After continuously working for more than 3 months, I took a much-needed vacation in August and went to Singapore with my daughter for ten days. The daughter had totally forgotten all about the time she had spent in Singapore and was seeing her father in person after 3 months and it took her quite a while to warm up to him.

After falling asleep on the overnight flight and suddenly waking up in what was ‘new’ surroundings to her in our Singapore apartment, the vacation started with me having to calm her. The next ten days simply whizzed past us in a blur with me absolutely enjoying spending every moment of the day with my baby after what seemed like ages.

To me, this was a real vacation since the major part of it was just eat-sleep-talk-play routine. My husband had also taken some days off from work and we spent a major part of the time just relaxing at home. I cooked after a long time and on some days, the dishes came out really well and I was happy that my cooking hadn’t become worse.

The best part about Singapore are the play areas having all types of slides and rocking horses which are present in every series of HDB (Housing Development Board) apartments. You can just walk into one in any area and let your child happily play. Sahana used to love it even when she was just 9-10 months old. Back then, it was rocking horses and later it was the slides that she enjoyed. This time, she was rediscovering the play areas as well, having forgotten everything and she loved playing there and what’s more, now that she could talk, though not in full sentences, she kept asking for ‘payyea’ (play area) all the time!

We had already visited most of the places in Singapore and there were only a few left. We covered one more place this time – The Underwater World Aquarium in Sentosa Island. While I did find some of the spectacular colours of the aquatic life stunning, with both my husband and I not being fans of seeing aquatic creatures, we got bored after a while. Sahana too didn’t seem all that interested and fell asleep within minutes after entering it. But all of us did enjoy the Maritime Experiential Museum tracing the early maritime routes and trade. The daughter, however, got scared during the short movie screening in the 360 degree theatre and they refused to open the door and let us out in between. All the effects including the simulation of the ship movement and the artificial rain created in the 360 degree theatre was nice.

More than all these, what my daughter really enjoyed was the fountains in Sentosa Island – those fountains that you find everywhere in Singapore where the children play and get drenched! Fountains with a whole lot of holes and you never know from which hole water is going to come from next and it was this surprise and the joy of running around from one hole to another that had Sahana going crazy over it and me launching on a panic alert on seeing her drenched from top to toe! She loved the shallow waters in Harbour Front/ Vivo City Shopping Mall as well and I had to keep changing dress after dress for her that day!

Apart from Sentosa to which we always prefer and enjoy walking from Harbour Front centre, we just walked around some shopping malls in Marina Bay, went to Sri Thandayuthapani Temple and visited Sri Srinivasa Perumal temple in Little India and the Central Library near Bugis – the last two being places we used to frequently visit.

The kids section in the Central library has been given a makeover and it now houses the World’s 1st eco-friendly children’s library. I just loved it and so did my daughter. That deserves a separate blog post.

I also visited a few day cares to get an idea of how they are in Singapore.

The surprise part of the trip was bumping into blogger Vinitha aka Vini The Pooh. It was nice meeting you, Vinitha 🙂

At the end of the day, no amount of time will prove to be enough when you are with your family and it felt good to be together as a family after a long time. I don’t know when my next trip to Singapore will be, but what I do know is, the next time I go there, it will be going there for good. And the Madras-lover in me sighs thinking about it!