singaporecity360° Lau Pa Sat
Lau Pa Sat is a hawker market at 18 Raffles Quay, in the middle of the financial district, housed under an octagonal Victorian cast-iron structure that is a gazetted national monument — the only hawker market in Singapore that sits inside one.
One thing to know first
The 24-hour opening is the building. Most of the eighty-odd stalls keep ordinary hours, so a 3am visit is not an eighty-stall experience.
Walking in and looking around costs nothing; you pay only for what you eat, and the building runs 24 hours, so there is almost always a stall open. Inside are more than 80 stalls, a handful of them Michelin-listed, covering Singaporean staples alongside Indian, Chinese and Western food. The draw after dark is Satay Street, when the neighbouring Boon Tat Street closes to traffic and satay grills are set up in the open air.
It marks its 130th year in 2024, and it is a short walk from Raffles Place and the Marina Bay waterfront. Four MRT lines land within a few minutes' walk — Telok Ayer (DT18), Downtown (DT17), Raffles Place (EW14/NS26) and Shenton Way (TE19) — with Telok Ayer and Downtown the closest on foot, so pick whichever is on your line rather than interchanging.
The satay grills are not inside the market — they run on Boon Tat Street, the road that closes alongside it, and only in the evenings: from 7pm on weekdays but as early as 3pm at weekends, through to 3am. If you turn up at lunchtime expecting satay, the indoor stalls are open but the street grills are not, so come for the smoke after dark and be ready to pay a bit more per stick than a suburban hawker centre.
Rain, heat, and what to do about it
Live readings and forecasts from NEA. Four days is the limit — past that, nobody is forecasting, they are showing you an average.
Southwest Monsoon
June to September
Short, sharp early-morning showers and occasional squall lines. Drier overall than the northeast wet phase.
The other good window. Rain tends to arrive early and clear, leaving usable afternoons. This is also when haze can occur, which is worth checking rather than assuming.
Plan your Lau Pa Sat stop
Straight-line distance from the three places a visitor has already heard of.
1.2km
west
3.4km
south-east
17km
south-west
Lau Pa Sat, in every light
Nearby, on foot
In Civic District — close enough to collect on the same trip out.
Contains information from Tourist Attractions accessed on 2026-08-01 from data.gov.sg, made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0.