West Coast Park

Today we ventured, by cab, to the West Coast of Singapore.  It took about 20-25 minutes; just far enough for Jake to fall asleep.  It is very inexpensive to travel by taxi in Singapore, and taxi stands are plentiful throughout the city.

We went to West Coast Park, which was, in fact, right on the shoreline.  I have been using a great book by Frommer's, called Singapore Day by Day, to find our daily outings. Before I go to bed, I thumb through to decide on our activity for the next day.  We then have something to look forward to after the kids do their studies in the mornings.  The park today was great.  It had many different play areas with zip lines, a giant climbing tower, and obstacle-course style equipment.  I have rarely seen play structures so large (especially in the U.S. with our litigious society).

(That is Emma near the top.  Both she and Kate climbed to the very top several times!)  The kids spent the majority of their time on the zip lines, playing with their new friends (a group of local middle-school- aged girls) who never tired of playing with the kids and taking photos with them.

The most fascinating part of the park was seeing all of the freighters, cranes, and containers right off the shoreline.  We immediately understood why most of the beaches in Singapore are not for swimming.  The smell of gasoline from the ships was fairly strong and, on the one strip of beach, lots of trash had collected (perhaps from the garbage off the ships).

We spent several hours at the park, but when we were ready to go we were unable to find a cab.  There was no taxi stand in sight, so we kept trying to flag down a cab from the side of a busy road.  After about 20 minutes, a taxi stopped and let us in.  However, when we told him where we needed to go (about 20-25 minutes away) he said that he could not help us and that we needed to get out and get another taxi.  We laughed, because it had been so easy to get a cab up until this point, and waited another 15 minutes before deciding that maybe we should take the bus.  With the help of a local man, he pointed us in the right direction of the bus stop (about a 10 minute walk) and we started to head that way.  Luckily for us, right as we approached the bus stop we successfully hailed a cab and were taken home at last!