Singapore starts as it means to go on. At the airport, a white line runs down the middle of the moving pavement from the arrival gate and on the escalators down to the immigration desks. Passengers are encouraged to stand neatly in two files, with the faster walkers in the overtaking lane of the outside. On the way, signs warn that possession of narcotics can lead to the death penalty. This is, clearly, a city that expects you to behave as a good, civic visitor.
But, then, there is a hint that rule-minded Singapore wants to soften its image. Bright, shining Changi Airport is one of the very few immigration desks I have passed through that offer bowls of sweets as you wait to have your passport examined - on my last trip, they were Fox's Glacier Fruits.
At the start of a new century, the 680 sq km state perched on the end of the Malay peninsula seems very aware of the need to renew itself, rather than rest on its laurels.
There is also a feeling that the place needs to lighten up and relax a bit, not just for its own sake but also to attract visitors. This being a society that is still closely regulated, the relaxation is limited. A decision to allow "table dancing" in nightspots, which was reported last year, turns out merely to let patrons get up and boogie on the bar if the spirit so takes them; I was told by cool young people that they would not be caught dead making such an exhibition of themselves.
However, the signs of change are there. A flowering of galleries has boosted the art scene. The excellent Singapore Art Museum, in a neat colonial building, highlights works from South East Asia as well as local artists. The beautifully laid out Asian Civilisation Museum presents a unique collection drawing out cultural cross-currents with particularly fine, and historically fascinating, exhibits from the seas to the south.
Once the Singapore river was a fetid stretch of water; now it has been cleaned up and its quays are crammed with restaurants and bars, selling some of the best Indian food outside the sub-continent on busy Boat Quay. Across the water, a stylish complex of Indochinese restaurants and bars - Indochine, Siem Reap and Opium - serves equally excellent food inside or on a wide terrace by the river, underlining Singapore's claim to be the regional eating capital of East Asia.
At night, the Zouk complex of dance clubs gets as raucously driving as anything in the west when 4,000 people crowd into its modernistic caverns for dance, hip hop and imported DJs. The bars and karaoke joints along Mohamad Sultan Road may not be notable for their sophistication, but they can be fun, and the terraced alleyways off Orchard Road are good to sit out in on a humid equatorial night. For something over the top, the Parkview tower, surrounded by statues of great world historical figures, has a huge, vaulting art deco lounge where waitresses ascend on pulleys to fetch choice bottles of wine from a cellar built vertically into the wall behind the bar.
The media remain cautious and supportive of officialdom. Political life is firmly regulated by the ruling party. But, on the edges, counterculture rears its head. This spring, the main theatre, in the Esplanade complex by the waterfront, staged Asian Boys, a collection of eight short plays by a local author on the theme of gay life in Singapore. Director Royston Tan won the critics' prize at the last Singapore film festival for his ground-breaking film, 15, which delves into the aimless lives - marked by drugs and violence - of five local youths. Reflecting the residual degree of local caution on sensitive subjects, it has not yet been shown in cinemas.
Alongside its international business clientele and such landmarks as Raffles, where the Singapore Sling was invented under the fans of the Long Bar, and the Goodwood Park standing behind its manicured lawns, Singapore has caught up on the trend for boutique and designer hotels, and for turning public buildings into places to stay, eat and drink. A complex of bars and restaurants in the middle of the city occupies a gleaming white former Catholic church and convent, now known as Chijmes. The elegant Fullerton Hotel, housed in the former main post office by the river, attracts a buzzy crowd for late-night drinking in its Post Bar, and lays on one of the best Sunday brunches in town. The Duxton is a conversion from a row of traditional shophouses. The Gallery Hotel on Robertson Quay makes much of its post-modern minimalism, from the room furnishings and lighting controlled by computerised sensors to the canteen-like café and zipper-topped staff.
For me, though, a main attraction is the food. Not the smart, expensive - and excellent - purveyors of western cuisine, but the food courts and Chinese dumpling houses.
Go to the modest Qun Zhong Eating House in a row of shophouses, and you are in dumpling heaven, the produce rolled before your eyes by a team of women at the back. If you want something different, they serve an exquisite Chinese pizza on the thinnest of crusts. In the Esplanade complex, My Humble House serves inventive new Chinese cuisine - marinated sea-bass with scrambled egg, sautéed sea cucumber with herbs, shark's fin in papilotte - at considerably higher prices in far-from-humble surroundings looking out at the bay.
At the bustling food courts where tens of thousands of Singaporeans eat each day or fetch their take-away meals, every manner of Chinese and Asian food is on sale: collect your helpings from the counter and eat them at the lines of Formica-topped tables. The prices are low, the portions ample and the food you order has usually been just prepared. The open-air Newton, the largest food court in town, has excellent stalls for quick-cooked seafood, though the prices can move up smartly. Or, for something completely different, try the French food stall, sprawling over the pavement on Serangoon Road. It serves up first-rate snails and fondue bourguignonne, foie gras and duck confit. You could be back in the west, except for the climate and the low prices - S$49 (£13, €23) a head for a three-course meal with three bottles of Crozes Hermitage among our party of eight on my last visit.
Singapore remains a constrained city - as one local observer put it, "we will relax, but only when the government says it is OK to do so". But it is opening up, and, given Singapore's attractions, that can be no bad news as it seeks to be more than a staging post for visitors to South East Asia. The "Lion City" may still be in the regulated lane, but it is pushing the envelope in its cautious manner.
