New attractions make Singapore a family affair
MANILA, Philippines – Our teen daughter was innocently peering into the waters somewhere along the Ganges — when a 14-foot gharial crocodile swiftly made a move from its rocky perch. A quick lift of its leathery, knobbed snout, a thick swish of its tail, and she almost fell backwards in shock.
That’s the kind of honest reaction you can’t fake with animatronics. And that’s the kind of thing you’ll see at Singapore’s River Safari, the city-state’s latest attraction for nature lovers.
We didn’t think our daughter would get to travel to the Ganges in the near future — let alone peep a pair of live pandas, get up close with massive manatees, or explore the Amazon, Nile, Congo, Mississippi and hundreds of live specimens from the world’s biggest river systems. So we did the next best thing: we took her to Singapore.
River Safari is the new companion to the Merlion State’s already popular Night Safari, Jurong Bird Park and Singapore Zoo. Seeing live animals in a zoo is one thing, but River Safari — like the much-visited Night Safari — is a real smorgasbord of live attractions. You get to watch enormous manatees doing a lazy backstroke in a huge tank, and spy on the park’s shy panda couple, Kai Kai and Jia Jia — on loan from China until they get over their shyness and produce a baby panda. But they never seem to hang out in the same space: the male likes lolling around eating bamboo stalks; the female likes lying in the shade, away from onlookers, staring at her feet. Clearly, she wants to be alone.
Singapore, though, has the opposite effect on families — there are so many new shared attractions to create bonding experiences, you can’t help posting group shots online, whether it’s exploring the beautiful Gardens by the Bay and Cloud Forest, watching sharks glide by overhead at the S.E.A. Aquarium, or perusing the hipster havens of Tiong Bahru.
A rep for reinvention
Singapore has a reputation for reimagining itself. Someone in Field of Dreams said if you build it, they will come: the Merlion country has managed to grow from a row of swampy ports a century ago to a major city-state built upon thousands of hectares of reclaimed land and sand (reportedly imported from Indonesia). With a population of 5.4 million, it’s a country that always looks ahead: you may think you’ve seen Singapore already, but there’s always a new item in the catalogue.
We checked into Singapore’s Hotel Jen at OrchardGateway, which offered a spacious double room with a third kid’s bed, and soon felt at home. The hotel also offers a stellar breakfast buffet with a view from the 10th floor, with a wide array of local and Western favorites like Indian breads and eggs cooked a la minute.
With our Singapore Tourism Board guide Anita Sharma, we hit the downtown area, first exploring Tiong Bahru and its strip of hipster cafes, bookstores and curio shops. Flock (78 MohGuan Terrace) is one such café, run by Singaporean locals and specializing in Speakeasy coffee and everything pork cheeks: Cheeky eggs, pasta and burgers. We enjoyed their hearty brunch fare before moving on to the bookstores.
Woods in the Books (3 Yong Siak St.) specializes in unusual kids’ titles, the kind that could mesmerize Isobel for half an hour: an illustrated Beatles’ Yellow Submarine with pop-up features, and Good Night, Darth Vader, a Star Wars spin on a favorite bedtime story. “I like that their kids’ books are non-condescending and creative,” she said, busying herself with stenciled books on Paris and anything to do with cats (such as How To Be A Cat).
Our daughter’s love of felines kicked in again at Books Actually (9 Yong Siak St.), a nearby shop said to have two cats prowling the book stacks. There you’ll find offbeat editions of classics (Frankenstein, The Great Gatsby) plus local speculative fiction and tons of retro-fun items: manual typewriters and crates of classic Pez dispensers, Instamatic cameras and vintage Magnolia milk bottles to dress up your hipster pad.
Next door, Strangelets (7 Yong Siak St.) carries glowing rabbit lamps, funky wall hangings, wooden toys, hip pottery and footwear. Like most of Tiong Bahru, it appeals to the younger Singaporean.
Our day concluded at Chopsuey, a rarefied colonial-style eating spot in Dempsey Hill, a former British and Australian military camp that became a weekend getaway thanks to its restaurants, antique shops and art galleries. Amid a happening mix of expats and locals, we had Wok’s Breath rice noodles with oyster broth and snapper filets, five-spice rack of lamb, chili chocolate cake and, of course, the house chop suey, which was possibly the best chop suey we’ve ever had.
Of Swarovski cable cars & supertrees
The next day found us at S.E.A. Aquarium in Sentosa, after riding the new Sentosa cable car line from Merlion Station to Siloso Point, with its 360-degree panoramas of beaches below, passing high above Singapore bay’s cruise ships and attractions like Underwater World. You’d be hard-pressed to find better views of Singapore, and they even have a cable car blinged out in Swarovski crystals if you must travel in style.
Also of note is the Peak-a-Loo at Mount Faber Peak Station. Touted as “the most beautiful bathrooms in Singapore,” you can watch cable cars drift by through huge picture windows — and, conversely, they can watch you washing your hands!
We touched down undersea. Built in 2013, Sentosa’s S.E.A. (South East Asia) Aquarium is massive, covering 80,000 sqm with over 8,000 marine species. We loved the overhead shark tunnel, and ginormous tanks that kept us hypnotized with its drifting UFO-like manta rays and amazing jellyfish.
A short monorail ride took us to Siloso Point where we enjoyed pizza and pasta at Trapizza, before heading over to Mosh!, a new digital edutainment center for kids next to Beach Station. Developed with Japanese technology, Mosh! encourages kids to create drawings that are then digitally scanned and projected onto screens for an interactive experience. We watched our hand-colored versions of Mosh characters bounce around in a cloud-bubble world, flew paper airplanes into a digital cove, ignited fireworks by waving our hands, played Hide and Seek with squirmy cartoon creatures, and watched our own fish drawings float around in an undersea world. (Isobel named her fish “Antoinette.”)
Another highlight for families is the hugely popular Gardens by the Bay. Two enormous domes fronting Marina Bay Sands house some of the world’s most beautiful flowers and plants, succulents and tree species. It’s easy to get lost inside the 101 hectares, where the main attractions are the Flower Dome, which set the Guinness record for “World’s Largest Glass Greenhouse,” and the Cloud Forest, a cooling escape from the heat with its 35-meter waterfall and mountain.
In the Flower Dome we headed straight for the exotic baobab trees mentioned in The Little Prince, and our daughter snapped dozens of colorful flower shots to send home to lola. At the Cloud Forest we took an elevator to the top of the mountain and descended via walkways that wind around the dome, a breathtaking feat of architecture by Britain’s Grant Associates. It’s virtually impossible to take a bad photo here.
The evening ended at Supertree Grove, where the Gardens’ eco-network of water-recycling tree structures are wired for a nightly dancing light show. We all settled in among the 22-meter-high Supertrees fronting Marina Bay Sands, and watched the lights erupt in time to a Broadway medley of hits at 7:45 and 8:45 p.m. (Plus, it’s free!) We had dinner at Palette, a posh food court at Capitol Piazza mall, Stamford Road, where the novelty is ordering your food through an iPad, selecting Chinese, Indian, Malaysian or Thai items.
The next morning found us at a popular Korean-based destination, Alive Museum (Suntec City Mall), for a round of goofy trick shots. Therese was carried in Superman’s arms, Scott narrowly escaped zombies and crocodiles, and Isobel towered over a basketball player in an optical illusion hard-court.
We spent time at Naiise Shop at Clarke Quay, which roused the shopping instincts of Therese and Isobel. With more than 8,000 hip and funky products by local designers, the retailer has everything from cool fashion, jewelry and home items to durian décor, rocking horses, and popular Neh Neh ice cream pops (try their Milo Dinosaur or Baklava). Lunch immediately followed at the Riverwalk branch of the oh-so-busy Jumbo Seafood restaurant, where we tucked into their award-winning chili crab (spice aficionados will love the black pepper crab as well), cereal prawns, and scallops wrapped in yam rings.
A dose of art & history with ice kachang
Believe it or not, not all families in the world subsist on constant thrill rides, food intake and shopping. (Maybe just Filipinos.) So our Singapore trip took a sharp turn that day into history, as we entered Chinatown to visit the URA Centre (45 Maxwell Road) and Chinatown Heritage Centre (48 Pagoda St.). Put up by the Urban Redevelopment Authority, the URA Centre shows visitors how much the city has changed with historical timelines and a scale-size model of the city — we couldn’t help noticing that about 20 percent of Singapore’s reclaimed land was still open for new high-rises and development. Always planning ahead.
Close by was a Buddhist temple, where we paid our respects (Therese and Isobel wore sarongs); then we entered the 1800s, inside a museum of Chinese dwellings in the Chinatown Heritage Centre. Detailed recreations of rooms of rickshaw drivers, doctors and families took us back into history. We learned about the supernatural rituals of Chinese New Year (feeding hungry ghosts, saying goodbye to evil spirits) and how a class of Chinese — the Sinkheh — fled famine and unrest in China to carve out a new life in this budding port city.
Naturally, since we were in Chinatown already, our journey inevitably led us to more shopping and food. Isobel gathered bargain trinkets for her classmates, and we settled down to Chinatown Food Street for pepper beef hot plates, fish curry paratha and fried carrot cakes, washed down with Tiger Beer and ice kachang.
Our final day took us to the new National Gallery Singapore (St. Andrews Road), which houses the largest collection of local artwork in the country. Linking the old Supreme Court and former City Hall via an air-conditioned walkway, it’s a great way to escape the heat and bask in Singapore art history. (And also a little Philippine history: the Gallery maintains a couple old detention cells, including the one where, reportedly, Filipina maid Flor Contemplacion was held during her sentencing to be hanged.) The modern art installations are eye-opening, more provocative than you might expect in Singapore.
On more of a family tip is the Keppel Centre for Learning down below the gallery lobby. It’s a fun journey that allows kids to explore art through four creative modules. Kids can explore collage, construct imaginary boats and cars out of cardboard, travel through the color tunnel and a land of cartoon dioramas by a local illustrator.
Lunch before leaving Singapore was at Blue Ginger (97 Tanjong Pagar Rd.) for spicy and aromatic plates of Peranakan food, the cuisine that arose from the union of early Chinese settlers with the Malays native to the region. Consequently you get dishes like Satay Babi, stir-fried lean pork slices marinated in spices, and beef rendang, beef cubes cooked in coconut milk spiced with ginger, lemongrass, lime leaves and curry powder.
We hear that families are the fastest growing arrivals in Singapore, and, after four days exploring the Merlion City-State’s latest attractions, we could see why.
