According to reports by The Straits Times, Sembawang Hot Spring Park will be reopening on Jan. 4, 2020, at 10 times its previous size. Singapore’s only natural hot spring site was closed to be developed from August 2018, and is scheduled to be open as the Sembawang Hot Spring Park in January 2020.
The temporary taps have been disconnected since 14 December 2019, and the new taps will be available when the park reopens.
The new park will feature a cascading spring water pool where visitors can enjoy foot baths, an area with running hot spring water for cooking eggs (the water temperature is a constant 70°C), a floral walk, as well as sheltered walkways and a cafe.
History of Sembawang hot spring
According to a newspaper article in 1908, Sembawang hot spring was discovered in 1908 by a municipal ranger called W. A. B Goodall on the grounds owned by Chinese merchant Seah Eng Keong (b. 1873).
Seah soon set up the Singapore Natural Mineral Hot Springs Company once the water was proven safe in Europe, and sold it under the brand ‘Zombun’, which became popular in Singapore as table water. Fraser and Neave Limited (F&N) bought the company in 1921 and built a modern bottling plant in 1933.
The hot spring was named Seletar Hot Springs, which became a tourist spot – even during the Japanese Occupation (1942-1945), when the Japanese built bathhouses around the spring for their officers. However, the spring was damaged by a 1944 bombing raid.
F&N built a new bottling plant in 1967 and continued to bottle the water for a few more years after the government acquired the land for military use in 1985. The springs was pretty much forgotten until 2002 when a small concrete base with pipes was built and people started coming to seek the water’s healing properties.
