Haw Par Villa

Few attractions anywhere are as gloriously strange as Haw Par Villa, a sprawling hillside park built in 1937 by the brothers behind Tiger Balm. More than a thousand garishly painted statues and dioramas illustrate Chinese mythology, folklore and Confucian morality — from legends like Journey to the West to graphic public-service lessons in virtue. Its infamous centrepiece is the Ten Courts of Hell, a walk-through tunnel depicting, in lurid detail, the gruesome punishments awaiting sinners in the Chinese underworld (not for very young or squeamish visitors). Long faded, the park has been lovingly revived and now includes a ticketed Hell's Museum. It's free, wonderfully kitsch, and unlike anywhere else in Singapore.