Boat Quay 
From Singapore Hotels & Singapore Lifestyle
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Boat Quay, for a century until the late 1960s, reverberated to the clamour of coolies loading and unloading sacks of rice, coal and other forms of cargo between lighter-boats huddled at the bottom of the steps and the shophouses once occupied by traders and merchants, walking precariously across the steps along narrow gangplanks.
Crowded with hundreds of bumboats, Boat Quay was the location of the city's leading towkays (Chinese business chiefs) and remained busy right up to the 1960s. When the fervour of urban renewal gripped Singapore some 30 years ago, the crammed south side of the Singapore River was deemed unsightly. The lighter-boats were banned from the river, floatsam and jetsam resulting from the loading activities were cleared from the Singapore River. By the mid-1980s, many of the shophouses were in ruins, and the business shifted to hi-tech cargo centres elsewhere on the island.
Boat Quay was declared a conservation zone by the government and its revival into an entertainment district began. The shophouses of Boat Quay were refurbished and converted to a kind of Latin Quarter with bars and restaurants.
Given the raucous character of Boat Quay today, some might say that the revival has been too successful, but there's no doubting that when viewed from across the river or from high up in one of the city's skyscrapers, the whole brightly painted and lit strip makes for a dazzling scene.
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Drinking
Every day at dusk, Boat Quay echoes to the clink of wine-glasses when executives descend from their surrounding office towers to unwind at popular drinking holes like Penny Black and the jazzy Harry's Bar with their open-air terraces overlooking the river.
Actors' Bar, Bar Opiume, Bed Room Bar, Eski, Fez Lounge Bar, Harry's Bar, Hideout, Mad Flemmings, Molly Malone's Irish Pub, Penny Black
Eating
Although recent competition from similar waterfront projects has taken its toll on Boat Quay, dining options are still plentiful - all the world's cuisines can be found along this riverfront strip, from Italian Restaurants to Indian Restaurants, Thai Restaurants and Japanese Restaurants.
Eating Areas
Restaurants
- American Cuisine: Hot Stones Steak & Seafood Restaurant
- Australian Cuisine: The Moomba
- Chinese Cuisine: Ban Seng Teochew Seafood Restaurant, Superbowl, The Art of Eating Congee
- Indian Cuisine: Haldhi Authentic Indian Restaurant, Kinara North West Frontier Cuisine, Saffron Bistro
- Italian Cuisine: Al Dente Trattoria
- Malay Cuisine: House of Sundanese Food
- Seafood Cuisine: River Quay Seafood Restaurant, Seafood At The Pier
- Thai Cuisine: Sukhothai, Southbank
- Vietnamese Cuisine: Indochine
Visitors' Information
- Nearest MRT: Raffles Place MRT Station
