Tampines Round Market and Eco Green

Tampines Round Market at 137 Tampines Street 11 is exactly what the name promises: a circular building that holds the cooked-food stalls and a wet market, so called because its floors are always being hosed down. The centre typically runs 6.30am to 3pm. Decide on the day before you decide on the dish, because the best stalls here each take their own days off.

Getting to Street 11

The easiest way in is Tampines West MRT on the Downtown Line. Take Exit B and walk nine to 12 minutes towards Tampines Street 11. You'll pass plenty of blocks with a kopitiam, a neighbourhood coffee shop, tucked into the void deck, the open ground floor of an HDB block, so keep going until you reach the round one. From Tampines MRT, where the East-West and Downtown lines meet, it's 10 to 15 minutes on foot or a short ride on bus 23, 31 or 292. If you come up facing Tampines Central and a cinema, you're on the town-hub side of the station.

Simei MRT on the East-West Line is about 10 to 12 minutes away on foot, which is handy if you're coming from Changi. Tampines East MRT comes up on Avenue 7, about 20 minutes' walk from the market. If you're taking a taxi, give the driver 137 Tampines Street 11 rather than Tampines Mall. Whichever way you come, carry water.

Breakfast in the round

We'd come for the kolo mee, the plate this corner of Tampines is known for. Yummy Sarawak Kolo Mee at #01-45 does the dry Sarawak noodles tossed in shallot oil, typically from 6am to 2pm, and it's closed on Fridays. There are spare ribs too, if you don't mind waiting a little longer for them. Xing Ji Wanton Mee at #01-35, for thin egg noodles with dumplings, typically runs 6am to 1.30pm from Thursday to Sunday, keeps shorter hours on Monday and closes on Tuesday and Wednesday. If either of those is the reason you came, get there before 8am.

Rajarani Thosai at #01-33 makes thosai, the thin South Indian pancake of fermented rice and lentils, typically from 7am to 1.30pm, and it's closed on Wednesdays. Song Han Carrot Cake at #01-07 fries carrot cake, which is radish cake with no carrot in sight, and there's curry powder in the white version. It typically opens from 6am to noon and closes on Mondays and Thursdays. For something slower, Yi Pin Wei at #01-40 does braised duck kway chap, wide rice noodles in a soy-dark broth with the duck served alongside, typically from 6.30am to 3pm.

Each stallholder sets their own hours, so read these times as typical rather than fixed, and expect many of the breakfast woks to be winding down by noon. The cooked-food side works like any hawker centre: queue at the stall, carry your plate to whichever table has space, and return the tray to the rack at the end.

Our Tampines Hub

Our Tampines Hub at 1 Tampines Walk is where to eat once the round market has closed up, or if you want dinner out this way. Its hawker centre is on Level 1 of a community club the size of a small town. It opened in 2016, has about 800 seats cooled by fans and typically runs from 6am to 10pm. From Tampines MRT, take Exit F and you're there in five to nine minutes.

Botak Cantonese Porridge at #01-65 typically runs from 7am to 9.30pm, so it covers breakfast and dinner alike. The centre used to stay open through the night, but that ended in 2019. Mommy Rendang at #01-61 has been listed as open 24 hours and closed on Thursdays, which sits oddly with the centre's own hours, so check with the stall before you plan a late meal round it.

The grassland at Eco Green

Tampines Eco Green is 36 hectares of grassland and marsh that the town kept between an expressway and a canal, at Tampines Avenue 9 and Tampines Avenue 12. It costs nothing and never closes, but the park has no lights, so NParks wants everyone out by 7pm. From Tampines MRT, take a bus or walk about 20 minutes through Sun Plaza Park. Tampines East MRT is closer to Eco Green than to the market, though you'll still have a neighbourhood walk and Avenue 9 to cover. The dirt paths inside aren't suitable for wheelchairs; the perimeter footpath is.

There are three bird hides and 75 bird species. Look for the Baya Weaver and its hanging nests, and for the Purple Heron, the tallest bird in the park at up to a metre. Nearer the ground, the Blue Pansy butterfly works the tiny flowers. Some dead trees have been left standing on purpose, and these snags are there for the woodpeckers. Please keep drones well away from the weaver nests.

The three trails can be walked separately. The Diversity Trail runs 1.2 kilometres to the pond platform, and the Marsh Trail follows vegetated swales for 0.8 kilometres. The Forest Trail makes up the rest, and all three together come to about 3 kilometres, or 1.5 to 2 hours. Pets aren't allowed and nor is fishing. The trails are for walking only, with no cycling or skating, and mass gatherings aren't permitted either. Go early, while the hides are empty and the sun is low.

Sun Plaza Park

Sun Plaza Park is 9 hectares of lawn along Tampines Avenue 7 and Tampines Avenue 9, open 24 hours. It's wheelchair accessible and welcoming to older visitors. Seen from above, its paths meet in the middle like the rays of a sun, which is where the name comes from. There's an amphitheatre and a dog run. There's also a woodball course, a kind of golf played with wooden mallets, and a therapeutic garden that opened in October 2023. When the trumpet trees flower, they drop a pink carpet that passes for cherry blossom.

Cycling and skating are allowed here, which makes Sun Plaza the better stop for a child who wants to ride, and a good place to let off steam after an hour of keeping quiet in a hide. Next door, Tampines Boulevard Park has a dog run of its own. It opened in 2025 and covers 10.06 hectares on both sides of Avenue 12.

A Tampines morning

Here's how we'd spend it. Check the day first, because the stall you came for may be resting: Yummy Sarawak closes on Fridays, Xing Ji on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and Song Han on Mondays and Thursdays. Be at the round market around 7am. Head to Eco Green by 9am while the hides are quiet, start on the Diversity Trail, and add the Marsh Trail if you've heard there's a heron about. If there's a child with energy left, finish in Sun Plaza Park.

If lunch comes round and the round market has wound down, head to the Hub, where the stalls keep going into the evening. Mondays work well too, since the kolo mee and the thosai are typically open.

Bedok Reservoir and the Pasir Ris mangrove are better saved for other mornings. There's a gravel loop round a flooded quarry in our Bedok Reservoir story and a boardwalk through the mangrove in the Pasir Ris Park walk. Out here in Tampines the parks are free, so breakfast is the whole bill.