It's the very first thing you notice when you arrive in Singapore. It's clean. From the amazingly modern, shiny and efficient airport you drive along the East Coast Parkway into downtown Singapore, and you can't help but notice that it's very tidy. Maniacally tidy. Every hedge is clipped, all the grass is cut, paths are free of weeds, there are no potholes in the road, traffic moves relatively easily. A piece of litter really stands out here, you notice it against the pristine backdrop as you would an oil-spill in the Arctic.
Singapore is at the very tip of the Malay Peninsula and used to part of the then Malaya before gaining independence in 1965. Like Monaco, it's a city state. It's territory is the island of Singapore, a bit smaller than Co. Louth, and 4 million people live there under the guiding hand Lee Kuan Yew who is now the Senior Minister. Since independence Lee Kuan Yew's Peoples' Action Party has been in power and through a mixture of rampant capitalism, centrally planned socialism and simple totalitarianism, it has made Singapore one of the most developed economies in South-east Asia with a very high standard of living. Like Monaco, Singapore is best understood as a company rather than a country. Think of it as Singapore Inc.

I'd come to Singapore to learn about beer, Tiger Beer in particular, and how it combined with food. I'm not exactly breaking new ground when I say I discovered that it went very well with Singaporean food - beer and Asian food are almost designed to go together. When it comes to food the Singaporeans are very like the Italians. They talk about it all the time. You don't get boring conversational gambits about the weather, you get food talk: what I ate today, what I'm going to eat tonight, what I'm planning to eat tomorrow. It's continuous, and everywhere you go there's good food to be had. The city is full of restaurants from the expensive to the very cheap and they all have one thing in common, good food.

One of Singapore's unique contributions to gastronomy is the Hawker Market. There are many of them around the city and they're large covered areas with outdoor tables as well where food is served. Each hawker rents a stall from the government-owned market and sets about cooking his speciality. Some hawkers are third generation, continuing to cook a family recipe over the years. And that's what makes the Hawker Market concept so different - in the market each stall specialises in a particular dish, one that they make over and over again year after year. After a while, they get good at it.

When you arrive chances are you'll be met by young boys who hustle to take your order. They'll go to the various stands and collect everything that you want for a small fee, allowing you to sit down and get on with the serious business of deciding what you want to eat. What's very hard to convey is the quality of the food and the cleanliness. You just know that you're not going to pick up any weird or wonderful bugs. Still you can get surprises. The first night we sat in a Hawker Market my delicate nose was picking up whiffs of what I assumed were the rubbish bins of the stalls. That almost sweet, pungent smell of decaying vegetation wafted occasionally past my nose. Not really unpleasant, but quite noticeable. I put it down to the heat and the inevitable need to dispose of waste in such a busy market. But after the meal was over, all was revealed when a large durian was brought to the table. Looking for all the world like a prickly pineapple, the durian was cut open and that smell of decaying vegetable matter filled my nostrils. For many in Asia a ripe durian is a real treat, as much a treat as a piece of ripe Stilton might be to us. You have to ignore the smell before you can enjoy the taste. With an exchange rate of $1.50 to the US dollar, the Singaporean dollar goes a long way in the Hawker Market, $5 would buy you enough good food to fill you for a while.

Over half of the population is Chinese, so Mandarin is one of Singapore's official languages and the Chinese influence is very strong. We spent a morning in Chinatown, enjoying the smells and the displays of the dried sea-food that seemed so pervasive. Along South Bridge Road you can find all the shops selling Chinese knick-knacks as well as Eu Yan Sang, Singapore's oldest Chinese medicine shop, which you can find right opposite the extraordinary Sri Mariamman Buddhist Temple. Inside there's a cornucopia of traditional Chinese medicine, complete with traditional dispensers, who chop up the herbs and other health-giving organisms for you. You might even be tempted to bring home a bottle of Deer Penis Wine. Or maybe not.

You can have yourself a 'chop' made in Chinatown. That's the traditional Chinese stamp, carved out of a soft stone like soapstone, which you dip into red ink and use much as Europeans used a seal on wax. What normally happens is that you tell your name to the stone carver who makes a stab at reproducing the sound he's just heard in Chinese ideograms. It doesn't always work very well, as some sounds don't translate so well and anyway, the chances are the result won't mean anything in Chinese either. I took my time and questioned Chong Lee, our host from Tiger Beer. 'Is there a Chinese word 'Pao'', I asked him. 'Yes,' he said. 'And 'Lo?'' 'Yes,' he said. 'And if you put them together, what does it mean?' 'All encompassing.' So my chop reads 'Pao Lo', and I do rather like the all-encompassing bit.

After the shopping it was time to eat, and in Chinatown the real treat is a meal in the Imperial Herbal Restaurant. This is real 'cooking with intent'. All the dishes here are made with traditional Chinese medicinal herbs, so they don't just taste good, they're good for you. You could try the 'Monk Jumps over the Wall with Cordyceps.' This dish makes more sense when you know that cordyceps are the cocoons of small worms. Braised turtle, sharks' fins, Ox tendons, frogs' legs and deer penis wine are all on the menu, so I finally got a chance to taste the deer penis wine at $35 a glass. 'Make you very strong,' said our waiter, accompanying the statement with the international gesture for rigidity. 'Very strong.' So, much fortified after so medicinal a lunch, it was time for an afternoon nap.

Apart from the high-tech shopping, which is pretty spectacular in Singapore, there are a few things that are well worth a visit. In Sentosa island, a islet reserved for the purposes of holidaying and tourism, there's a wonderful aquarium where you can walk through a perspex tunnel while sharks swim over your head. Sentosa's other big attraction is its monorail, which twists and winds its way over the island, interfering with no roads and it's free. Luas did spring to mind more than once. The Jurong Bird Park, too, is a bit of fun, culminating with a show for the tourists by the birds themselves. Best of all I like Amigo, a grey parrot who spoke clearly in three languages as well as performing a song in Malay, Mandarin and English. Clever bird.

They do like their animals in Singapore. There are places where the huge Kimodo Dragons are inclined to lazily wander across the roads. One of these huge lizards was being treated in Singapore zoo for depression. The poor beast had gone off his food and was looking sorry for himself. I'd gone to the zoo for two reasons, first I was to go on the famed 'night safari' and secondly I was going to learn how to cook the Singaporean way. My hosts at Tiger Beer had organised Violet Oon, a food critic and broadcaster, to give me a lesson in Asian cookery in the new restaurant in the zoo - an inspired idea, I thought.

Because of its history and demographic make-up, Singapore cuisine is fusion. A fusion of Chinese, Asian, Malay and hints of Indian as well. The menu Violet had designed with the title 'Cooking Amongst Tigers' went like this; prawns a la Katong, pepper beef with pasta, east coast chilli crabs and Nonya Roti Jala with butterscotch sauce to finish. The prawn dish is worth describing by virtue of its simplicity. The first job is to cut off the feelers of the prawn and to make a slit down its back, then remove the intestinal vein. Slice up some chillies, onions and shallots and line the bottom of a wok with them, adding about a half a cup of water and some salt. Spread the prawns on top of this bed adding some lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves. Cover the prawns with more sliced onions and then put a lid on the wok, allowing the prawns to steam. After 3 or 4 minutes the prawns will have turned bright red and the dish is ready to serve. Very good it is, too.

After the cookery lesson, where I became a dab hand at making lace pancakes, it was time for the night safari. An electrically powered bus running silently takes you around the night zoo, the part where they keep all the nocturnal animals. After a bit your eyes get used to the half light and soon you can pick out the various deer, okapis, tigers and ruminants that make up the tour.

Singapore has much to recommend it, not least the fact that there's no chewing gum to be seen. Not in the shops, not in people's mouths, not in splodges on the pavement. It's been illegal for years and although they're thinking of relaxing this law, I think it's a winner. But even though littering is a serious misdemeanour here, we couldn't resist one moment of law-breaking. We'd bought plastic gliders in the market that looked like birds and decided to launch them from our balconies on the 66th floor of the Raffles Plaza where we were staying. They swooped and whirled, caught thermals and wheeled through the high-rise buildings of Singapore before landing hundreds of feet below in the trees lining the roads.

Lastly I can't think of anywhere in the world where I've been impressed with the airport, but Changi in Singapore is impressive. Beautiful orchid gardens in the shopping plaza, a room to lie down and rest in, a swimming pool, showers for weary travellers, big loungers for sitting in front of the telly, free internet points for browsing, free connections for your lap-top. If you have more than four hours to spare, they'll even take you on a free tour of the city. Aer Rianta could do well to copy this place.