Sembawang Hot Spring Park

Closed until 30 October. When it reopens, the water still comes out at about 70°C; hence the eggs.

First, the bad news: NParks has closed the park for urgent maintenance until 30 October 2026, so don't make the trip to Gambas Avenue until its page says the foot bath is back. Once it is, this is an hour well spent for children, older relatives and anyone curious about the only hot spring on the island. The compromise is size: 1.1 hectares, rustic, with no car park on site, so it is a stop, not a day out.

The water is genuinely hot, about 70°C at the collection station, which is why regulars bring eggs. And the park has one of the stranger back stories of any patch of green in the country.

Bottled, bombed and petitioned for

The spring was found in 1908 on land owned by the merchant Seah Eng Keong, who had samples analysed in London and was soon bottling it as Zombun. Fraser & Neave took over in 1921 and sold it under names including Zom and Singa. During the Japanese Occupation it became thermal baths, until a 1944 bomb disrupted the flow. Kampong residents then used the pools for bathing, washing clothes and cooking eggs, and called it semangat ayer, spirit water.

In 1985 the government acquired the land to expand Sembawang Air Base and the bottling stopped. When the spring was closed in early 2002 for military works, people petitioned to keep it, and it reopened a few months later: plastic chairs, shared pails, metal standpipes and the original well caged in a red-brick hut. Plenty came for its reputed help with aches and rheumatism; doctors asked by the press found no evidence of a cure, which has never stopped anyone.

What the park is now

NParks reopened it as a proper park in January 2020, shaped by public consultation and kept deliberately rough: unpaved paths, naturalised streams, trellised seating. The centrepiece is a four-tier cascading pool, and the water cools as it falls, so you choose your level. There is a wheelchair-friendly tap at the collection point and an educational zone where children splash in warm water and learn where groundwater comes from. Nobody is quite sure where this particular water comes from, though geologists suspect faults to the southwest.

The egg question

The egg station is the main event. Bring your own eggs and a container, and soy sauce and pepper if you want to eat them there. Keep the eggs under the flowing water for at least ten minutes; leave them in a tub of cooling water and you take home raw eggs and a lesson.

When it reopens, go on a weekday morning, which avoids the foot bath's cleaning slot on Mondays and Thursdays if you go before 11am. It's a small park, so we would steer clear of evenings and weekends. Roll up your trousers, start the eggs, then walk the Floral Walk of fruit trees and edible plants and read the panels on the site's history while they cook.

Good to know NParks has the park closed for urgent maintenance until 30 October 2026; check its page before you go. Usual hours are 7am–7pm, with the foot bath closed for cleaning on Mondays and Thursdays, 11am–2pm. Bring your own buckets, eggs and containers. Nearest MRT is Canberra, then a short bus ride; there's no on-site car park (the nearest is at 114 Yishun Ring Road, about 450m away).

More green space with a story: our guide to nature beyond the usual.

Sembawang Hot Spring Park | Along Gambas Avenue | Nearest MRT: Canberra (then a short bus ride)