Five places to find zen in Singapore

SINGAPORE — You might think it isn’t easy to find peace and tranquility in a buzzing metropolis like Singapore. But the truth is, you just need to know where to look.

Where can you go that is not an elbow-jostling subterranean MRT walkway, a park infested with skate scooters, an expressway choked up with honking cars or a heartland mall jammed with baby strollers?

Well, open the eyes of your heart — or just your eyes — and you will see what has been in front of you all along.

SHENTON WAY 
ON A WEEKEND

Needless to say, Shenton Way on a weekday is a veritable fish market of sweaty-shirted executives. Shenton Way on a weekend, however, is that spaghetti Western ghost town for which even a passing tumbleweed wouldn’t stop, proving that in life, timing is of the essence. On a non-workday, the fountain in front of Capital Tower, for instance, is a great place to put your feet up and reflect on the futility of the paper chase.

SPEAKER’S CORNER

Where can you escape from loud and incessant talking? Ironically, the place designed for thunderous public speeches. The Speaker’s Corner at Hong Lim Park is, more often than not, a motionless oasis of green calm in the midst of touristy Clarke Quay and the Central Business District — and a reminder that silence is, 
indeed, golden.

NATIONAL GALLERY SINGAPORE

On the outside, the gorgeous slate-grey building may be crawling with Instagrammers striking calculatedly effortless poses. But fight your way through them and on the inside, it’s a haven of still, air-conditioned respite.

As Dr Eugene Tan, Director of National Gallery Singapore explained: “We want all our visitors to have a pleasant visit and experience when they visit the Gallery. To do so, we have gallery hosts at all our exhibition galleries and spaces to ensure that noise level is kept to a minimum.” In addition, the Gallery Explorer app, which helps you plan your visit, also contains an audio guide that can only be used with earphones. “One of the Gallery’s goals is to impart the importance of museum etiquette at all arts spaces and in the long run, we hope to cultivate a museum-going culture in Singaporeans and encourage a new generation of art lovers,” Dr Tan said.

And so, after the initial ruckus of the Gallery’s grand opening, its hallowed halls and galleries are now cloister-quiet and perfect for those who seek contemplative solitude — and even a little culture while they’re at it.

HAW PAR VILLA

Imagine an amusement park with no ridiculously-priced merchandise, no admission fee and no queues — in fact, no visitors at all. Well, Haw Par Villa is just that place. Never mind that it’s quite literally hell on earth — as the saying goes, hell is other people, right? Haw Par Villa’s eerily deserted Ten Courts Of Hell is exactly where you can escape from other people. We can’t guarantee what else you might run into, but isn’t that a small price to pay for wide-open spaces?

PUNGGOL WATERWAY PARK

Now that the Punggol Instagram Tree is no more, the park is back to being a hipster-free, botanical sanctuary where you can commune with nature without being interrupted by requests for photographic assistance. We hear another tree is in the running to take its place though, so make full use of the time before it’s officially crowned as the new Instagram Tree to loll about in the grass and contemplate deep, philosophical questions such as: “If a tree falls and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”