Spice shops, street art and plenty of soul

Plan your first visit to Orchard Road with this practical guide to Tanglin, Orchard and Somerset, including malls, MRT stops, viewpoints and hidden heritage.

Thailand’s capital is the world’s most visited city, a place where monks in saffron robes rest in the shade of towering malls, and heritage-inspired meals are served in former family shophouses. …

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Joo Chiat has more than just colourful shophouses, and its merchants want visitors to know. Read more at straitstimes.com.

SINGAPORE - Joo Chiat has more than just colourful shophouses, and its merchants want visitors to know. A group of them are spearheading efforts to spotlight the rest of the neighbourhood by going door to door to convince fellow business owners to step out of their shophouses to engage customers. This will be part of Land Transport Authority’s World Car-Free Day…

Thailand is famous for beaches, temples, night markets, and street food. But there is another side of the country that deserves a place on every traveler’s itinerary: its café culture. From minimalist coffee bars hidden inside Bangkok shophouses to jungle cafés surrounded by rice fields in Chiang Mai, Thailand has turned the simple act of drinking coffee into an experience worth traveling for.

Singapore’s Joo Chiat neighbourhood swaps skyscrapers for colourful shophouses, heritage buildings and local food, making it an appealing base for exploring the city.

TAIPEI — Phone in hand, the middle-aged woman gestured to the Taipei intersection, where an infantry platoon unloaded sandbags on the pedestrian crossings. "My Uber is waiting for me just there," she said in Mandarin, pointing behind them. The bespectacled military policeman blocking her path with a T112 assault rifle apologized: She'd have to find another way around. Soon after, Clouded Leopard infantry fighting vehicles emerged between the shophouses, opening fire with blanks into a killbox the Taiwanese formed with barricades.

TAIPEI — In the dead of night, scores of masked military police moved a medley of defensive gear beneath flickering traffic lights and store signs. Hemmed in by rows of shophouses, they laid metal barricades, land mines, and sandbags along an intersection just a mile from Taiwan's presidential office. Behind them, Clouded Leopard infantry fighting vehicles prepared to roll out and open fire on incoming enemy forces.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) College of Design and Engineering (CDE), led by Professor Heng Chye Kiang (NUS Department of Architecture), have developed a computational framework for reconstructing the genealogy of vernacular architecture.