11 unwritten rules to know before visiting Singapore

Don’t litter; don’t vandalise public property; don’t chew gum. Singapore, which Condé Nast Traveler readers named one of the best cities in the world in 2024, has laws so famously stringent that T-shirts gently poking fun at them make popular tourist souvenirs. (The gum thing is actually often misconstrued: it’s actually illegal to import and sell gum, but not to chew it.) That said, in this intricately multicultural East-meets-West metropolis of nearly six million people and 95 ethnic groups, it’s the rules that tether society. Which is why we Singaporeans are such sticklers for them; in fact, we’ve added many of our own unofficial decrees to the rule book—from the correct way to save a table at a hawker centre, to how…