Our future neighbourhood

We went on an excursion today!

Guess where that bright blue sign is pointing to?

Downtown line!! We changed at Botanic Gardens for the Downtown Line to get to Bukit Panjang. Then we exited the station to find our way to the LRT - we were heading for Pending, two stops away.

I learnt about the new Bukit Panjang Hawker Centre from work and decided to check it out. It is not very big but looks nice, like food court due to movable chairs instead of fixed seating. There's a tiny family corner with big tables for bigger families and low chairs for kiddos.

With a stroller park that is empty...

Mee goreng for me, Indian rojak for us

That was $7.70. Sito had fishball noodles for $2.50 and the portion was not tiny. So the prices there are quite ok.

We took a walk around the neighbourhood - it felt so HDB! It really reminded me of what I grew up with in AMK. As I grew up, however, I grew further away from the heartlands too.

It used to be that everything was centred on the "market" as we called it, referring to the wet market, the hawker centre, the various shops in the area. When I was more able to go places, downtown became much more appealing than the market.

But today, I was reminded of it all again. It still feels close to my heart :) I told Sito I feel glad that our kids will grow up in a more heartlands place than Holland Village.

Shops, seating, playground and a lot of people doing their stuff!

Sito said he grew up like this too but his mood certainly changed for the better when we hit Bukit Panjang Plaza after walking for 15 min hoho! Aircon, it makes all the difference? Or I'm more HDB-gia than him?

Anyway, we love BPP! It has all the necessary shops, including Popular for the kids, Harvey Norman for the Papa and Daiso for the Mama! And we found a foot reflexology shop at $20 for 40 min - deal!

Hopped across the road to check out our new place - one block has reached 20 storeys, one at about 15 and the last at fewer than 10. With 60+ storeys across three blocks, it's more than halfway built. Can't wait to move into our new place - more space, more toilets!

By then we were quite tired and decided to take a cab back. With surcharge, the fare came up to under $14 - not bad. If we couldn't manage the kids on the train when we come back to Mum's place next time, we can just hop on a $2.40 $2.90 $3.20 $3.70!