5 things you didn’t know about Singapore

As a Singapore tourist guide and travel writer, I’ve dug up some pretty interesting lesser-known facts about Singapore that I like to wow visitors with when they explore Singapore. Here are my 5 favourite things you didn’t know about Singapore.

I wrote this because one thing I’ve learned from talking to people on my travels is that most people know very little about Singapore if they have never visited before. – we’re a blip on the map after all so I don’t take offence. I’ve also found that if they do know anything about Singapore, it’s mostly things like Singapore is very clean and green, or that is has too many laws and fines and where people can get caned.

I’ve encountered people with some downright strange concepts about life in Singapore. My best story is an online comment by some guy who was adamant that if you misbehave in Singapore, they will chop off your head. Like, in this day and age? I had to laugh out loud at that, so let me just put it on record right up front that capital punishment in Singapore has never involved chopping off any heads.

(Although there was that time someone got murdered and his limbs were chopped up and cooked into curry, now that’s… gruesome)

But I digress, here are some facts about Singapore that you can use to impress other people or answer random trivia questions with.

Singapore noodles does NOT exist in Singapore

Singapore noodles is one of those weird dishes that exists everywhere else in the world but Singapore. I was pretty non-plussed when I found out such a dish existed.

I like curry noodles but putting curry powder on dry vermicelli is just really weird and such a strange thing to associate with Singaporean cuisine. I assume it might have something to do with Laksa and spicy dishes we have in Singapore, but… no. Just no. No culture in Singapore makes noodles like that!

If you want a properly Singaporean noodle recommendation, there are a ton of options that locals love – laksa, wanton mee, bakchor mee, fishball noodles, mee goreng… I could go on!

Most Singaporeans live in public housing

Public housing is something often associated with the lower income strata in most other nations, but in Singapore, over 80% of the population lives in government housing, subsidised high-rise blocks of flats that can be found all over the country. These apartment blocks are a way to save space and fit in the growing population, and some of the newer ones look quite similar to private condominiums these days, like Pinnacle@Duxton which is also the tallest public housing block in the world at 50-storeys tall.

Singapore’s national language is actually Malay

Let’s talk about Singapore ethnic breakdown first: The largest group are the Chinese who form 75% of the citizen population. Following that are the Malays at under 15%, which is a pretty broad umbrella term to refer to the people who came from the areas that we known as Malaysia and Indonesia today and can be considered the indigenous people of Singapore. The next largest group are the Indians which is just about under 10%, and then everyone else is lumped under Others.

Thus, Singapore recognises 4 official languages – English is the unifier and international language that everyone can communicate in and is used in business and schools. For the three major ethnic groups, their representative languages are Mandarin for the Chinese, Bahasa Melayu for the Malays and Tamil for the Indians who mostly came from the south.

Bahasa Melayu or Malay gets extra props as Singapore’s National language in recognition of our roots – it’s used in Singapore’s national anthem, seal and major documents.

I’m a Singaporean Chinese person who grew up in a mostly English speaking household. so I consider English as my native language. Because of my ethnicity, I took Mandarin in school under Singapore’s bilingual policy and I consider it my second language, though based on the fact that my ancestors came from the Fujian province, my mother tongue is rightly Hokkien, a Chinese dialect but I’m barely fluent in it these days.

When on the road, I do get a lot of people who are surprised by my command of English, which used to really piss me off because I grew up speaking this of course I’m fluent, but I understand the surprise now considering that English isn’t the main language in most other Asian countries – I just never knew that growing up.

Singapore isn’t just 1 island, it’s an archipelago

People think of Singapore as one little island, but there are plenty of even littler islands, mostly found off the southern coast of Singapore. Many of these islands are used for industrial, military or non-commercial purposes, but you can visit some of them if you take the time to do so.

Sentosa is probably the most famous island that visitors flock to for Resorts World Sentosa, Universal Studios as well as the beaches. I’ve cruised around Lazarus Island and the southern islands before, and even scuba dived at Pulau Hantu. To the north is Pulau Ubin and some of our last villages and wetlands.

It’s also hard to say how many islands we have in Singapore right now because many of these islands have been joined or demolished due to various acts of land reclamation!

More than 1 Singapore exists in this world

We like to think of Singapore as unique, but did you know that there exists a few other places called Singapore in history? There was once an American lumber town in Saugatuck, Michigan called Singapore that has vanished and all that remains are postcards and memories.

Somewhere in South Africa’s Limpopo is a rural place called Singapore though not much is known about it. I found a Mount Singapore while looking at a map of Wilson’s Promontory in Gippsland, Australia as well.

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Want to read more about Singapore by a Singaporean? Check out all my Singapore related posts. You can also check out this Culture Trip article I wrote about the 11 Incredible Things You never Knew about Singapore!