the most photographed religious structures in the city.
Entry is free. Dress modestly. Go in the late afternoon when the light catches the coloured statues. If you are visiting during October–November, time your trip around Thimithi — the fire-walking festival — for one of the most extraordinary cultural spectacles you will ever witness.
6. Spend an Evening on the Singapore River
The Singapore River was, for 150 years, the commercial artery of the entire colony — a chaotic waterway crowded with bumboats carrying rice, spices, and goods from trading ships. Today it is one of the most pleasant evening walks in Asia.
Start at Boat Quay, walk through Clarke Quay (the nightlife hub), continue to Robertson Quay (the quieter, more local end), and end with a riverside dinner. The river cruise — a 40-minute bumboat ride — gives you the full sweep of colonial shophouses, modern bridges, and the glittering Marina Bay skyline from the water. It is on the itinerary of every thoughtfully designed Singapore tour package and is one of those experiences that photographs beautifully but is even better in person.
7. Walk Through Little India on a Sunday
Serangoon Road on a Sunday afternoon is one of the most vivid sensory experiences in Singapore. The entire street floods with South Asian workers on their day off — the pavement stalls are packed, the temples are active, the flower garland shops are fragrant, and the air smells of jasmine and cardamom and frying murukku.
The Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple on Serangoon Road is open daily and is one of the most beautifully maintained Hindu temples outside India. Mustafa Centre — the legendary 24-hour department store — is two minutes away and sells everything from gold jewellery to South Indian pickles at prices that will confuse and delight you.
8. See the Sun Set from the Marina Barrage
The Marina Barrage is a dam across the Marina Channel that created Singapore’s first reservoir in the city centre — and its rooftop green space is one of the best sunset-watching spots in Singapore that almost no tourist ever finds.
It is free to visit. The entire city skyline — Marina Bay Sands, the Esplanade, the Central Business District — sits directly across the water. On weekends, Singaporean families fly kites on the rooftop grass. It is one of those genuinely local experiences that makes you feel like you are actually living in the city rather than passing through it.
9. Explore the Peranakan Heritage of Katong
The Peranakan — or Straits Chinese — community created one of Southeast Asia’s most distinctive hybrid cultures, blending Chinese, Malay, and colonial British influences into food, architecture, fashion, and ceremony. Katong, in the East Coast neighbourhood, is where this culture is most intact.
The pastel-coloured shophouses along Koon Seng Road are the most-photographed street in Singapore that most Indian tourists have never heard of. The Peranakan Museum in the Civic District is the definitive collection. And a bowl of Katong laksa — the coconut-milk noodle soup that is Singapore’s unofficial national dish — eaten at a table on the pavement here is one of the great simple pleasures of any Singapore tour package.
10. Visit Pulau Ubin — Singapore’s Last Village
Take a bumboat from Changi Point Ferry Terminal (10 minutes, S$4) and arrive in a Singapore that has not changed since the 1960s. Pulau Ubin is a small island off the northeast coast where about 30 people still live, bicycles are the only transport, and the jungle has reclaimed abandoned quarries into stunning granite lakes.
Chek Jawa Wetlands on the eastern tip of the island is one of the richest coastal ecosystems in Singapore — mangroves, seagrass lagoons, and a boardwalk over the water at high tide. It is completely free to enter. It is one of the most surprising half-days you will spend in Singapore.
11. Walk the Southern Ridges
The Southern Ridges is a 10-kilometre trail connecting four parks — Mount Faber, Telok Blangah Hill, HortPark, and Kent Ridge Park — along Singapore’s southern hills above the harbour. The Henderson Waves bridge — a wave-shaped wooden pedestrian bridge suspended 36 metres above the forest floor — is the centrepiece.
Walk it in the late afternoon and you will be in the forest canopy as the light turns golden, emerge above the treetops on Henderson Waves as the city lights begin coming on below, and end at Mount Faber as the sun sets over the South China Sea. It is free, it is spectacular, and it takes about 3 hours at a leisurely pace.
12. Go Night Cycling on East Coast Park
East Coast Park is a 15-kilometre stretch of beachfront park along Singapore’s southeastern coast — the place where Singaporeans go to barbecue, cycle, rollerblade, and stare at the container ships anchored in the Strait of Singapore. It is completely unknown to most tourists.
Rent bicycles from one of the park’s rental kiosks (S$8–12/hour), cycle the full length of the park at night when it is cooler, stop for a seafood dinner at one of the open-air restaurants along the park road, and watch the lights of tankers on the water. It is relaxed, local, and genuinely enjoyable.
13. Discover the Art Galleries of Gillman Barracks
Built in 1936 as a British military barracks, Gillman Barracks is now one of Southeast Asia’s most concentrated clusters of contemporary art galleries — about 14 international galleries in beautifully restored colonial bungalows set in tropical greenery in the Labrador area.
Entry to all galleries is free. The surrounding grounds are quiet and beautifully maintained, with an excellent restaurant (Naked Finn, for seafood) on site. It is a 15-minute drive from the city centre and is one of those addresses that marks the difference between a Singapore tour package designed by someone who knows the city well and one that does not.
14. Take a Heritage Trail Through Chinatown
Most tourists walk through Chinatown’s Pagoda Street market and think they have seen it. They have not. The real Chinatown is on the streets behind — Teck Lim Road, Keong Saik Road, Ann Siang Hill — where the original Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese clan houses, temples, and shophouses survive almost untouched.
The Chinatown Heritage Centre on Pagoda Street tells the story of the immigrant workers who built Singapore from the 1800s onwards. The Thian Hock Keng Temple on Telok Ayer Street is Singapore’s oldest Hokkien temple, built between 1839 and 1842 without a single nail. Both are essential.
15. Watch a Performance at the Esplanade
The Esplanade — Theatres on the Bay — is one of Asia’s premier performing arts venues, and its free outdoor programming is one of Singapore’s great cultural secrets. The rooftop terrace and the outdoor stage on the waterfront host free performances almost every week — jazz, classical Indian music, Chinese opera, contemporary dance.
Check the Esplanade’s calendar before your trip. Even if you do not attend a paid performance inside (though the acoustics are world-class), the building itself — its famous durian-shaped aluminium sunshades designed by architects DP Architects and Michael Wilford — and the waterfront promenade around it are among the finest architectural spaces in Singapore.
16. Visit the Asian Civilisations Museum
The Asian Civilisations Museum on the Singapore River is one of the finest museums in Southeast Asia and is criminally undervisited by tourists who fill the queues at Universal Studios instead. It houses the world’s most comprehensive collection of pan-Asian art and artefacts — Tang shipwreck treasures, Hindu bronzes, Islamic ceramics, Chinese textiles — in a beautifully restored 1860s colonial building.
Admission is S$20 for adults. Budget three hours. The Singapore River views from the upper gallery windows are among the best in the city.
17. Swim at Siloso Beach, Sentosa — But at Sunrise
Everyone knows Sentosa. Almost no one visits it at 6:30 AM. Siloso Beach at sunrise — before the water parks open, before the day-trippers arrive — is one of the most quietly beautiful hours in Singapore. The beach faces west, so the morning light is soft and golden, the South China Sea is flat, and you will have the sand largely to yourself.
Walk from the beach to Fort Siloso afterwards — Singapore’s only preserved coastal fort from World War II, where the 15-inch guns that famously faced the wrong direction are still there, rusting quietly in the jungle. It is free, it is sobering, and it is essential context for understanding Singapore’s colonial history.
18. Explore the Bidadari Heritage Trail
Bidadari is a former multi-faith cemetery in the Woodleigh neighbourhood that is being transformed into a new residential town — but the heritage core of the cemetery has been preserved as a park, with graves of early colonial settlers, Malay royalty, Eurasian pioneers, and Indian labourers all lying side by side.
It is a genuinely moving place — and a microcosm of Singapore’s entire history in a few quiet hectares. Almost no tourists know it exists. If you are the kind of traveler who wants to understand a place rather than just photograph it, this is one of the most rewarding hours you will spend in Singapore.
19. Eat Chilli Crab on the East Coast
Chilli crab is Singapore’s national dish — a whole mud crab wok-fried in a rich, spiced tomato-chilli sauce, served with mantou buns to mop up the gravy. You should eat it exactly once during your Singapore trip, and you should eat it properly: at one of the seafood restaurants along East Coast Seafood Centre, at an outdoor table, with cold Tiger beer and steamed rice, looking out at the sea.
Jumbo Seafood and No Signboard Seafood at East Coast Park are the two names every Singapore tour package consultant worth their salt will recommend. Budget S$60–80 per person. It is worth every rupee.
20. See Singapore from the Sky at One-Tenth the Price of Marina Bay Sands
Everyone wants the infinity pool view from Marina Bay Sands. Far fewer people know that the observation deck at 1-Altitude on Raffles Place (formerly OUE Bayfront), the rooftop bar at LeVeL33 in Marina Bay Financial Centre, and the public observation deck at the Marina Bay Sands Skypark (S$29 — no pool access required) all give you the same panorama for a fraction of the cost — or free, with a drink purchase.
The best free city view in Singapore is actually from the top floor of ION Orchard mall — ION Sky on Level 56 is open to the public free of charge with advance registration. It looks directly down Orchard Road and across to the Central Business District. It is one of the most underused free experiences in Singapore.
21. End Your Trip with a Trishaw Ride Through the Colonial District
The tricycle-powered trishaws that once carried passengers through Singapore’s streets are almost gone — but a small number still operate as heritage tours through the Colonial District, Chinatown, and Little India. A trishaw ride through the illuminated streets at night, from the Padang past the Victoria Theatre and down South Bridge Road, is one of the most atmospheric ways to end a Singapore trip.
It is unhurried, it is nostalgic, and it is quietly spectacular in a city that is always moving very fast in every other direction.
Planning Your Singapore Tour Package with Dook International
Singapore rewards the traveler who goes in with a plan — and even more so the traveler who goes in with a good one. With 13 years of experience crafting Singapore tour packages for Indian travelers and over one million happy customers, Dook International designs Singapore itineraries that combine the iconic highlights with the experiences that make travelers come back.
Whether you are looking for a 4-night Singapore city break, a Singapore-Bali combination, or a full Southeast Asia circuit including Vietnam and Cambodia, our Singapore specialists will build an itinerary around what you actually want to experience — not just what everyone else is doing.
