Annual SG Picture Summary…

Yep! It’s that time of the year again when i flood you with images of our trip back to our homeland, the tiny red dot, the island nation of Singapore 😉

This year, of course, we visited with family and friends and had a ball eating all the yummy foods we miss. But we did a whole lot more touristy things than previous years so i’ll be showing lots of places you can visit (whether you are local or foreign to SG).

The first place we visited was the S.E.A. Aquarium on the fun-filled island of Sentosa. The tickets are a little pricey but we thought the Aquarium was well done and worth the money. We were told to be prepared to queue even though we bought tickets online. But we chose a Monday and schools were already back in full swing so there was no crowd when we got there about 11am. However, it did start to get crowded later in the day. Your ticket enables you to enjoy the Maritime Experimential Museum as well which was good, but not very big. Tobias enjoyed it greatly as he loves all things ocean-related. If you wanted to cover the whole place thoroughly, i would advice giving it a whole day. We spent a little under 5 hours there, including lunch.

Talking about the ocean, Tobias had great fun at this Sushi place which served your order on race cars (see picture below). We also did a nice long walk from Shenton Way (the financial center) to Marina Square, taking in the river-front sights and the Merlion Park. The place has certainly changed. See this post.

Next we headed to the far remote end of the island, Jurong, where the Singapore Discovery Centre is located. As the name suggests, it allows you to discover Singapore, its history and quirks. It was quite interesting. The Military Museum was just next door so we walked around that too. There you can learn what National Service is, how it started and what’s it like now. These places are free for citizens to visit. The highlight for Tobias was getting to shoot a real pistol and a standard-issued army rifle.

Singapore started as a little fishing village and for a long time people lived in villages, called kampongs. Now there is almost none left except a remote kampong on the mainland and on Pulau Ubin (Pulau means island in Malay). We decided Tobias needed to see/experience this kampong before it is gone too. So we spent a day cycling around the tiny island of Ubin. It was tiring but fun.

We went back again to the island of Sentosa, this time we went to Adventure Cove Waterpark. It is filled with water-rides of the thrilling sort and the lazing sort. i don’t have many pictures as it is a waterpark and i don’t have a waterproof camera. There weren’t too many people (we went on a weekday and it was school-term time) but still Tobias was put off after having to queue just under 30 minutes for his first thrilling ride which lasted less than a minute. So if you are planning to go, try to go during non-peak times like we did. Or else be prepared to queue much longer. We spent a fair amount of time on the Lazy River and in the Wave Pool. The attraction which Tobias loved and gladly queued again for was the Rainbow Reef where you could snorkel and see the ocean reef-fishes.

Our final tourist stop was the River Safari, showcasing all creatures which live along the major rivers of the world. This is not yet fully opened, one of the main rivers (the Amazon River) was closed, which was a shame as that was the only river which featured a boat ride. But ticket prices were reduced because of that so it was okay for us. Another main attraction here is the two Giant Pandas, KaiKai and JiaJia. A special enclosure in the middle of the Safari has been built for them and of course there were lots of Panda-themed merchandise and even food items you could get. Once again, Tobias enjoyed this as he loves water-creatures. However, because he has already watched so many documentaries about these creatures, he couldn’t be bothered to read more about them during this trip. So we finished walking around the whole Safari in less than 3 hours. But if you are going and if the Amazon River is open, then do plan for more time there. There are tickets you can buy which enables you to get entry into the Singapore Zoo, the River Safari as well as the Night Safari which are all next to each other. And if you are really into animals/birds, you can also get a ticket which would include the Bird Park (located in Jurong) as well.

Well, that was the touristy highlights of our trip this year. We would highly recommend that all the above be enjoyed in the great companion of family and friends. We loved our time with our family and friends, just enjoying each other and the food, of course 😉

Till next year Singapore…
syc