Saturday, February 09, 2008

Sentosa Flowers 2008

Another part of our CNY holiday itineraries in Singapore, on the first day of Chinese New Year, we went to Sentosa to visit the Sentosa Flowers 2008 event in the morning, prior to our visit to Aa Duddy and Teh Ellen's place in Tampines for a reunion lunch. Sentosa Flowers 2008 is an annual flower festival held at Sentosa, spanned from Imbiah Lookout to the Beach station.

Having visited the earlier Sentosa Flowers 2007 last year, I found that this year's festival is a bit disappointing. The "blooming" quality of the flowers is not as good as last year's event. I feel that last year's event is more blooming with more variety of beautiful flowers throughout the Imbiah hill. Nevertheless, for the first-timers, this event is quite worth for a visit.

It opens between 9am and 10pm, until 17 February 2008. The admission to the event itself is free, although of course you would still need to pay for the entrance fee into Sentosa ($2) and the transport ($1 using Sentosa Express or Sentosa bus). I would suggest you start your journey from the entrance near Imbiah station. From there, you can explore the flowers park around Imbiah Lookout before heading to the Merlion, and passing through the Merlion Walk all the way to the Beach station.

I agree with Mbak Susan that the best time to visit the event is early in the morning, not only to avoid the hot baking sun, but also to avoid the crowd as well. Different from last year, now they open until 10pm every day, so it might be a good idea to come in the evening.

More pictures can be found on my wife's Multiply site here.

Related links:

Festive Street Stalls at Chinatown

As I have mentioned here (in Indonesian), this is the first of our itineraries in enjoying Chinese New Year holiday in Singapore.

Wednesday, 6 February 2008, on Chinese New Year's eve, I got half day off from work. After picking up my kids at Clementi (my wife is attending a gathering with her friends there), we went to the Chinatown area, just to see the hustle and bustle of the street stalls around Pagoda Street and Temple Street during Chinese New Year's eve.

Since the Chinatown area would be closed to traffic in the evening, we parked our car at The Central in Clarke Quay, and we took the North-East Line MRT train to Chinatown.

Both Inka and Irza got themselves some CNY-themed souvenirs from the market.

More pictures can be found here.