This post continues my long-term project of visiting every MRT stop in Singapore—this time by riding the Singapore MRT Circle Line from HarbourFront to Serangoon. Along the way, I explored sixteen stops, which is about what a reasonably energetic person can manage in a day.

At each stop, I spent ten to fifteen minutes wandering around, curious to see how Singapore evolved from one stop to the next.

HarbourFront – Telok Blangah – Labrador Park – Pasir Panjang

HarbourFront

This stop provides a gateway to so many things: a huge mall (VivoCity), ferries to nearby islands in both Singapore and Indonesia, the Sentosa Express mini-train, the southwestern terminus of the MRT’s Northeast Line, and the start of the Mount Faber Park trail.

HarbourFront is also one of the six stops along the Singapore Cable Car, which runs from Mount Faber to Sentosa.

Telok Blangah

A huge housing estate sits on one side of the Telok Blangah station, and the Keppel Club golf course sits on the other. But highlight of this stop, tucked in between the housing estate and a busy highway, is the very-pink Ting Kong Beo temple.

This Chinese temple, built in the early 1920s, features life-size statues of the Eight Immortals, brought to you by the same artists who crafted the many wild and wacky figures at Haw Par Villa (more on that venerable institution later).

The facade is just wonderful …

… and it’s one of the few temples in Singapore at which I have seen traditional incense coils hanging from the ceiling.

Labrador Park

Moving further west along the coast, you get to Labrador Park Station, which leads you to a cluster of business towers on one side of the highway.

On the other side, you’ll find the Berlayer Creek wetlands area on the other:

This stop provided by far the most interesting juxtaposition of the trip, with skyscrapers standing nearly shoulder-to-ankle with jungly mangrove swamps. You can walk right into the Labrador Nature & Coastal Walk from here, or you can look out over (but not access, as far as I could tell) the western end of the Keppel Club golf course.

Pasir Panjang

Unless you have super-secret port access, Pasir Panjang has very little to offer to the casual visitor. There’s a huge hawker stall with a significant altar area out back …

… some random green space …

…and then a long string of buildings that divides the rest of Singapore from the port.

Singapore boasts the busiest shipment container hub in the world, which necessitates also having the world’s largest port. A shipping operation of this scale requires huge amounts of security. So when you try to walk near it (as I did, by wandering into one of the buildings in the photograph above), you’ll find guards at ready who tell you that (1) no, you cannot take any pictures and (2) no, you cannot proceed to exit the building on the other side.

Haw Par Villa – Kent Ridge – one-north – Buona Vista

Haw Par Villa

It’s rare to find truly strange things in Singapore, but Haw Par Villa has to be one of the strangest. This giant outdoor sculpture garden, built by two Singaporeans in the late 1920s and early 1930s, now looks like something from another world.

The brothers hired craftsman Guo Yun Shan and his family to create this outdoor display as a way to teach the visiting public about the moral values of traditional Chinese legends.

But most of the figures aren’t labeled, so unless you happen to know the legend at hand, you just have to make up your own story.

This wacky and wonderful place was once the #1 tourist attraction in Singapore. As for the area surrounding the Haw Par Villa station, I’m not sure there’s much else to see — this is definitely the highlight.

Kent Ridge

The Kent Ridge stop is really straightforward — it’s all about NUH, the National University Hospital. This means that you’ll see nothing but hospital …

… and more hospital.

This is a giant complex, filled with a wide array of interconnected buildings. If you walk up a few blocks, you can also access Science Park, a sprawling tech R&D hub.

one-north

one-north is the only MRT stop with no capital letters. This is a place that you come for work, not for fun; the station sits at the center of a vast business and research complex that includes giant glass buildings with names like Synthesis, Symbiosis …

… and Galaxis:

Unless you like to look at big, shiny, buildings, there’s not much to do here, though you may find changing exhibits in the lobby of the Symbiosis building.

Buona Vista

More buildings! Here we have complexes like Fusionopolis (which the sign calls, a “synergistic environment for info-communications technology, media, physical sciences, and engineering activities”), Biopolis (a “world-class research cluster for biomedical and life sciences, including basic drug discovery, clinical development, and medical technology”), and Metropolis (a “grade-A office building”).

I wandered through Metropolis looking at the sculptures.

Buona Vista is also home to the Star Performing Arts Centre, one of Singapore’s largest performance venues, and the Star Vista mall. But my favorite thing at this stop was the station art: Tree of Life by Giles Massot.

Holland Village – Farrer Road – Botanic Gardens – Caldecott

Holland Village

Holland Village is known as the place where expats come to shop, eat, drink, and get their hair done. You can get all sorts of things here, from fancy groceries to baked goods to English-language magazines.

Holland Village was named after Hugh Holland, an early twentieth-century architect. But Hugh is now largely forgotten, while the “Holland” part of his name is celebrated in windmills at the hawker …

… and in the MRT station itself.

Farrer Road

Farrer Road is exactly what it sounds like: a road. You get off and are immediately on a giant street, with HDBs (Housing and Development Board residential complexes) on either side. And they’re pink!

I’ve never seen pink HDBs before.

That’s about all that’s here — though if you walk a bit, you’ll eventually reach landed houses and tall condo buildings:

Botanic Gardens

As the name suggests, this stop leads out to the northern end of the Singapore Botanic Gardens — and those amazing plants and junglefowl above were waiting for me as soon as I exited the station. I’ll try not to belabor the point — I’ve written about the Botanic Gardens many times, from the National Orchid Garden Cool House and Gallop Extension to six Singapore parks accessible by MRT — but wow, this place is fabulous. It was very hard not to linger.

Even the station art is all about the botanicals.

Caldecott

Unless you’re a resident, there’s not much at Caldecott. It feels like the area around this station is slowly coming into its own, and that you eventually might find things to do here. But at the moment, it’s limited if you’re just walking around.

My favorite element of Caldecott has to be the easy access to flowers and plants at the giant nurseries along Thomson Road.

I do appreciate the Caldecott station art by Hazel Lim, The Cartography of Memories, a “map” of local residents’ personal histories and anecdotes:

Marymount – Bishan – Lorong Chuan – Serangoon

Marymount

The Marymount stop offers roads and residences as far as the eye can see, with HDBs on one side of the major street and condos on the other.

There’s precious little else to see here, but I did amuse myself at the Shunfu 3G Park.

This park consists of two components, a large children’s playground and an “Elderly Fitness Corner”, the latter of which gives a new, depressing (to those of us over 45) definition of “elderly.”

Bishan

Bishan has a lot going on — after several quiet, empty stations, this stop feels like a mob scene.

For starters, you’ll find a great old oval food centre, a bus interchange, two MRT lines (red and yellow), HDBs, a hawker and wet market, a library, and a shopping mall. But the real Bishan stop highlights are the tiny old playground with original tile-work activity stations …

…the wonderful architecture of the Sky Habitat condo …

… and the station illustration that informs you that Bishan — a former hotbed of triad activity in Singapore — once earned the nickname “the Chicago of Singapore.”

Lorong Chuan

Lorong Chuan is another stop without a whole lot going on for the wandering adventurer — it’s pretty much condos in one direction …

… HDBs along a drainage canal in the other …

… and nearby construction that hints at the wider roads and additional condos to come.

Serangoon

Like Bishan, Serangoon is another hub of activity — and it’s the intersection of two MRT lines, the purple and the yellow, so I’ve been here before. Notable features include an enormous mall (the NEX) and lots and lots of HDBs …

… everywhere you look:

I liked the artwork that I found painted at the base of some of the HDBs.

There’s fun station art here, too: View of Life, a riff on batik, by Sarkasi Said:

The Truth About the Circle Line

The name of the Circle Line is deceptive; it does not actually run in a full circle. So if you want to head along Singapore’s southern coast, from HarbourFront to Marina Bay, you’ll have to choose a different route.