Punggol and Seletar: Bikes, boardwalks and RAF bungalows
Hire a bike and give it the day: Coney Island in the cool of the morning, a quiet minute at Punggol Point, then lunch in an old RAF bungalow across the river.
Singapore's newest town sits on some of its oldest ground, and the best way to see it is from a bike seat.
Punggol and Seletar make a proper day out, and it's best done on two wheels. Mornings are for the car-free trails of Coney Island and the long, flat line of the waterway; lunch is a slow affair in an old RAF bungalow across the river. It suits cyclists, birdwatchers, families with energy to burn and anyone beginning to suspect that a Singapore weekend has to involve a mall. The catch is distance: Seletar is a taxi or a ride away, not a stroll, so plan that leg before you set off.
Best forCycling DaysNature and BirdwatchingBrunch in Colonial BungalowsFamiliesWar History
The walk · A full day, best by bike
An island, a memorial and an RAF lunch
Coney Island Park
Ride in on the 2.5km Coney Island Park Connector, entering from the east or west side, and go before the day heats up. Beach D is the one to make for if you want a stretch of sand to yourself.
Punggol Point Park and beach
A rocky shore and a 2.4km boardwalk at the end of Punggol Road. Find the plaque for the Sook Ching victims of 1942 and give it a quiet minute before moving on.
Punggol Waterway Park
Follow the 4.2km waterway, with its themed zones and bridges, back towards the town centre. Your legs will appreciate how flat it is.
Seletar Aerospace Park
Cross to Seletar by taxi or bike for the RAF bungalows around Park Lane and The Oval. Wildseed Cafe at 3 Park Lane does brunch and coffee by day.
Hampstead Wetlands Park
Finish on the boardwalks at 1 Baker Street, a good spot for dragonflies, butterflies and white-throated kingfishers. Move slowly and let them come to you.
What reviewers say
Boh Geh Uncle Canteen, often called the last kampung canteen, has closed, so don't let an older list send you there for lunch.
Ride the Seletar North Link park connector for the greenery, and keep an eye on the banks: otters are sometimes seen along the way.
Treat Punggol Point as a place to sit, not swim. The beach is rocky, and the memorial asks for a quieter half-hour than the rest of the coast.
If Coney Island's main paths feel busy, Beach D is the secluded one.
Coffee and cake in a 1930s RAF bungalow in Seletar by day, a garden bar by night, dogs welcome at the café. The easy way into the black-and-white enclave; book the half you want.
Thirty years as Singapore's landfill, now a reed-bed wetland that cleans its own leachate, with a red steel bridge over the reservoir that is the best sunset in Punggol. Bring water.
A corner of the old Seletar golf course that flooded, grew its own forest and was kept: boardwalks, a pond and kingfishers in an aerospace park. Small, so pair it with lunch at The Oval.
Wooden houses, zinc roofs and named chickens, ringed by HDB blocks off Yio Chu Kang Road: mainland Singapore's last kampong, and people's homes rather than an attraction. Look from the lane, or go in with a guide.
A new town's river walk that kept an old bus stop, a stretch of Old Punggol Road and a bridge named after the kelongs. Flat, pram-friendly and best at sunset.
Where: Punggol
Price: Free
The story of Punggol & Seletar
Nobody quite agrees on what Punggol means. One account takes it from a Malay phrase for hurling sticks at fruit trees to knock the fruit down; another from punggor, a fallen tree trunk. Malays settled here some 200 years ago, before Raffles arrived, and Chinese migrants came from the mid-19th century to work the rubber. Then it was farms, growing vegetables and orchids and raising poultry and pigs, until the last pig farm closed in 1990. The shore also holds a darker memory. On 28 February 1942, during the Sook Ching, around 300 to 400 Chinese civilians were shot at Punggol Point, and a plaque there marks it as a national heritage site.
The new town took its time. Punggol 21 was announced in 1996 and then stalled through two downturns, so the relaunch made water the point. The 4.2km Punggol Waterway opened with its park in 2011, Coney Island opened to the public in 2015, and Punggol Coast station and its mall have since arrived as part of the new Punggol Digital District. The upshot for a visitor is a town built along its water, which is why the bike makes sense: you follow the water rather than the roads.
Seletar is the other half of the day. It was Singapore's first air base, and its black-and-white bungalows housed Royal Air Force families on streets that still read like a London map: Piccadilly, Baker Street, The Oval. The bungalows now hold restaurants and cafés. Ride Coney in the morning, pause at the point, and take lunch where the RAF families once lived.
