Jacob Ballas Children's Garden Carnival '07

I recently came across a write-up on this children's garden (Jacob Ballas Children's Garden) at the Singapore Botanic Gardens, in the Holiday Fun magazine, and realized they were having a carnival today. So messaged K about it and she called to say she actually had carnival tickets. They were planning to give them away but since we were keen to go, they decided to go as well so an impromptu arrangement was made to meet up today at the gardens.

Have decided to give some advice to people who are planning to visit this place. It pays to do your homework first (sigh). Make sure you go through the correct entrance, which is the entrance off Bukit Timah Road, not Tanglin Road. We got there just after 10am and had a breakfast of roti prata at the food court. Then decided to join the shuttle bus queue that would have taken us to the children's garden. However, we thought it was crazy to wait half an hour for the shuttle to arrive, thus we thought it'd have been faster to walk. So we left the queue. Big mistake! A short distance off, we met a young lady who was giving out pamphlets for the carnival and she informed us that it would take 40mins to walk there. With my legs, it'll have taken me at least an hour, if I can even make it there. Joining the queue again would have been out of the question as it was long at that point.

So we took a cab and told the driver to take us to the NUS entrance, but he dropped us off at another entrance in the middle of the gardens. Boy, how were we to know that this place was super ginomous and that wasn't the supposed entrance. Gosh! So we decided to join the shuttle queue here and when the bus came, it was a mini one thus we couldn't get on, and that meant that we had to wait another half hour for it. Ridiculous! So we hopped on a cab again and this time we told ourselves that if we still can't find it, we'd go home. Luckily we did. We persisted even though cab driver was like wanting to take us to another gate. Told him to go further and finally saw signs leading to the carnival. Boy what a roller coaster ride. Have learnt our lesson. Really a waste of our precious morning.

K and family too had to walk a super long way as they've not been there.

Here we are having some little snacks and kids were dying to go have some fun especially princess who was so looking forward to it. She's there for the water play but we wanted to go check out games first.

This is a very interesting garden dedicated to children. There is a tree house and suspension bridge and they 'can learn about botanical processes such as photosynthesis, and discover the different uses of plants, experience the joy of gardening, and more'.

The proceeds from today's carnival goes to the Garden City fund to support the maintenance of this 'living classroom'.

I intend to take princess there doing the holidays to discover more of the place as we only covered a small area today.

We started off at the maze where they had to make their way to the middle to find the balloon sculpture artist who would make them something as per their request.

Right beside the maze was the trampoline/bungee thingy. There was a long queue, but it's not so much the waiting time. The sun was scorching hot and we hadn't remembered to pack any sun block, so while the dads were minding the table under the shade, we mums and kids were baking under the sun. It was truly scorching hot and we are all baked and brown now. :(

Princess was truly excited about the jump but also very frustrated with the heat and long wait. She couldn't wait to do it. But when it actually happened, oh boy, you should have seen her face. She was terrified, almost in tears and kept telling the guy that she had had enough. I guess she didn't know what she was in for. She's normally very brave so it must have been pretty scary to be thrown in the air and suspended by the ropes. But when he let her down, she calmed down and asked to go up again! Kids! They just can't make up their minds!

The highlight of the outing was this waterplay area. She finally got her wish granted hehe.

Am now taking a break while she's off to art class and then there's a birthday party this evening. Yippee though, it's a drop off party! I love those ;)