Before we moved to Singapore, I showed the girls a video of the what was considered the best playground in Singapore. We finally visited it.

This week Singapore lightened restrictions up to Phase 3. This includes being now permitted to be in groups of 8. Our whole household left the house together for the first time since April.

For the last 8 months, we had only been allowed out as of group of 5 or less. For a while we were only allowed out singly. Most people I talk to don't see moving from groups of 5 to 8 as much of a celebration, but going out with one adult to one child was amazing for us. It also means that when we're out on the playground with the kids (being a group of 4 or 5 ourselves), we are now allowed to talk to another family.

For our big outing together, we took a 40 minute Grab together and headed to the North of Singapore to Admiralty Park. The playground here has 26 slides set along the hillside. Some of these slides 3 stories high. This playground is not just for kids, it's created as a family playground. There are also a number of different play zones set along the wide winding path, so you can pick a less intensive zone for your toddler. Our toddler was more than game for the big kids zones. She was the first down the 3 story slide. MsE waited till we were leaving to try out the tallest slides.

This park was reasonably shady, so there were no burning hot slides and no one got sun burnt. I did coat us in Sunscreen, but I forgot the bug spray. No one seems to have caught Dengue Fever.

It was super hot and humid and we were all sweaty quickly, but that's pretty standard. The playground was pretty busy for a weekday, but schools were still on their long winter break. Most people had masks on, including most children. We asked our kids to try to keep their masks on, even though at home they often take them off when playing hard on the playground.

MsC was a fan of the Flying Squirrel, and was happy to wait in line for it. MsE tried it too. The track went in a circle instead of going down a hill, so there was no having to run the rope back to the beginning. That yellow line was supposed to keep people from getting hit by kids on the zip line, but it was super ineffective. Every few minutes the line would shout a warning at someone who had passed over the line as they walked by and was about to get hit by a "flying" child. MsI got hit when she popped up at the stairs there too, but quickly recovered from her shock and moved along.

Having one adult to one child was really key to our low stress day here. I only lost MsI for a few minutes when the slide she went down went through the ground instead of letting her out there. The slide ended a story farther down than I had expected and she had already run around a bit before I realized what had happened and went down the slide myself. Everyone else pretty much stayed in sight of their chosen adult.

The playground of slides reminded me of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Jonathan says he can't see it, as we were standing in a hot humid tropical jungle in Asia.

After a couple of hours of running up and down the hillside, the adults needed a break. We let the girls play on one of the more contained playgrounds and then headed off to find some lunch. Everyone one would like to go back, but it was an expensive and long ride to get there, so we're unlikely to get back there anytime soon. This was about as far North as you can go in Singapore and the first time we had been North of the zoo.

Admiralty Park is also a 50 acre nature reserve, so after our playtime we took a walk through a wooded path to get to the Waterfront. I wanted to get a glimpse of Malaysia.

The path started out pretty urban. Near the beginning there was a huge grassy hill and the girls wanted to know what was on the other side of it. They gave up and came back down before they found out.

Pretty quickly the path petered out to a pretty solid dirt path surrounded by some dense looking jungle. We didn't have any problems with the stroller on it though. We tried to keep MsE's attention away from the numerous monkey warning signs, but once MsC saw them, she loudly pointed out there were monkeys near by.

MsE didn't cry. Instead she pointed out that she didn't like how the trees hung over the path in case monkeys were in them and then climbed into the stroller, pulling the canopy over "to protect" herself. I consider this walk a huge win for MsE.

We walked out on to the pier and were shocked by how close Malaysia is. The straight is only about 2000 metres between Singapore to Malaysia here. We could also see the bridge between the 2 countries, The Johor–Singapore Causeway. We spotted a couple of large freight trucks crossing over, but before the border closed due to Covid it saw about 350,000 people pass over it daily.  

Weather changes pretty fast. We thought we might get caught in the rain before our walk was over, but we made it to the Pier. The rain rolled in shortly after, and we sought shelter in the restaurant out on the pier. Our view of Malaysia all but disappeared in the rain.

The restaurant on the pier was the first place to eat we had spotted all day. This was the first time we were able to eat out with our Helper and our whole Household. The Rule of 5 signs hadn't been changed yet, but they were happy to seat our larger group in accordance with the new rule of 8. MsE made sure I captured the Christmas decor here. She though it was hilarious. The "Let It Snow" picture pretty below much sums up Christmas in Singapore.

After eating our fill of Satay and/or Waffles, we caught a Grab home once the rain passed. MsI was so impressed with the pillow in our luxury Grab Van that she fell promptly to sleep.