Kreta Ayer Square

It is an ordinary public space for most of the year — paved, unfenced, free to walk into at any hour — but it doubles as Chinatown's main outdoor stage. During Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival it fills with free evening performances of Cantonese opera, erhu and guzheng music, and community dance, and lesser weekend stage shows run at other times. A short walk up the staircase on Banda Street is the "Colouring Banda Street" mural set painted in 2015, including the Samsui women panel that most visitors come to photograph.

The Buddha Tooth Relic Temple stands directly across from the square, so the two pair naturally. Maxwell MRT (Thomson-East Coast Line, Exit 3) drops you beside the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and the square, and is closer than Chinatown MRT, whose Exit A leaves you at the far Pagoda Street end with a five-minute walk down through the market.

The square is only worth a special trip when something is on it — check the Chinatown Festivals calendar before you go, since on a plain weekday it is just an empty plaza. If you are here for the Samsui women mural rather than a performance, it is on the side of the staircase by Blocks 4 and 5 Banda Street, a minute's walk from the square, and free to see any time.