Crazy Rich Asians
Experience the best and brightest Singapore has to offer like the characters in the new blockbuster rom-com, whatever your budget, writes Lorna Thornber.
Warning: Minor movie spoilers ahead
You don’t have to be crazy or Asian to live it up in the Lion City like the main characters in the film, Crazy Rich Asians, but it does help to be rich. What the island city-state lacks in size, it more than makes up for in image-enhancing luxury hotels, boutiques, restaurants, bars, clubs, and hi-tech attractions.
However, you don’t need a seven-plus figure savings account to have fun in Singapore – even street food stalls hold Michelin stars.
So whether you’re a ‘‘crazy rich’’ Nick Young (Henry Golding) with a lifelong appreciation for the finer things in life, a working-class Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) beginning to acquire a taste for them, or just want a glimpse of how Singapore’s wealthiest citizens live, there’s plenty to fill your days (and credit card statement) with. Here are key sites featured in the film to check out. Airports aren’t generally associated with luxury, gourmet, recharging experiences unless you have a lounge pass, but Singapore Changi Airport treats even penny pinchers like passengers of honour.
Asians’ Rachel isn’t the only first-time visitor to be impressed – it has been named the best airport in the world by Skytrax for six years.
As the gateway to the ‘‘Garden City’’, it’s fittingly filled with plants. Check out cycads from the dinosaur era in the rooftop cacti garden, make like you’re in the Provencal countryside in the sunflower patch, and see some 1000 tropical butterflies flit past flamboyantly coloured flowers and a six-metre-high waterfall in the butterfly garden. Fill up on quality hawker-style or gourmet cuisine, catch a complimentary movie, take a dip in the rooftop pool, find consumer nirvana in the luxury duty-free stores and your inner child on the four-storey slide, or chill on one of the plush armchairs or couches with charging outlets.
From next year, there’ll be another incentive to get to the airport early. New development Jewel, connecting three of the four existing terminals, will feature walking trails through a five-storey garden, complete with animal-shaped topiary, 40-metre-high waterfall, glass-panelled suspension bridge and 250-metre long bouncing net. You don’t have to have been born into one of Singapore’s wealthiest families to eat some of its best food – even hawker stalls have Michelin stars here. Nick, as it soon transpires in the film, did happen to be from one of Singapore’s wealthiest families, but street food held a special place in his heart.
The couple and their soon-to-be-married mates had their first meal together at the Newton Food Centre, a few minutes’ walk from the shopping mecca of Orchard Road.
Sample classic local dishes such as Hokkien mee (egg and rice noodles with egg, pork, shrimp and vegetables) and satay, or something more adventurous. Sambal stingray (sambal-doused stingray served on a banana leaf), popiah (soft spring rolls stuffed with jicama, daikon, lettuce, peanuts and hoisin sauce), and rojak (a fruit and vegetable salad with a punchy sweet and sour dressing) are among the many choices.
Alternatively, check out the first hawker stalls to receive a Michelin star: Liao Fan Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodle at Chinatown Complex Market & Food Centre and Hill Street Tai Hwa Pork Noodle on Crawford Lane. Rudyard Kipling might have had mixed feelings about the hotel, describing it in his 1889 book From Sea to Sea as ‘‘a place … where the food is excellent and the rooms are bad’’, but these days it’s officially a national treasure – it was designated as a national monument by the Singapore government in 1987.
Aside from Rachel and Nick, the posh 19thcentury hotel, named after the so-called father of modern Singapore, Sir Stamford Raffles, has hosted Charlie Chaplin, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Its pearly white halls are closed for renovations until the end of the year, but you can still order a Singapore Sling, the cherry brandy-spiked cocktail said to have been invented at the hotel, at the popup Long Bar next to the gift shop.
And it’s still acceptable to drop the shells of the