Mount Faber was out of my radar for a long time, until someone spontaneously decided that we should go up just for the fun of it. We cheated, we drove up midway and walked the rest up. The last time I went up to Mount Faber, we took a bus, carried a few plastic bags of food from Giant (the supermarket at Vivo) and had a little picnic while enjoying the night scenery. Turns out that it is pretty interesting to walk up Mount Faber in the morning as well (sun block is a must)!
It always seems that some kind of hill is always on my itinerary when I go overseas- most of the time it's free so why not. In Budapest, we went to Gellert Hill. In Prague, we went to Petrin Hill. In Montreal, we went to Mont Royal. In Penang, we went up Penang Hill.
Mount Faber was known as Telok Blangah Hill initially but was later named after Captain Charles Edward Faber who carved a road up to the summit of the hill- these colonial references never seem to fade!
One of my favourite childhood memories was sitting in the cable cars . I belonged to the era where they were in multiple colours- blue, green and yellow. The anxiety as you piled into the cable car before it sent you off on an aerial journey. Then it became the black ones with the transparent bottomed cabins. Then all these cable cars are now metallic black. The price is unfortunately prohibitive if you just wanted to sit in the cable car for the fun of it- $26 per person!
We walked further up and lo and behold we saw a Merlion. Many times smaller than the one at Sentosa, but still, it was an interesting encounter. Now, the question is, how many Merlion statues are there in Singapore? Officially, the answer is apparently 5- 2 at Merlion Park, 1 at Sentosa, 1 at Singapore Tourism Board and the last one at Mount Faber. That day, a tourist asked me for directions to the Merlion at Merlion Park. His exact words were, "You know, the dragon?" For the avoidance of doubt, the Merlion is a creature with the head of a lion and the body of a fish.
At the peak- just suntanning and taking in the views- is there really anything better than this?
The one Singapore experience you will get out of this is seeing the places that Singaporeans live in. On one hand, there's Reflections at Keppel Bay for the rich.
On the other hand, 80+% of Singaporeans stay in public housing.
If anything, Mount Faber is a place for you to get away from all the high rise buildings in Singapore (and look at them from above instead), and just take in all the sights. Kind reminder: Water and sun block if you are going in the morning!
How to get there. I haven't tried it but you can try the Marang Trail as well.
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