A day in the heartland of Singapore - Toa Payoh

I am lucky to live in the central area of Singapore, about a ten minute walk from the famous Orchard Road.  But the truth is most of Singapore's 5 million inhabitants live scattered throughout the island, well-connected to the central areas.  Yesterday my family and I went to explore one of the 'heartland' areas of Singapore - Toa Payoh, one of the first residential communities in Singapore.  One of those days where I was in charge of the plan.

What drew me to spend the afternoon in Toa Payoh?  The answer to that is the Dragon Playground.  I had read about this playground structure in several blogs and websites, and I happen to have a seven and nine-year old who absolutely adore good old-fashioned playgrounds, so the plan was made.

Once I started digging around about what else there was to do in Toa Payoh, I found another cool playground and a Chinese Monastery.  Now we're talking!  The weather cooperated, which is never a given in Singapore, so after lunchtime off we went on the #5 bus heading north for about 20 minutes.

The Dragon Playground was ok - iconic but it was the only thing to climb in the small area, so it was a bit underwhelming.  Soon thereafter we headed over to the Toa Payoh Sensory Park - like a glorified playground surrounded by the typical Singapore HDB government housing. The kids had a ball.  Adjacent to that park was a great food center - on the famous 'hawker centers' so we each got our favorite fresh juice (mine is "ABC" - Apple, Beet, Carrot - juiced fresh for a whopping $2.50) - found one more playground for good measure and then meandered through a maze of HDBs until reaching the pedestrian gate to the Lian Shan Shuang Lin Monastery, where we were lucky enough to witness the end of a ceremony.  Beautiful place where the kids each carefully lit an incense stick.  I would have stayed much longer but we were already there past the 5 pm closing time.

Next family day one of the kids chooses the plan - let's see what they pick.

Dragon from Dragon Playground Toa Payoh

the kids climb 'in' the dragon

service in session at the temple

hello little cool statue!!

when the wind blows you can hear the bells ring

incense - always smells so good at Chinese temples!

Lian Shan Shuang Lin Monastery