Problem
How do you get to the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital?
Answer
During the week and Saturday mornings there's a free shuttle bus from Yishun MRT station (on the red line) every fifteen minutes. On Saturday the shuttle bus is mornings only. We must have caught one of the last buses before 1 pm. Presumably, I thought, we will be told when we get there or the main entrance will be the last and only stop.
We had no trouble getting ready to alight. As the bus went along the main road we could see the name of the hospital and a grand building, white effect with lots of green.
We got lost on arrival because we were not going there for physical health problems but to a speech contest in the training area. Two hospitals are adjacent. We asked for tower E and got sent to the next building. Clearly no room twith the name we needed.
Is it unusual to have two adjacent hospitals? Back in London, England, the well-known Northwick Park hospital, has a secret twin, St Mark's, the isolation hospital. I discovered this when a family member had cacer treatment. Visitors are limited to prevent the introduction of infection to patients with reduced immune systems.
I thought about this hospital pairing as I ran from the Yishun hospital to the Khoo Teck Puat hospital.
Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
Plants
What strikes you on arrival is the number of plants, some in huge pots; others up the sides of the walls, others in a quadrangle in the open top middle like the quadrangles in ancient times. Seats all around allow you to rest while waiting.
On the ground floor see a large bust of the founder, Khoo Teck Puat. His family's fund financed this development.
Another bust of the man is in Goodwood Park hotel. I took pictures of it years ago when I visited Goodwood Park hotel for their Durian lunch with a Chinese friend. But my laptop only has space for the most recent third of my photos, so I raced to handy Wikipedia, a great source of royalty free photos.
If you return from the hosptial Saturday late afternoon when there's no shuttle bus, you have to cross the road outside for the stop for the bus, just a few stops on a normal bus back to the MRT station Yishun. On the journey towards the city cetnre I commeneded to two friends, one French, that few hospitals in the UK have so much greenery, most are plain barracks type buildlings. My French friend agreed that France also had older, ordinary buildings.
Greenery, restful greenery, is becoming more and more common in Singapore. It is also seen increasingly in new or refubished buildings in London, England, and other parts of the world.
Back in the centre of Singapore, passing the Goodwood Park hotel, I now have a new interest in the man whose legacy has helped transform health and architecture in modern Singapore.
Useful websites
www.goodwoodparkhotel.com
visitsingapore.com
google maps
Author Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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