6 Best Kept Secrets of Singapore
For many, the glossy facade of Marina Bay Sands and the ingenuity of Gardens by the Bay are Singapore’s star attractions. But if you roam around the city, the Lion City’s nooks and crannies will reveal many more facets of this Southeast Asian city that you didn’t think ever existed.
Here are the top 6 of Singapore’s lesser-known places!
1. Experience Romantic Moments at Tuas Lalang Field
The widespread of tall lalang grass in the breeze, as the sunlight spread across the field transforming it into a shimmering gold, will make you think this is a wheat field in the summertime.
The fact is, this south-western part of Tuas – which is also known as ulu-ulu (fur-flung and remote area) by the Singaporeans – is a paradise tainted by urbanization. Tuas is now an industrial estate which was a former swampland and fishing village. Here you still can enjoy and explore a romantic afternoon of wandering around dunes, lalang fields and abandoned construction sites away from the power plants and grey factories.
2. Colonial architecture at Wessex Estate
In Wessex Estate, which is a residential city off Portsdown Road in the western part of Singapore, you can see the regal black and white bungalows which are of British time as proof to the imprint they’ve left on Singapore. These residential blocks are also named after former British provinces like Gaza, Quebec, and Tangier. After the 1970s when they left this place, and after that this area which was rich with an air of suburban languor and bohemian nonchalance, gradually changed into the spaces of art studios, cafés, and open-air restaurants.
3. Bird-watching at Sungei Buloh
Singapore is left with some wilderness on its tidy shores. Sungei Buloh is a wetland spread across 87-hectare located on the northwestern side of Singapore. In this ecological wonderland, you will love to watch birds and enjoy nature treks. It is full of native flora and fauna like riverine species including mudskippers, water monitors, mud lobsters and also the estuarine crocodile.
4. Explore Kampong Lorong Buangkok
Kampongs, which means village in the Malay language, are rapidly disappearing in Singapore. Fast urbanization has wiped it all but you still can find among Singapore’s well-planned housing estates. Kampong Lorong Buangkok situated off Sengkang East Avenue is known as Singapore’s last kampong where 26 houses are still made of wooden planks where Chinese families lie. The doors remain unlocked with no care of break-ins. This place will take you back to the slower and simpler way of life in Singapore in the ’60s. You will be greeted by the simple villagers who are happy to welcome visitors into their private homes.
5. Give and take at Singapore Really Really Free Market
Yes, you heard right. This market is free, even in highly expensive Singapore. This trend of the free market started in New Zealand and then spread to Asia and other parts of the world. The Really Free Market is a global initiative with the intention of giving, where temporary markets are set up based on a barter system where sharing of products or resources was done. Everything is free on the market. It’s a two-way passage – you can take and give free. Tangible things like food, books, toys, or even intangible things like haircuts or performances.
Synopsis
These are some of the most wonderful and hidden secrets of Singapore that you did not know so better to plan out your next trip to this amazing place and discover many more such things.