BikingSG Best of Singapore Tour

Singapore's story unfolds across colonial districts, waterfront reservoirs, and neighborhoods once segregated by race. On this cycling tour, you'll find out how a tiny port colony became one of the world's most expensive cities to call home. You'll also see how land reclamation and multicultural planning shaped modern Singapore.

The tour starts at the National Stadium, a 55,000-seat venue with a retractable roof, and heads through Kampong Glam, past the golden domes of Masjid Sultan and the remnants of the Sultan's Palace. You'll push your bike through Haji Lane's graffiti-lined alleys, then pass Parkview Square, nicknamed the Gotham Building for its comic-book architecture, before reaching the colonial-era buildings around St Andrew's Cathedral.

You'll ride along the Singapore River, once so polluted it took a decade and $300 million to clean, and stop at Hong Lim Park's Speaker's Corner, the only place in Singapore where public protest is legal. In Chinatown, you'll see a mosque, Hindu temple, and Buddhist temple standing within a few hundred meters of each other, then pass Thian Hock Keng Temple, where 1800s Chinese immigrants gave thanks after surviving three-month sea voyages. The tour ends back at the National Stadium, after skirting Marina Bay and the Marina Barrage.

On this 120-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Learn why owning a car in Singapore can cost upwards of $90,000, once every fee and certificate is factored in
• Hear how Merdeka Bridge's 2004 collapse claimed four lives, including a supervisor who died saving his workers
• Spot the Esplanade, nicknamed the 'durian building' for its spiky, fruit-like architecture
• Ride past Marina Bay Sands, and find out the trick for visiting its rooftop without paying the public admission fee
• See the Flower Dome and Cloud Forest at Gardens by the Bay, twin domes anchoring Singapore's 'City in a Garden' vision
• Look out from the Marina Barrage toward container ships queuing for the Port of Singapore

By the time you're back at the stadium, you'll understand exactly how scarcity, ambition, and multicultural planning built modern Singapore.