Marina Bay

Singapore decided that if geography would not give her a great bay, engineering would: Marina Bay is reclaimed land around captured water, crowned by three towers carrying a ship in the sky, gardens where steel trees breathe light after dark, and a lion-headed fish spouting at the water's edge — a city-state's confidence expressed as skyline. Behind the glass, the strait works: half the world's shipping slides past, patient as weather.

The sensible traveller walks the bay loop at dusk when the heat relents — from the Merlion to the theaters shaped like durians, across the double-helix bridge to the gardens for the light show among the supertrees, free and nightly —; rides to a rooftop for the hour when the anchored ships switch on like a second city on the water; and eats where Singapore actually eats: at the hawker centres, where a starred meal costs pocket change and the queue is the menu.

The Guide's honesty: the famous infinity pool belongs to hotel guests — the SkyPark deck ticket buys the same view honestly —; the fines for gum, jaywalking and littering are real, and the city's order is the point, not the exception; everything outdoors is best before ten or after five — the equator does not negotiate at noon; and 'Singapore is expensive' is half true: the bay glitters at hotel prices while the hawker table beside it feeds you like family.