Family fun in Singapore
By Andrew Jefford
Published: February 14 2009 00:47 | Last updated: February 14 2009 00:47
Laborious yet rewarding travel is for adults. Those travelling with young children prefer easy destinations. En route to Australia, we could have struggled to bundle our 16-month-old and our three-year-old off to Ho Chi Minh City or Angkor Wat. Instead, as we were flying on Qantas on our way to Australia, we went to Singapore. A few friends had muttered disdainfully about it being a tropical Milton Keynes but our exhausted little family gave it an emphatic thumbs up.
It helps that the architecture seems modelled on Gotham City and that the island itself is almost small enough and well enough endowed with transport systems to resemble Sodor, where Thomas the Tank Engine passes his cheeky days. It helps also that everyone speaks English and that the wide-ranging code of Singaporean civic responsibility seemed to extend to compulsory smiling at foreign children, even mid-tantrum. Simply being tropical helps, since most visitor attractions (the Science Park included) come endowed with water features where the children can strip off and get happily wet before going home refreshed. But the city-state has its own intrinsic adult charm as well, based on easy-going multi-ethnicity and a long-standing mercantile raison d’être.
Singapore’s zoo, one of the world’s greatest, is a near-compulsory visit. Try the Night Safari, which occupies a separate site next to the main zoo and is open from 7.30pm until midnight. This is ideal for older children, with its fire-eaters and nocturnal shocks and surprises; there are walking trails as well as an inexpensive tram ride to move you around. The setting of the main zoo itself is superb, with almost as much to detain the botanically curious as the animal-lover. If you want to avoid the heat of the day, book breakfast with the orang-utans; at some point, you will be offered a snake to fondle over the croissants too. The monkeys and apes in general seem to be allowed a latitude of movement that eclipses other zoos, swinging across artfully positioned branches and creepers overhead as well as exhibiting at disconcertingly close quarters, to a chorus of giggles, their spectacular bottoms. Leave enough time for the Asian rarities such as the indolent white tigers.
The Jurong Bird Park nearby (8,000 species) is almost as unmissable as the zoo, and insatiably animal-obsessed children might like to visit the island’s frog and crocodile farms. The leisure islet of Sentosa, complete with man-made beaches, also has an Undersea World, Dolphin Lagoon, Butterfly Park and Insect Kingdom, so there can’t be many species left on earth with no ambassador in Singapore. Children (especially males) tend not to see the point in flowers but if any family member has even a passing interest in orchids, then the Mandai Orchid Gardens and Orchidville are essential visits (those with pushchairs should avoid the former, because of its hilly setting).
The best part of travelling with children, though, is having the chance to discover the small surprises of the world together, thereby redeeming the miseries of messy, rejected meals and post-sleep screaming fits. The ever-changing colours of the neon lights along Clarke Quay at night-time, for example, were considered the summit of exoticism by our pair and we all admired the clever statue of the diving boys halfway up Boat Quay. (Look out for the bronze cat and kitten too.) The 10 minutes I spent discussing with the elder boy why the quayside stones were still warm at night were no less precious.
Singapore’s squeaky clean and efficient MRT (metro) system was an attraction in its own right for the boys, though it took quite a while to explain exactly what the “no durian” symbol might mean (why would anyone, I wondered, want to eat a fruit that smells of vomit?), and the safety video surely deserves a “15 and over” certificate.
The city, as ever, is in a frenzy of further development. Gazing out at the forests of cranes, industrious diggers and mountains of piping scattered along the waterfront development zones proved more compelling than the endless shopping malls along Orchard Road.
You don’t, we reasoned, visit one of the world’s busiest ports and not take a look at the great bay of boats waiting to get their bellyfuls of oil refined or their haystacks of containers shuffled. From the air, the scene resembles maritime art of the 18th and 19th centuries in terms of its teeming throng, even if the ships are less picturesque today. To get a close-up view of the boats, take the Imperial Cheng Ho harbour cruise from Marina South, which in the mornings and afternoons travels out to Kusu Island for a short stopover and gives you a chance to see some of the merchant fleet in all its grimy glory at close quarters.
Kusu itself (“turtle island”) is an anodyne annual pilgrimage spot; almost the most interesting thing about it is the view of the shore of Lazarus Island next door, which looks just the sort of place to bury a chestful of doubloons. Our 45 minutes there, though, gave four little feet their first ever paddle in tropical waters, as well as the chance to hunt for shells along a beach scattered with fallen, half-rotting mangoes. It’s hard to guess what the stuff of memory might be in young heads but those moments will contend with the rest for strangeness and wonder.
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Details
Singapore Zoo, 80 Mandai Lake Road, 8.30am-6pm, tel: +65 6269 3411; www.zoo.com.sg
Night Safari, 7.30pm-midnight daily, www.nightsafari.com.sg
Jurong Bird Park, 2 Jurong Hill, 8.30am-6pm, tel: +65 6265 0022; www.birdpark.com.sg
Jurong Frog Farm, 56 Lim Chu Kang Lane 6, 7am-6pm, tel: +65 6791 7229; www.jurongfrogfarm.com.sg
Singapore Crocodile Farm, 790 Upper Serangoon Road, 9am-6pm, tel: +65 6288 9385; www.singaporecrocfarm.com
Sentosa attractions, tel: +65 6736 8672; www.sentosa.com.sg
Mandai Orchid Gardens, 200 Mandai Lake Road, 8am-7pm daily except Monday (8am-6pm), tel: +65 6269 1036; www.mandai.com.sg
Orchidville , 10 Lorong Lada Hitam, 8am-6pm weekdays, 8am-8pm Saturday, 8am-5pm Sunday, tel: +65 6552 7003; www.orchidville.com.sg
Imperial Cheng Ho Harbour Cruise, Marina South Pier, 10.30am-6.30pm, tel: +65 6533 9811; www.watertours.com.sg
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
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