What to expect
Tiong Bahru is a pre-war public housing estate, and the architecture is the reason to come: curved balconies, spiral stairwells and horizontal lines that look like a 1930s ocean liner. It is still residential, so the pleasure is in walking quietly through somewhere people live rather than visiting an attraction. In the last fifteen years bakeries, bookshops and coffee places have arrived, which has changed the area's economics without much changing its look.
Getting there
Tiong Bahru station on the East West line, then six to eight minutes on foot. The walk from the station passes a mall first; keep going, the estate proper is beyond it.
When to go
Weekday mornings. The market is at its best before nine, the estate is quiet, and the light on the curved facades is worth the early start. Weekend mornings are busy with a queue at almost every cafe. Sunday afternoons are pleasantly dead.
What a resident would tell you
The market is the reason residents are here, not the cafes. Breakfast upstairs is inexpensive, excellent and the genuine article, and it is what the neighbourhood was doing long before anyone opened a bakery.
Worth knowing
This is somebody's home. Stairwells and corridors are not public space even when nothing says so, and residents are noticeably more patient with people who behave accordingly.
If it rains. Market is covered. The estate walk is exposed but short.