Cloud Forest - Avatar Like Modern Greenhouse in Singapore

Coming from the Helix Bridge and Merlion, we were headed to our next destination and that's the Gardens by the Bay! Actually, it was time for lunch, and since we skipped the Science and Art Museum, we headed right away to the garden.

At that time, we were already hungry so we stopped by Shake Shack as it's the nearest to the conservatories. We had burgers and nuggets, I will share our experience there in a separate blog. But after having lunch, we headed first to the Cloud Forest.

I was really looking forward to this spot because it's one of the places that has been recommended online, the waterfalls were what I was really anticipating. And it didn't take long for us to see it because the artificial waterfalls were just right at the entrance!

It was very challenging to take a photo here because all visitors wanted to take a photo of themselves and the area isn't that huge, if you go very near to the waterfalls, you'll get wet too! So, the best option was to set up a timelapse! This allowed us to just stay there at the base of the waterfalls and just stay still for a while. The photo above was just one of at least 100 pictures taken. I am glad that there was one clean shot.

Now let's talk about this place...

Cloud Forest for me after visiting is like the movie Avatar, it is filled with vegetation, and it felt like a separate world while in this shell-like structure. And it's very interesting how they developed this remarkable place. In fact, they were just developing it for the Avatar experience! It was in October 2022 when we visited it and the second sequel of Avatar was about to be premiered in December.

According to online sources, this is a botanical garden in a modern greenhouse. But aside from it being a greenhouse, they also made it into a tourist spot and tourists just flock here. It's fascinating to really believe that these area all real plants! Singapore is aiming to become a city within a garden. As per the local that we had spoken with, before, Singapore wants to be referred to as a garden within a city but today, they switched it to a city within a garden.

Anyway, after the long wait of taking a photo at the waterfalls, we headed to the foothills. We spotted some weird-looking art using some branches.

My parents walked before us because they were tired of walking from the Helix down to the gardens. We told them we will meet them at the foothills and then we will go together at the cloud walk.

We found the parents while we were at the foothills, they were sitting on the bench. There are many benches around here so visitors can rest. There were a lot of covered areas in the foothills in preparation for their avatar experience.

We then headed to the next adventure, there's a line at the entrance to the cloud walk. Wearing masks is not mandatory though but there's a limited number of people for the lift. I actually thought that we will be walking up one floor at a time but actually, it's from the top down to the ground. So we have to take the lift to the topmost part of the conservatory and then we will be walking down to the exit door. But, visitors are also given the freedom to use the lift to go to the next level and so on if they want to.

As we reached the top, I was fascinated with the view outside. It's airconditioned by the way so I was glad we were not affected by the hot and humid temperature outside. Here are some of the photos I took while we were going to the tree top.

Oh, I also tried to take a photo of the people down at the waterfall! This turned out very pretty with some water droplets bokeh here.

one of my favorite shots though was this one, I was walking towards this entrance arc filled with ferns and greeneries and I saw this woman taking a photo of the Marina Bay Sands and I did a quick snap to freeze this moment! I am glad I took it!

All around the conservatory, there are numerous flowers, those which I have not seen before! Their varieties were mentioned on information boards right next to the flower plants. There were too many to take photos so I just appreciated them as we walk further to the next level.

There is a separate conservatory dedicated to flowers and it's called Flower Dome so this one here is just a little glimpse of the next dome. Anyway, they were still fascinating and although I told myself not to take that many pictures, I couldn't help but take photos.

Now, the next set of photos are snaps of the structure of the Cloud Forest. We were glad we also witnessed the misting, it occurs I guess every two hours in the day. When the misting happened, it really felt like we were in the Avatar movie, it was amazing.

Misting is just how the plants are being watered in the cloud forest conservatory. So since this vegetation is planted all around the place and even up to the top of the building, it was not easy to water them and I guess the waterfall was built strategically as well to provide a temperature for the plants to survive but the misting is their main way of watering the plants.

As soon as the misting starts, the entire place looked magical and I guess the name Cloud Forest was derived because of how it looks at this point. It also felt refreshing to feel the mist too.

Are you afraid of heights? Well, this one might not be for you. Actually, we have to always look down each time because we can't get enough of how impressive they made these things possible. I think Singaporeans have a wild imagination and perhaps because this is just a fishing village and a coastal country, they made their own artificial forests and waterfalls instead.

There are 7,000 plants of more than 135 species and hybrids inside the Cloud Forest. Fascinating and definitely a must visit. You must not miss experiencing the misting too and if you are visiting anytime within this month, you should get a ticket with the Avatar experience too!

Entrance to the Cloud Forest Conservatory is priced from Php 800-Php 2000+ depending on the specific package you wanted to avail of. I highly recommend that you go visit this during the daytime, after lunch, or before lunch so as to avoid the hot weather outside, explore and learn, and take a lot of photos of course!

If the Avatar experience was available during our visit, I might have also chosen that package. Make sure to wear comfortable footwear too when visiting the conservatories because this requires a lot of walking. I actually saw one visitor who was walking awkwardly because her feet hurts after walking a lot!