Family Holiday in Singapore Part 3 - Jacob Ballas Children's Garden and Ice Cream Chef

After a tiring day out at Universal Studios Singapore, we decided to do a free and easy rest day before venturing to Sentosa Island the next day. Thus on our 4th day in Singapore, we visited the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden.

This garden is a part of the Singapore Botanic Gardens and is located within the grounds of the National University of Singapore. It came highly recommended from just about everybody we spoke to. 

I found it to be a very educational place. Lots of stuff for the kids to feel and see and lots of greenery to shade and cool the place.

There's a treehouse for the kids to climb around and slide down. Bigger kids may find this boring though.

There is a lily pond and a floating pontoon on which you are encouraged to jump.

We explored some water plants...

 So I asked the kids if they could drown a water plant....and they started putting rocks on the plants to try to sink it.

 The verdict : the plants won.

This is supposed to be a 100-year-old tree trunk that was zapped dead by lightning.

Have you ever seen a fig tree? This was my first time seeing one!

 Joy enjoyed the sensory garden...

...and finding her way through the maze...

I got the chance to show Joseph a banana tree upclose and he remembered this amount of bananas is called setandan pisang.

Joy found a friend at the sandy playground and started making sandcastles.

There was a very low tree with lots of wide-spread branches. I encouraged her to climb it because it's not everyday that you find a tree so easy to climb. Initially she was apprehensive. But with some encouragement, she took to the challenge.

 And then she enjoyed it so much, she did not want to come down.

 We spent over an hour there before we had to go home for lunch...

Ah Mah's char koay teow

 In the evening we had dinner at home with other relatives and then my newly-promoted daalin treated everyone to some ice cream. My food-enthusiast nephew decided on Ice Cream Chefs.

 There is actually quite a number of artisan ice cream shops just around the corner from where we were staying. My nephew selected this over other options (like Udders and Salted Caramel) because he finds the selection of flavours better and the mix-in option something special and different.

 Here at Ice Cream Chefs, you pick your flavour, and then a item like Famous Amos, marshmallows, cookies, sprinkles, etc etc to be mixed-in on a cold stone.

Joy had a very BIG scoop of pink rose-flavoured ice cream on a cone.

 She didn't finish it.

Joseph had blueberry flavour with chocolate sauce (FREE!) on top while Daalin had the Durian Decadence and Yoghurt ice cream.

 I had the Durian Decadence and Chocolate Hersheys mixed-in with Famous Amos. It was very very good.

 Ice cream makes everyone happy!!!