Villa & Vivo

Travel Details:
Take Bus No 10



For the whole of last year, every School Days, I will pass by Haw Par Villa. And everytime I pass by Haw Par Villa, I will wonder, how much has Haw Par Villa changed?

Then towards the 3rd quarter of 2006, other than being curious about Villa, I got curious about another building. Vivocity, built in Harbourfront. That causes the HarbourFront station to become crowded suddenly. That causes alot of hoo-huh when it officially opened with layout design problem and communication problem.

Finally on 14th Jan 2007, I satisfied my curiosity. I got to see what lies behind the walls of Haw Par Villa.

Villa was same as per my childhood memory. The only difference is the lack of noise. I remember in my childhood memory, this place was bustling with activity. Every few hours, there will be street performances. Today I only kept seeing the sweepers sweeping the floor. And the ride to the 18 stages of hell is priced because the admission to Villa is free now. Funny thing is I always know Hell has 18 stages. But today, I realised that it is called 10 courts of Hell. And that there are 10 judges in each courts. Never knew this description of Hell before. Did the description got westernised? I certainly hope not. Oh! And there is a museum inside too, Hua Song. It is a restaurant cum museum and we did not step in because we don't feel like having a meal there and it seems that one needs to dine there to be allowed to view the exhibits.

Took about an hour to walk to complete the place and concluded that this place has indeed quietened down. Even the number of tourists that came were only a handful.

Travel Details:
Nearest MRT: Harbour Front MRT Station



Then we headed down to Vivo. Can you imagine it was before 11 and stores have not opened but there were quite a crowd already? Everybody was just milling around. We were hungry and were scouting for a place to eat. And between wooden baked pizzas (Modestone) and Brazilian food (Carnivore), we chose Brazilian food because it opened at 11.30 and the buffet price is cheap haha. Imagine 19++ for buffet lunch. Rare deal!


We can choose food from the salad bar where they had baked potatoes, potato salad, pasta, rice, cheese bread, beetroot, salad variety and soup. Oh ya, I forgot to try the soup. Argh. I certainly must remember to try that the next time.

We can also wait for the guy to serve you the meat e.g. chicken breastmeat, pork sausage, fish, beef and pineapple which they roast too. I always like to try everything, thus at the end of the day, I was pretty much filled up.

<-- The middle picture is the food served. <-- Green and you still wish to be served. Red means you are full already After lunch, we shopped around because Vivo is a mega shopping mall. And I guess I really have to acknowledge that Vivio is magnificently large because my legs got tired half way. I'm surprised that Pet Safari opened a branch in Vivo too. Hopefully they still have their branch in Simei because I kinda like this place. Oh ya and that Daiso opened a branch here too after opening one in Plaza Singapore. Guess it is trying to reach out to the public fast.
The day ended well as I got to buy a top and a dress to add onto my Chinese New Year collection. On the way back, it was raining though. Luckily the weather was good in the morning at Villa.