Kallang River: Marina Promenade

So the first part of Kallang River I visited was Marina Promenade. It is located right after the Merdaka Bridge along Nicoll Highway and leads all the way up to the Singapore Flyer and the Helix Bridge.

Marina Promenade is home to several features of the area such as the biodiversity garden and the office of the Waterways Watch Society. It’s quite popular on Sundays as a picnic spot for various groups as well.

Marina Promenade also overlooks Kallang Riverside Park on the other side of the river. Kallang Riverside Park is one of the key locations of the area and thus we will go into further detail when I get around to visiting it.

Biodiversity Pond

One of the more interesting features of Marina Promenade is the Biodiversity Pond & Park. It is a little area built near the pier of the nearby that consists of various educational exhibits about biodiversity and sustainability. Most of the exhibits in the area are made of recycled material. The signboards are made of wooden pallets, structures are made of granite slabs and seats area made of old repainted pieces of lumber.

There are little games around such as this “interactive granite slab” where players play tic tac toe on the slab by wetting their finger using the tap nearby and drawing on the slab. It’s quite the means of reusing a slab of concrete if you ask me.

 Further on we see a brief history of this corner which was quite enlightening. This corner came about as a result of flotsam having the tendency to gather in the dead spot of the pier. So the Waterways Watch Society decided to build a barrier to prevent flotsam from collecting and it slowly evolved to become the biodiversity garden today. This is really interesting because it highlights how governance of such an ecosystem need not be top down but can be bottom up where volunteers make improvements to the ecosystem to enhance its sustainability.

Here’s a picture of the park pond which used to be the dead spot of the pier. It is now however an actual pond that is somewhat separated from the river through a floating barrier. Which interestingly has allowed water surface plants to grow there!

Waterways Watch Society

The office of the Waterways Watch Society is also located a few metres away from the biodiversity park right under the Merdeka Bridge.

The group seems to be really active as the facilities seem well tended and there are additional exhibits located outside their premises.

For example there is this garden beside their office that seems to be a mix of plants and fruits. It is definitely tended to going by the amount of wooden structures in it. Amusingly enough there’s also a sign at the corner of the garden that says “VIP Entrance for Otters” implying that otters visit this garden on occasion.

 Duck Tours Embarkation Point

Last of all, there’s also a spot further down the river that’s the embarkation point for Duck Tours. Duck Tours is a sort of a mix land and river tour rolled into one where tourists can sit on their amphibious vehicles to visit various places around the Marina Bay area. This is one area which diverges drastically from Bedok Reservoir Park as tourism is an additional draw to the area.

Marina Promenade is home to several features of the area such as the biodiversity garden and the office of the Waterways Watch Society. It’s quite popular on Sundays as a picnic spot for various groups as well.