Vivocity Mall and Water Play Area

Everything in Singapore revolves around shopping and food. Both of these things are done usually here at shopping malls. Everything is done at shopping malls. The malls have banks, even libraries. Most of the playgrounds and water play areas are part of the mall experience too. Why not?

I suppose the difference is that the malls here are not massive rectangles with box stores framing the ends and your standard choices filling up the sides along with one food court area. Often the malls here are big, but they feel more like indoor cities. The layout is usually confusing, the stores are mainly quite small, the up and down escalators are never close to each other, and the directories are hard to come by, not usually categorized, and typically map out only what's on that particular floor. There are usually many different food collections throughout the place too. They are also very crowded.

I was looking for an interesting water play area and had heard great things about this mall called Vivocity
http://www.vivocity.com.sg/home2.html  It's a crazy looking place with some crazy features. We had to check it out on this hot, hot day. We invited some friends we met here at our building. They have been here longer than us (4 weeks) but have never taken the bus or train in Singapore. They wanted to come with us to find out how it works because, you know, we've been doing this for almost 2 weeks now so we're obviously pros.

We decided to meet in the lobby at 9:40. We arrived a bit early so the Bach Family Band performed:

Once our friends arrived, we walked to the nearest correct-facing bus stop and boarded a bus. It took us only a couple kilometers away to a train station where we walked a fair distance to board the train. Our trip was lengthened by one of new friends' phobias. The little girl, six-year-old Ava, fell down an escalator in France (where she's from) when she was younger and has not gotten over her fear yet. We climbed a descended quite a few sets of stairs but eventually made it. Her six-month-pregnant mom survived too, but I'm pretty sure the whole day's experience has convinced her to stick to the taxis.

Wyatt, George, Zoe, Ella, and Ava on board the North-East line toward Harbourfront.

When we passed through the train's exit turnstiles, we quickly realized that we were in the basement of a mall. Welcome to Vivocity! 

Now this sounds terrible, but one of the main reasons I liked the idea of going to this particular place (aside from the water play stuff) was that it had a Toys "R" Us. I know, I know. But the kids really wanted pool toys and I refuse to pay $40 for diving rings, mostly because I don't have the $40 to spend on diving rings. We found some at TRU for under $10. And a couple of other things. Having made our big purchases, we headed to what was labeled as "Kids Open Play Area" on the second level. It's a huge outdoor playground surrounded by (American) fast food outlets and kids' clothing stores. The play area had some interesting features.

Big spinning 1970s inspired seats

Our first fast food in Singapore. It's from Carl's Jr because it's better than Burger King and Long John Silver's.

Right next to where we sat to eat there was a roped off area with a bunch of ride-on cars and horses and things. The kids went running right over to them ready to hop on--until an attendant came over to tell us that there was a fee to ride the toys: $5 for 5 minutes. Yikes. In fairness, they were mechanized ones, not just push-toys but holy steep prices. We passed.

Instead, we checked out the sprinklers, but mostly didn't get wet yet.

George and Ava climbing into the sprinkler area

Ella and Zoe on the standing bouncy teeter-totter thing

All over this floor there were these crazy animal sculptures to climb on. I thought they looked so inviting and fun. My kids wanted nothing to do with them. In fact, I didn't see a single kid on them. Weird.

The intermittent sprinklers

And what I was really looking forward to was this roof-top pool. I had the wrong impression though, imagining crystal blue chlorinated water and a place to swim laps and run through sprinklers. Nah, it's just that most of the floor area on the top floor was outside and covered in water. There were signs everywhere that said "No Swimming" so we weren't sure we could even wade in, despite what I had been told about this place. Eventually some people walked by us, noticed we were confused and staring longingly at the cool water with our hot kids and told us we were permitted to wade in the pool. 

At first, that's what the kids did. But quickly, clothes were flying off and it turned into this:

We played in there for about 20 minutes even though we were the only people in the water. This was at 1 in the afternoon. People would walk by and smile. Some people took pictures. We were reassured we weren't breaking any rules though. 

After this, we dried off and visited our friends' shopping destination: the Japanese store where everything is $2. We bought some furry cat and squirrel figurines, an owl, drawing paper, markers, pens and pencils, and a plastic set for making our own juice ice-pops.

The ride home was hot and sweaty and long, but that just meant that the kids were ready for a quick dip in the apartment pool (to break in their new pool toys) and then for a nice long nap that lasted until Daddy got home from work. 

Now, Ted has the Sonos speakers hooked up so we can access our Rhapsody account and the four of them are rocking out to Jack White's new album while I type this. I think I may join them.