Punggol Beach, Singapore

This area is relatively secluded, but is a very nice place to spend an afternoon with your kids. 

 

The beach isn't that clean but there are stretches where it is relatively clean...at least clean enough to dip your legs in. I don't think swimming in the water is a good idea. Just opposite this beach is Johor Bahru, Malaysia and there's a lot of factories there which I guess is where the rubbish comes from.

 

What I like about this beach is the rock formations that dot the beach. It gives it such a unique character.  There are trees lining the shore so in the late afternoon you can sit under some shade. There is also a Jetty there for people to fish.

 

Carpark for the time being is free. There is a public restroom as well as an outdoor shower head if you want to rinse yourself.  Near one of the carparks is a small children's playground with sand as the base.

 

One of the main attraction there is a couple of ponds that house cute little turtles which you can see sunbathing (or trying to escape?). Deep inside the pond we even spotted this long fish that's usually kept as a prized pet at many pet shops and restaurants.

This is a great place to bring the kids to, they can roller blade, cycle, scoot to their heart's content.  

Pickled Lotus Root

Pickled Lotus Root is so delicious! I had one big lotus root which I sliced up for soup. I cooked all of it in the soup and once the root was tender enough I took half of it out. Be careful not to overcook it because you still want to have a crunch and bite to it.

Drain the cooked root and rinse with some water if you wish.  Then place in a bowl. 

Mix some sliced red chilli, you can use chilli padi/birds eye chilli for extra kick, add some vinegar, sugar and a bit of fish sauce. Adjust the seasoning to your liking, it should be a balance of sweet and sour and spicy. Pour the mixture over the roots and mix and marinate thoroughly. This is best left for half a day in the fridge so that the roots absorb the flavours.

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Amazon Quest boatride at River Safari Singapore Revisited

On the day of Caelyn's birthday we decided to go to the zoo because if it's your birthday you get free entry! We got to the zoo about 10.45am and the line to buy the tickets were ridiculous!! It was stretching all the way to the River Safari entrance sign. I couldn't believe it because 2 weeks ago on a Monday as well there was hardly any queue. Here's a tip, if you aren't after any discounts or promotions, just go buy your ticket online so you don't have to wait so long! (note that there's a discount for OCBC credit cardholders if you buy at the ticket booth).

But there's also a catch, while queuing up, we noticed on the tv there were time slots for the River Safari boat ride. The ride starts at 12pm and the slots were for every half an hour until 4.30pm. By the time we got to the ticket counter, only 4.30pm time slot was available, so we took it cos we were planning to go to River Safari anyway after the Zoo since we had annual passes. Here's what I don't get, if you had annual passes, you would've by passed the ticket line and go straight into the park, which means you wouldn't be able to book your time slot. The ticket counter gave a printed ticket with the time of your boat ride and how many people it was for. So I'm not sure how it would work for annual pass holders....and they didn't have this system when we went 2 weeks ago too. So strange. Lucky we did manage to get a slot because straight after us it was all filled up but there was still a long queue of people behind. Disappointed no doubt. If you don't manage to get a ticket though, it's no harm to ask the attendants at the attraction, who knows, they might let you in.

For the time being, the boat ride is complimentary. I don't know when and if they will start charging for it. If they did, well it'd be pretty sucky because it's such a fun attraction and if time permits you'd want to go on it at least a second time. But then again, perhaps they'd sell an all day pass or something.

This time around, we went with a friend who had a child that was too small for the ride, so we got to experience the baby swap system. It went fairly smoothly, you go on the boat and the other parent with the baby waits at the baby room. Which is a half open room with fake grass, green plastic table and chairs (from Ikea type), and a tv showing some kind of cartoon. So after you get off the ride, you go around the exit barrier to the room and get the other parent who will go straight onto a boat with 'minimal' waiting. My friend did have to wait a while for some reason because the attendant forgot to tell the other attendant who was arranging the passenger numbers for the boat that she was in the priority queue. So if you find yourself waiting a while, just prompt them.

I think this is her favourite attraction at the River Safari.

Amazon Quest boatride at River Safari Singapore

*SPOILER ALERT* Don't read if you'd rather be surprised. 

One fine Monday morning, we decided to go to River Safari seeing as the weather was bright and sunny. We decided to also get the family annual membership which is a good value. You just need to go at least 3 times within the year to break even. And the great thing now is they have different memberships like 2 Adults and 1 Child, or 2 Adults and 3 Kids, etc. So it's more 'fair'. And with the annual membership you also get free parking, so everytime you go there you save $7 on parking! The thing about River Safari is most of the attractions and walkways are sheltered, so even if it rains it's still ok to go there, unlike the Zoo. 

The big draw of course is the new boat ride called Amazon River Quest since it has just opened. We were a little bit nervous when we entered the turnstile and saw a sign that said wait time for the ride was 2 hours! The park attendant told us it's actually just about an hour. Ok, we hoped she was right. If you want to go to the boat ride straight away, after the turnstile go to the right side so you'll be walking against the flow of the park.  If you went the other way, it's no big deal, but you just need to cross the long bridge across the lake. 

When we got to the ride, we were told the wait time was only about 40mins, phew, that's not so bad. And actually it didn't feel like 40 minutes at all. 

This is the boarding area after you've queued up. They'll divide you according to rows, each row can take up to 3 people, it only has 3 seatbelts. Having the seatbelts there makes you think the ride will have some kind of high drop, but I realise that maybe the seatbelts are more there to stop people from standing up during the ride. There's a height restriction of 106cm, so it's too bad the younger kids can't enjoy the ride too because I think they'd really enjoy it. 

 Once you board the boat, you go towards the elevator.

 And then it lifts you up! Rather quickly too. So this is where you'll meet the first drop. The drop isn't too steep and you don't get wet on it at all....except for a few droplets. Along the ride there are a couple more drops, can't remember whether it was one more or two more.

The boats returning after their journey. We waited here for quite a while and it got really hot. 

This is the first animal enclosure you see. The 'river' the boats travel on is quite narrow, narrower than any other water ride I've ever been on. The boats travelled slightly too fast, would be good for it to go a bit slower so we could look at the animals properly. As it was, all we were trying to do was spot the animals as fast as we could before the boat passed by the enclosure. And some of them were really hard to spot too! Just see the elusive Jaguar below. We also couldn't spot the giant anteaters.....too bad.

Can you spot the spots?

Flamingos you get a good look at, but the enclosure smelled a bit......

Iguana

So I guess the ride really requires you to go on it more than once in order to properly see all the animals. It sure beats the silly Madagascar ride at Universal Studios Singapore (I still don't get why there was never any drop on that boat ride!! I guess they were going for It's a Small World kind of ride)...At least everytime you go on this boat ride you'll see something different.

As it's a new attraction I can imagine how crowded it will get on the weekends.

Snow at Universal Studios Singapore!

Ok, so it's not actually real snow, it was foam or something. Would be cool if they could somehow make real snow come down, but I guess in this heat it would just melt by the time it reached you :p Maybe hail stones...ooooh that'd be something wouldn't it? :p

We were actually at USS for an impromptu visit, we didn't realise they were closing at 7pm and we arrived there at 6.15pm! Lucky with our annual passes they still allowed us to go in and we managed to go on 2 rides with no queues whatsoever.

The New York side was decorated with a huge Christmas tree and there was tons of people just waiting around. Seeing the empty sleigh we figured they were all waiting for Santa to get there. True enough after we got back from the Transformers ride, Santa was there with Grover from Sesame Street and there was a line of people waiting to take photos with them. The tree by this time was already lit up, and Christmassy rock music was playing. Seeing as we had some time, we went on the Spaghetti Chase ride and when we came out, to our surprise it was "snowing"! Reminded me of our trip to LA where they also had the fake snow at The Grove. The interesting thing is the foam wasn't soapy. So I wonder what it's made from...

I'm not sure if this snow is on everyday or only on weekends for now, but from 19th Dec till end of the year they'll have extended hour till 10pm and the snow fall show everyday, see here.

Tree with a Cherry on top instead of a star

Yeah I know my expression is weird, I was pretending to look in awe :p

Missing Pictures in my blog

Some of you may have noticed that I have missing pictures in my older blog entries. It's so sad, because I used to blog on another site called Multiply which has now closed down, so hence my pictures hosted on their site has also disappeared. I do have the originals in my computer somewhere....but it's a little tedious to dig up. So I apologise in advance for the 'messiness' on some of my posts.

SingKids indoor playground at Vivocity

Indoor playgrounds within a shopping centre in Singapore are not so common. But I think they're great, helps us leverage in our bargaining when we tell the kiddo that it's a shopping day.

Me: "We're going shopping today ok?"

Kiddo: "ohhhh (very whining and drawn out) again??"

Me: "You let me shop for a while and then I'll let you play there"

Kiddo: stops and thinks for a while and then "ok!"

Free ones are obviously the best but they're usually outside in the hot sun (or torrential rain) and the play things are usually limited. SingKids I think is more geared towards the younger kids, the max age limit is 10years old.  But my soon to be 7 year old still enjoys playing at Playgrounds....playground addict even I would say....she loves playing with other kids she meets at the playground and can play hours there, playing chase, chatting, etc. 

Everything there is padded so it's safe even for the littlest ones to play.  There are bouncy castle type of things, inflatable slides, a 'room' filled with floating balloons and rotating rides, all padded of course,  which seems to be their signature attraction.

There are various price options for the entrance fee so do check out their website. Or a better deal is to check if Groupon has an offer, which is what I did. 

Parents are supposed to stay with the kids but sometimes if you ask them nicely (and you get a nice person behind the counter) and if your child is old enough they'll close one eye and let you leave them for a little while and come back. I said to the lady, "I don't have to stay right?". She was like "of course you do!" and pointed to the sign on the table that said parents must accompany the children. So I played dumb and said, "what, for 3 hours??? She's old enough to take care of herself......how about I just quickly buy something and then come back?" So she kinda gave me a secret smile and said ok....and so I went off did a 'quick' round of shopping and came back after an hour and a half. At the back of my mind I was also feeling rather guilty leaving her there on her own, so I hurried back and sat in the corner while she played for a further hour or so. 

These suspended ball things are one of the rotating rides. 

Yup that's how you do it!

a big spacious area

Here's another rotating ride, this one is super slow. 

A very spacious sitting (or waiting) area.

some slides and the one behind is another moving ride

Giant inflatable slide

Like a bouncy castle type of thing

The seahorse thing is pretty huge! And it's another rotating ride.