Day Out at the Botanic Gardens

By Chaayen

 My poor son was placed on SHN for 5 whole days and it was awful for him really. He enjoyed going out for leisure strolls and being forced to lock indoors was terrible. Worse, it was merely a viral fever but because he didn't took the ART, he was "naturally" placed on SHN. 

For us, it was just huge change of plans. But we have a really good support network, so basically it was my parents who had to take extra days off for him haha. I just took 2 days (and 1 was merely to celebrate his release). And maybe to take a breather too, cos taking care of an irate baby who wants to vent his anger by hurting himself is no easy feat. 


By now, I have pretty much realised that weekdays are the way to go when you want to avoid the crowd. There were so many animals spotted there. We were first welcomed by a hen and her brood of chicks. I saw older kids having a lot more fun chasing after the chickens and roosters. My baby could barely walk so he was happy to cling on to us as I *pants* run after them instead.
There were also the usual squirrels, fishes, swan (only 1 spotted) and tons of monitor lizards. I think covid and the lack of human presence has allowed them to breed freely and sort of be less fearful of humans. I am on the other hand petrified by the lizards especially, now they don't demarcate boundaries. 
Botanic Gardens is one of my favorite gardens in Singapore, maybe because it is free haha or perhaps because of the memories I have with it. A lot of the photos I took with my child, my mother had the exact same photos with me. We did try to recreate some old photos with little success because my boy still can't walk very well.
Now that we ain't considering going overseas, I am feeling so much for this colonial-designed garden. Some parts of the garden let me feel like I just step out off Singapore...Nice! Generally, the garden is very child-friendly. Fresh air and a long, tiring stroll does make me feel better!

Sadly, we missed lunch that day because we thought it would be great to see all the sights - band stand photos are being held hostage in the Hub's phone. Boo! You really need to decide where you wanna have a meal because the eateries are spaced quite far apart. Best tip for you, grab a nice cold coffee at every eatery to drink on the go. Super shiok in the hot weather!
My bad decision for the day was deciding to eat a late lunch at Dempsey and all the restaurants were on their afternoon break. To be fair, most of the eateries serve pretty boring western brunch food and I was in the mood for something more exquisite. Ended up going hungry, the kid though had a ball of fun as seen in the photos!***Note: Laptop is down, so posts won't be as frequent!