Haw Par Villa

We visited Haw Paw Villa at the end of February for the first time.

I'd been hearing about this free outside garden that shows the morality tales of Buddhism in statue vignettes, sometimes in grotesque detail. We skipped the "10 Courts of Hell", which I've been told can seem rather scary to children. The gardens have a bit of greenery, but mostly it's statues and the vignettes. This place is such an odd and awesome Singaporean thing.

I was thrilled Jonathan's mom was with us, and we had finally found the time to visit. It's right on both the bus route and the MRT so it's surprising I hadn't made it here before. It was in the blazing sun - almost no shade - so hats and lots of water were required. It's also thoroughly on a hill, and the layout makes the most sense if you can take the stairs. We made out fine with the stroller, but I did quite a bit of back tracking and trying to keep up with the kids who kept taking the stairs to another level.

Haw Paw Villa seemed to be used to managing some crowds, but we only encountered 1 or 2 other couples as we wandered around.

The scenes were large and filled with so much detail. Many of the more traditional ones were clearly marked with the story they were illustrating. We enjoyed reading these and piecing the story together with the next scene.

Some of the other scenes had us completely lost though.

In the centre of the Gardens is a large pond and the site's largest Buddah statue. Feeding the turtles and fish to "increase our karma" at the pond was the kids favorite part. Food was provided for $1 a bag with the honour system.