Singapore Expats

Hi everyone.

My family and I are moving to Singapore in August 2013. We are very nervous and excited. We have a 5 month old baby boy. Our first!

I have a ton of questions regarding baby safety in Singapore; namely traveling by car. We do not plan on buying a car as we've been reading that doing so is very expensive. How do you travel by taxi with an infant?

Looking forward to chatting with you all and hopefully joining some mommy groups!

Welcome aboard!

Mrsfrenchbread, have you arrived yet? I have a 4.5month old boy (also our first) and always looking for playdates. email me on [email protected] when you have settled.

Here's my experience when traveling various modes of transportation with my son. We moved here when he was 7.5 months old and he's now 18 months.

Taxicabs: We have a stroller with a car seat that clips in/out, so when getting in cabs, we just unclip the seat while he's still in and transfer him into the cab and put the seatbelt on over the designated area of the car seat. We then collapse the base of the stroller and put it in the trunk. Unlike Canada, USA and other western countries, Singapore has no child safety seat laws that I'm aware of....and if such laws exist, they're not nearly as strict as you'd find back home. Some people just hold their child in their lap. Another thing to note, for some reason many cabs have seat belts that are rolled up and buried behind the seats so you have to dig them out--especially the middle seatbelt--the one that I always used to secure the baby/toddler car seat.

Buses: Depending on the width of your stroller, it might or might not fit through the bus entrance. I've had to collapse the stroller base and hold it with one hand and lift the car seat containing my son with the other hand. Sometimes the bus driver will come out and help or another passenger will volunteer to help me with the stroller base. Every bus driver is different. Some will let me put the stroller back together while on the bus so when I exit through the back of the bus, it'll be easier. Others say the stroller base has to be stored in a particular area while my son can remain in his car seat. Others have told me I have to physically take him out of his car seat and hold him. That seems horribly unsafe and it's no fun trying to hold a squirming baby/toddler, especially on a long ride. If you have one of those wearable baby carriers, it might be better for a bus (although those carriers never worked for me -- too much shoulder/back pain). Also, buses don't always arrive on schedule and this is tough when you're waiting in the heat with a young child.

MRT (subway): This is the easiest and safest mode of transportation if traveling with a baby, in my opinion. The toughest thing is waiting for the elevators/lifts because that's time consuming and fighting to get onto trains during rush hour. And at a few stations, the elevators can be hard to locate. But your child can sit in their stroller while you wheel them onto and off of the trains. If you're going to live near a MRT station, you're in luck!

Anyway, we eventually got tired of relying on these modes of transportation so we went out and bought a used car. It's nice, especially when traveling with our son. But on the other hand, fuel/gasoline is pricey, parking places are often hard to find and then there's learning to drive on the other side of the road.

Hopefully this helped. Welcome to Singapore.

Following! I will also be moving to Singapore in the near future and I have a 10 month old.
Looking forward to meeting other expat moms.

Sadly, it's not against not to use car seats here. We only take a taxi when absolutely necessary.