Weekends away and days over the border: Bintan, Batam, Johor Bahru, Malacca and the staycations worth booking.
Typical spend per person, in Singapore dollars.
Seventy minutes on a catamaran and an hour back on the clock. Resort pools and ATVs in Lagoi, fireflies in the mangroves and a pompong to Penyengat: Bintan is bigger than its brochures.
Take the ferry from Tanah Merah and skip the Causeway: a waterpark morning for the children, a spa for the adults, one dinner out in Sungai Rengit. Easy rather than charming, and it works.
Three slow days: Dutch Square in the morning, the Baba & Nyonya museum booked ahead, Jonker Street's night market on Friday. Stay in the old town; the train now gets you most of the way.
A treehouse over Upper Seletar Reservoir, an 1880s bungalow on Sentosa, a monument with butlers: the Singapore hotels where the place is the point, with the weekly deals left out on purpose.
Plenty of Singaporean divers did their open water on Tioman's west-coast training reefs. The diving worth the drive to Mersing is past them, on the pinnacles, the wreck and the outer islands.
