the little BIG explorers

One of the sad truths of traveling around a lot is that you will eventually have to wait for a seemingly unreasonable amount of time in an airport. We were due to fly out of Singapore and were ready for a little bit of a boring wait for our flight on to Indonesia which was a little delayed. Usually airport departure lounges are a dull place to be, at best a large shopping centre to wander around and at worst an uncomfortable overcrowded old office building. Singapore, however, was radically different. On arrival to check in we could tell it was a nice airport, with huge open space – low key and friendly check in desks and an easy to navigate, efficient security clearance.

We had our passports stamped and then got air side. This was when we saw quite how incredible Singapore airport is! We got in to see a large shopping street which sold the usual duty free, electronics and last minute souvenirs. Above this there was a large food court with street food style vendors selling a wide variety of local and regional dishes. What really caught our attention was that there were signposts for a butterfly garden! This seemed quite unbelievable. We have both traveled quite extensively both together and on our own, but have never seen something like this in a departure lounge.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The garden was at the far end of the terminal, with a sealed set of doors to stop butterfly’s from escaping. It was an enormous space – two stories tall with a huge array of plants and even a waterfall. We went in to take a look and were instantly hit with the aroma of the flowers and surrounded by butterflies!

There are information points around the garden where you could learn about butterflies and moths, there is also a metamorphosis centre where if you are lucky you can see butterflies coming out of their cocoons! Next to the butterfly garden there is an enormous Koi pond which is equally beautiful. It may seem a little over the top to write about an airport terminal, but, it was such a cool experience that I couldn’t not share!