Siloso Beach

Siloso is on the western side of Sentosa, an island off the southern tip of Singapore reached by a short bridge, cable car or monorail. The beach is around a kilometre long and every part of it was constructed.

It is a useful record precisely because nothing is hidden. Sentosa was a military installation and then a quarantine station before being redeveloped as a resort island from the 1970s; the beaches were created with sand imported by sea, shaped, and held with breakwaters and offshore islets connected by suspension bridge. Singapore has expanded its land area by roughly a quarter since independence, and this beach is the leisure face of that programme.

The sand is pale imported quartz, groomed daily, with a shallow engineered entry and no swell. The water is warm and calm and the visibility is limited. The horizon is the Singapore Strait, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, and the view seaward is of anchored vessels — which some find incongruous and others find the most honest thing about the place. Palawan and Tanjong, the two beaches east along the same shore, were built in the same programme and are quieter; Palawan has the suspension bridge to a small islet marketed as the southernmost point of continental Asia, which is a claim worth examining.

Development is complete: bars, restaurants, beach clubs, volleyball courts, a boardwalk and a free shuttle running the length of the island. Entry to the beach itself is free once on Sentosa. Swimming is permitted in marked areas, and jellyfish notices appear from time to time.

Imported sand, a monorail, and a wall of bars. Siloso is Singapore's party beach and makes no other claim; the water faces a shipping lane and is not the attraction. Come for the evening rather than the swim.