The drizzle from the forecast arrived just after seven, a fine, warm mist that did nothing to cool the air. I was already out, walking the quiet streets of the Sembawang Estate, past the low-slung black-and-white bungalows on Gibraltar Crescent. The lawns are immaculate, the frangipani trees heavy with flowers.
These houses are the ghosts of the British naval base that built this whole town. From the 1920s until 1971, this was the Royal Navy's main dockyard east of Suez. The streets are named after ships — HMS Gibraltar, HMS Terror, the troopship Canberra. It's a strange, leafy, colonial corner of Singapore, one of the few places where the old architecture survives in clusters.
I cut through to Cyprus Road and saw more of the same. They're mostly leased to expatriates now, I'm told, and you can feel the history in the thick walls and high ceilings. It's not a museum, it's a living neighbourhood with a very particular past.
My destination was the Sembawang Hot Spring Park on Gambas Avenue. The rain had stopped by the time I got there, and the humidity was already climbing back towards the forecast high of thirty-three degrees. It's the mainland's only natural hot spring, which still feels like a novelty.
I found a spot at the cascading foot-bath pools. The water comes out of the ground at around seventy degrees and flows down through a series of cooler pools. I stuck my feet in the warmest one and just soaked for a while. It's free, by the way. The whole park is free.
The real tradition here, though, is the egg-cooking. You bring your own raw eggs and a little wire basket or just a bag, and you lower them into the hottest pool near the source. I'd stopped at a minimart on the way and bought a few for about a dollar. The rule of thumb someone told me is twenty minutes for a soft-boiled egg, longer if you want them hard.
I sat on the edge of the pool, watching my eggs bob in the steaming water while the heat did its work. The park is small, with a walkway lined with fruit trees — I spotted a few jackfruit starting to form. It's a very local, very unhurried way to start the day.
When the eggs were done, I cracked one open right there. The yolk was just set, creamy and rich. It's a silly pleasure, cooking your own breakfast in a natural hot spring, but it's one of those things that makes this island feel genuinely special.
From the park, I wandered north towards the coast. The roads get wider as you approach the old dockyard, and you start to see the cranes and the hulls of ships being repaired at the Sembcorp Marine Admiralty Yard. It's a working waterfront, not a tourist one, and I kept a respectful distance, just watching from the public road.
The contrast is sharp. One minute you're looking at massive floating dry docks and the next you're at the gates of Sembawang Park, one of the last places in Singapore with a natural sandy beach. The Johor Straits are right there, calm and brown-green, with the skyline of Johor Bahru shimmering in the heat haze across the water.
There's a battleship-themed playground on the beach, a proper climbing frame shaped like a warship. Kids were swarming over it, having a fantastic time while their parents sat on the sand. I walked past it towards the water's edge. The beach isn't for swimming — the straits are busy with shipping — but it's lovely for a walk, and the jetty was full of people fishing.
On the way back through the park, I stopped at Beaulieu House. It's a grand colonial bungalow, painted a bright, almost blinding white, that sits right on the water's edge. It's a restaurant now. I decided to check it out for a late lunch, thinking I'd snag a table on the verandah with a view of the straits.
The menu is mostly Western-Asian fusion, and the prices are on the higher side for a hawker-fed local like me. But the setting is the real draw. I had a simple pasta and an iced kopi, which came to around thirty dollars, maybe twenty-two US. It's not a daily habit, but for a long lunch with a view of the old naval anchorage, it felt right.
Fortified, I set off on the Sembawang Heritage Trail, following the NHB signs that wind through the estate. The trail tells the story of the dockyard, the people who worked there, and the kampongs that existed alongside the British base. There are information panels at key spots, and it's a self-guided walk that takes a couple of hours if you stop to read.
I walked past the former Admiralty House, now called Canberra House. It's a grand, sprawling bungalow and a gazetted National Monument. It was the home of the highest-ranking naval officer in the base, and you can feel the weight of that history in the sweeping driveway and the mature trees around it. The trail wove past the other landmarks I'd already seen, tying them together into a coherent narrative of a town built around a single, massive industry.
The trail eventually led me inland, to a part of the estate I hadn't explored. The roads narrowed, and the architecture changed from colonial bungalows to neat terrace houses. That's where I found Masjid Petempatan Melayu Sembawang, tucked away on a residential corner.
This is apparently the only surviving coastal kampong mosque in Singapore. It was built in 1963, just as the village life around the naval base was starting to change. It's a modest building, but it has a traditional tiang seri pillar inside, and there's a kentong, a wooden slit-drum, used to signal prayer times in the old days. The imam, a friendly man, saw me hovering outside and invited me in for a look.
He told me the mosque's history, how it served the Malay fishing community that lived along the coast before the dockyard expanded. Then he pointed to a tree in the compound. It's reportedly the oldest rubber tree in Singapore, a gnarled, towering thing with a trunk you'd need three people to wrap your arms around. It's a living link to the rubber plantations that once covered this part of the island.
I thanked him and stepped back out into the mid-afternoon heat. The sky had cleared, and the temperature was pushing towards that forecast high. I was tired of walking, so I treated myself to a late afternoon coffee at a small cafe called Community Brew, a short bus ride away. A flat white there cost me about six dollars, and the air conditioning was a welcome relief.
The weather forecast had promised a dry evening, and I had one more plan for the day. The Onam festival, Kairalee Kampong Onam 2026, was apparently happening over the weekend at the Sembawang Recreation Centre, and I wanted to see if there was anything set up yet.
I walked over around six, and the place was already buzzing. There was a huge, intricate pookalam flower carpet on the ground, made of thousands of marigold petals and coloured powder. A group was rehearsing for a traditional dance, and the smell of frying food was coming from a row of stalls. The main Sadhya feast, served on banana leaves, was scheduled for the weekend itself. I made a mental note to come back.
I grabbed another kopi from a stall, found a bench under a tree, and just watched the community getting ready. It's a wonderful thing, seeing these festivals brought to life in the heartlands. The cost of the coffee, by the way, was about a dollar fifty — a reminder that you can still eat and drink in Singapore without breaking the bank, if you know where to look.
As the sun started to set, I made my way back along the coast, hoping to catch the last of the light at Sembawang Park. The sky turned a soft orange and pink behind the Johor skyline, and the fishing boats were heading in for the night. The air smelt of salt and diesel.
I stood on the jetty for a long time, listening to the water slap against the piles and the distant sounds of the shipyard. It's been a quiet, informative day. I've seen the grand colonial history and the simpler kampong past, cooked my lunch in a hot spring, and watched a community prepare for a festival. The cost of the day was modest — the eggs, the pasta, two coffees, and a few bus rides. Maybe fifty dollars all up, about thirty-seven US. The history, as always, was free.
Tomorrow I'm going to tackle the Bukit Canberra complex — the big integrated hub with the hawker centre that everyone keeps telling me about. I hear the char kway teow is under five dollars. Everything I've talked about today, from the hot spring to the trail, and the details on when to visit the mosque, is in the episode notes.
For now, I'm going to sit here a little longer and watch the lights come on across the water. Sembawang has a different pace, a slower rhythm that takes a minute to adjust to. I think it suits me fine. See you tomorrow.