Friday
At the MRT (mass rapid transit) station at Changi airport, buy an Ez-Link smartcard (£6.50), which will last you for a couple of days, and take the train to Bugis in Singapore city centre. The ideally located Beach Hotel (beachhotel.com.sg), on the corner of Beach Road and picturesque Liang Seah Street, offers comfortable, reasonably priced rooms (doubles from £55) with air conditioning and WiFi, minutes from all the food and shopping action downtown, making it perfect for a bargain Singapore break.
You can get a quick and dramatic orientation a ten-minute walk away from the top of the IM Pei-designed, 73-floor Swissôtel, the tallest hotel in Southeast Asia. Return to sea level, next door, in the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel – order Singapore Slings (£3), naturally, and crunch the drifts of peanut shells underfoot.
When you’ve worked up an appetite, try the ever-buzzing Banana Leaf Apolo (56-58 Racecourse Road, thebananaleafapolo.com), where all-you-can eat dinner (£6) is served, as tradition dictates, on banana leaves - a Singapore bargain bonanza.
Saturday
Wander down Liang Seah Street and tuck into soft-boiled eggs, kaya toast and tea at Bugis Junction shopping centre (£1.50). Then walk through the soaring architecture of the Gateway (IM Pei again) and Parkview Square to the accessibly exotic shopping district around Arab Street, where you can bargain affably for silk, inlaid chests and carpets to the sound of the muezzin’s call to prayer from the Sultan Mosque.
Take time to visit the superb galleries at the Asian Civilisations Museum (Empress Place, acm.org.sg, entry £2) and then stroll over the breezy hill of Fort Canning Park (tinyurl.com/5a2ukw) and down into the retail nirvana of Singapore's Orchard Road, with its colossal shopping malls.
If you can tear yourself away, the conservation-driven Singapore Zoo & Night Safari (zoo.com.sg, entry £13) is one of the island’s outstanding attractions, with orang-utans and many species behind moats. At dusk, a land train gives you unparalleled access to rare, nocturnal creatures.
Head back into town for a Cantonese dinner at one of the great-value Soup restaurants (39 Seah Street, souprestaurant.com.sg, £5). If you still have the energy, go to Zouk, Singapore’s most enjoyable club with great DJs (17 Jiak Kim Street, zoukclub.com, entry £12).
Sunday
Have a lie-in, then follow it up with an unusual finale to your stopover: a visit to Pulau Ubin, a jungle-covered island in the Straits of Johor. Check your bags in early at Singapore Changi airport, then take a cab to Changi Point ferry terminal (30 minutes, £25 each way) and wait for a bumboat to make the ten-minute crossing to Ubin (£2 return). Ubin has a tiny main village, or kampong, which is a living reminder of the Singapore of a century ago. Hire bicycles (£1 an hour) and ride around the island’s quiet lanes, and be sure to allow an hour for a fish and rice meal at Sin Lam Huat (£3), next to the Chinese temple in the village square.
Total for two
£270
BA flies to Singapore from London Heathrow. Book a flight on ba.com now.
Discover the world's best cocktail bars, including bars in Singapore and Australia, in Cracking cocktails.
