Novena and Balestier: Singapore's Medical District and Its Food Street

What Novena Is, and What It Is Not

Novena is Singapore's medical district: Tan Tock Seng Hospital, the medical school, and a dense cluster of specialist clinics. That sounds unpromising for a visitor and largely is - but it is the reason the area has good transport, reliable food at all hours and a lot of hotel beds that are not priced for tourists.

Novena Square and United Square sit on top of the MRT with the usual food halls and supermarkets. Nothing here is a sight. Everything here is convenient, which for a certain kind of trip is worth more.

Come for a cheaper bed and a genuine food street. Do not come expecting a neighbourhood to wander: that is Tiong Bahru, Katong or Kampong Glam, and they are all a short ride away.

Balestier Road Itself

The road is named after Joseph Balestier, the first American consul to Singapore, whose sugar plantation stood here in the 1830s. Almost nothing of that survives, but the street kept an unusual character: it is simultaneously a food street, a heritage trail and - for reasons no one can fully explain - the place Singaporeans go to buy lighting. Shop after shop of chandeliers and LED fittings, for a kilometre.

Along the same stretch: rows of two-storey shophouses with the ornamental plasterwork the conservation authorities list, the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall in a villa just off the road, and Zhongshan Park with its own cluster of hotels. It is a working Singaporean street rather than a preserved one, which is exactly why it is interesting to walk.

Staying in Balestier and Novena

The area holds a lot of Singapore's better-value hotel stock. Novena MRT is on the North-South line, two stops from Orchard and four from Marina Bay, so you are about fifteen minutes from the centre without paying centre prices. Balestier Road itself is a long, low, unglamorous stretch of shophouses, lighting shops and food stalls - not a tourist district, which is rather the point.

It suits anyone who would rather have a bigger room and a short train ride than a small room in the middle. It does not suit anyone who wants to step out of the lobby into the sights.

For which area to book, see where to stay in Singapore; for properties, Singapore hotels. The best-known address on the road was the Quality Hotel Marlow at 201 Balestier, which has since become a Holiday Inn Express - what happened to it is its own story.

Getting In and Out

Novena is NS20 on the North-South line: two stops to Orchard, four to City Hall, six to Marina Bay. From Changi it is a change at City Hall or Dhoby Ghaut, about fifty minutes on the MRT, or twenty-five minutes by taxi outside peak hours.

Balestier Road itself has no MRT station. From Novena it is a ten to fifteen minute walk north, or a short bus ride - the 21, 131 and 139 run along it. That gap between the road and the station is the one thing worth knowing before booking anything on Balestier: the address may say Novena, and the walk may still be fifteen minutes in afternoon heat.