Tally-Ho is a semi-regular column of my adventures with the Adventure Crew (and sometimes other people). We figured that Singapore can’t be all that boring, and are determined to show other folks how fun Singapore can be… if you know where to look.
The Adventure Crew asked ourselves: We can has picnic? And we answered: Yes we can!
And so it was that we resolved to go to Marina Barrage to have a lovely little picnic. Except the weather was very wet. But because we’re the Adventure Crew, we decided to take a gamble with the weather anyway!
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming... (Photo courtesy SeriouslySarah.com)
And we won! It was probably the first day in the week that it hadn’t rained when we headed down to Marina Barrage :D
We would’ve walked to the Barrage in our joy, but there’s a lot of construction going on so there’s no way to actually walk from the Marina Bay mrt station to the Barrage. So we had to take a big loop around to find a very weirdly-placed bus-stop.
There are two buses; one is a shuttle, the other is a normal bus. I’m not sure which is which, but I think we took the normal bus there and the shuttle back.
At any rate, it’s about 15 minutes from station to Barrage. Once you walk into the Barrage itself, you get treated to some lovely views:
Inside the first floor of the Barrage, with the second level visible and Marina Bay Sands in the background
And because it was such a clear day, we could see quite far out. That was really rather nice (:
Some background on the Barrage: it was opened in 2008, and serves as the most glorified dam I’ve ever seen (not that that’s a bad thing). It’s a reservoir and a floodgate at the same time, as well as a sort of public park. Sort of.
We took advantage of the park-ness of it, and found a spot in the shade to unpacked our picnic stuff!
Drink, sushi, curry puffs, bagels, cookies, and potato salad
We ended up with a lot more food than we’d expected, heh! But s’okay. I had cornflakes in my potato salad, which I find incredibly weird, but it tasted good.
After we ate, we went up to the second level and attempted to fly our kites. My cheapo $3 plastic kite broke in about two minutes ): I fixed it, then it broke again, and I gave up on it.
Mintea’s kite kept breaking too, so after a while, we went downstairs to buy a kite for ourselves. I bought a proper cloth kite and string from the shop ($14). A bit expensive, but it’s a pretty sturdy kite.
They have lots of kites in varying sizes. I bought the smallest one, and it was pretty big!
Woohoo!
Because the Barrage isn’t surrounded by tall buildings, you get some amazing wind up there. But a note to all kiters: bring lots and lots of sunblock, a pair of shades, and a hat. I ended up horribly sunburnt on one arm ): Not enough to be all peely and icky, but enough to hurt.
The weather was a bit too good, and we didn’t stay up there for too long because it was just too hot. To cool down, we went into the gallery. It was quite dark inside, so I don’t have a lot of pictures.
Section talking about the Singapore River
The whole gallery is dedicated to Singapore’s attempts at building a sustainable urban country, so it’s all about the environment. Some of the exhibits were really very interesting, and they talked about things like the 80s cleanup of the Singapore River. (Before my time, but I’ve heard stories of how horrifyingly dirty it used to be.)
Inside the gallery
Entry to the gallery is free, and it’s a really interesting way to learn about the environment and the government’s efforts in maintaining it.
My favorite part was towards the end, where they have a fully working scale module of the Marina Barrage itself. There are demonstrations on how it works every half an hour or so I think, and we were just in time to catch it.
A bird's eye view of the complex (top), with the floodgates (bottom)
Basically, the Marina Barrage works as such:
- The gates are closed by default, forming a reservoir on one side.
- When it rains, water levels in the reservoir rise. If they keep rising, various areas will flood.
- Once they reach a certain level, the floodgates open. Water rushes out into the sea, evening out the water level in the reservoir.
- Various areas stay unflooded!
Excess water also gets pumped out through the pump side, but that’s in extreme cases.
It was really cool to watch, and it’s easy to understand. We all went “ooooh” when it started to ‘rain’, heh.
The gallery is very large, so do take your time to explore it!
And as we headed out, I had to take a photo with Water Wally, the PUB’s water mascot!
Water Wally! :D