Crazy Rich Asians: From Newton to the Supertrees

Rachel Chu flies to Singapore with her boyfriend Nick Young for his best friend Colin's wedding to Araminta Lee. The airline on screen, Pacific Asean Airlines, is made up: Singapore Airlines declined to take part. The arrival at Changi Airport and the dash to Newton Food Centre with Colin and Araminta were shot on location. Newton is a hawker centre that opened in 1971 and closed in 2005 for a revamp. It remains one of Singapore's most popular, and the tourism board promotes it for sampling Singaporean cuisine.

Visitor guidance: The food centre stands at the intersection of Newton Circus and Clemenceau Avenue North.

The Young family has a sprawling estate at Tyersall, but Rachel and Nick stay in a luxury hotel instead. Scenes were shot at the Raffles Hotel, and the film has its leads stay there when they arrive in Singapore. The hotel is the real thing: a historic luxury hotel, established in 1887 by the Armenian Sarkies Brothers and named after Stamford Raffles, the founder of modern Singapore. It was gazetted as a national monument of Singapore in 1987.

Visitor guidance: Raffles Hotel is at 1 Beach Road, Singapore.

Peik Lin drives Rachel to the dinner party at the sprawling Young estate, and Rachel's first meeting with Nick's mother Eleanor is awkward. In the story this is Tyersall Park in Singapore. It was filmed in Kuala Lumpur at Carcosa Seri Negara, two abandoned mansions in the Perdana Botanical Gardens built for the British High Commissioner in Malaya (Carcosa in 1898, Seri Negara in 1913). Interiors went in one building, exteriors in the other. Designers added a Peranakan-style interior and a foam-and-fur tiger in the foyer that customs held up, thinking it was real.

Visitor guidance: Carcosa Seri Negara has been used as a museum since 2017; it stands in the Perdana Botanical Gardens, so check access before you go.

At their parties, both Rachel and Nick are warned that the Youngs would never accept her. Rachel leaves hers to find a dead fish in her hotel bed and a message calling her a gold digger. Nick and Colin swap the noisy, wild party for a quiet beach, where Nick reveals his planned marriage proposal. On screen this is Rawa Island; the beach scenes were filmed on Langkawi Island, and the bachelorette party took place at the Four Seasons there. The party barge was a set built in a car park, with a rented container ship for exterior shots.

Colin and Araminta's wedding was shot at CHIJMES, a former convent in Singapore built in the 19th century; the wedding scene took place in CHIJMES Hall. Rachel confronts and dismisses Nick's ex-girlfriend Amanda, charms an unfriendly aristocrat with her economics knowledge and, during the ceremony, wordlessly reaffirms her love for Nick. Singer Kina Grannis cameos as the wedding singer. The complex was used as a Catholic convent from 1852, and its Gothic-style chapel, renamed CHIJMES Hall, is now a function hall and wedding venue.

Visitor guidance: The complex was restored in 1996 as a dining, shopping and entertainment centre.

After the wedding, the reception is held in the Supertree Grove at Gardens by the Bay, and the grove is featured in the film. The extras were drawn from the Peranakan Association, a historical society, and wore their own vintage formal clothing. The evening turns bitter: Eleanor and Su Yi privately confront Rachel and Nick with a private investigator's findings, and Rachel declares she is done with the Youngs. The grove has 18 Supertrees, 25 to 50 metres tall, and a nightly light and music show, the Garden Rhapsody.

Visitor guidance: The Garden Rhapsody shows run nightly at 7:45pm and 8:45pm; an elevated walkway, the OCBC Skyway, links two of the larger Supertrees.

The depressed Rachel retreats to Peik Lin's, refusing to talk to Nick or anyone. Before she returns to New York, though, she agrees to meet Nick at Merlion Park; the scene also used locations at Esplanade Park. The park's statue is Singapore's mascot, a mythical creature with a lion's head and a fish's tail. The original Merlion is 8.6 metres tall and spouts water from its mouth, and the park opened on 15 September 1972.

Visitor guidance: The statue stands on a pier beside The Fullerton Hotel, on the far side of the Esplanade Bridge.

Rachel invites Eleanor to a mahjong parlor and points out that Eleanor has created a stalemate. She says she loves Nick too much to force him to choose, then hands Eleanor the tile that lets her win, revealing she could have kept it and claimed victory. Eleanor first strides through archways in Ann Siang Hill, in Singapore's Chinatown, but the parlor was the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion in Penang, redecorated for the film; a mahjong expert advised on the choreography. The indigo-blue mansion has 38 rooms, five courtyards and seven staircases.

Visitor guidance: The mansion on Leith Street is a hotel-cum-museum; tours in English run twice a day.

The film's closing scenes are set at Marina Bay Sands. As Rachel and her mother Kerry board a plane for the US, Nick intercepts them; his second proposal, with Eleanor's ring, was filmed inside a twin-aisle jet at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Rachel accepts, they stay in Singapore for an engagement party, and Eleanor nods approvingly. Marina Bay Sands, with three towers topped by a 340-metre SkyPark, also appears in the film's scenic shots of the city.

Visitor guidance: The three towers are topped by the Sands SkyPark, which holds a 150 m infinity swimming pool.