Singapore

Singapore Airlines flies nonstop from Newark in about eighteen hours, one of the longest scheduled flights in the world — long enough that we only recommend it for trips of a week or more. Gardens by the Bay's Supertree structures put on a light show each evening that's worth timing a first dinner around, and the Marina Bay Sands rooftop pool view is one of the more photographed skylines in Asia.

Singapore's hawker centers serve genuinely excellent food, including some Michelin-recognized stalls, at prices closer to fast food than fine dining, which makes them an easy, low-pressure way to feed a family. The city is also remarkably clean and safe by any standard, which makes it a comfortable first stop for a family newer to Southeast Asia travel.

Singapore sits almost exactly on the equator, so temperatures stay hot and humid year-round with no real off-season — February tends to be the driest stretch, though rain is possible in any month. Many families use Singapore as a stopover before continuing on to Bali, Thailand, or Vietnam.

Singapore's Gardens by the Bay and Marina Bay Sands define the modern skyline, but the city's older ethnic quarters — Chinatown, Little India, Kampong Glam's Arab Street — preserve distinct architectural and food traditions within a few subway stops of each other. Hawker centers, Singapore's open-air food courts, hold some of the only street food anywhere with a Michelin star, and the city's strict cleanliness laws make it one of the easiest Southeast Asian cities for a first-time visitor.

Three to four nights covers the city's ethnic quarters and modern attractions. It suits nearly any traveler given the city's cleanliness, safety and English-language accessibility, and its status as one of the world's longest nonstop flight routes from the US makes careful jet-lag planning worthwhile.

Getting there: About 18h nonstop from Newark (Singapore Airlines) — one of the longest scheduled flights in the world. We compare that routing against the alternatives before booking, and help plan the trip's dates around Year-round (equatorial climate), driest around February.

Singapore's modern identity was shaped deliberately and fast: founded as a British trading post in 1819, it became fully independent only in 1965 — unexpectedly, after being asked to leave a short-lived federation with Malaysia — and transformed from a resource-poor port city into one of the world's wealthiest nations within a single generation, largely credited to the disciplined, long-term planning of founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew. That planning shows up everywhere, including in the country's strict laws: chewing gum sales have been banned since 1992 (originally over vandalism to subway doors), and fines for littering or jaywalking are real and enforced, not just posted signage. Singapore's hawker centers — open-air complexes of food stalls, many family-run for generations — hold UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status, a rare case of a country's everyday food culture earning that designation, and dishes like chicken rice, laksa and chili crab reflect the country's Chinese, Malay, Indian and Peranakan (a Chinese-Malay fusion culture with its own distinct cuisine and architecture) heritage layered together rather than kept separate. The Peranakan shophouses of neighborhoods like Katong and Joo Chiat, with their ornately tiled facades, are one of the more overlooked architectural threads in a city better known for Marina Bay Sands' modern skyline.