We visited the Army Open House in the City when it opened their doors on 26th-27th May 2012. Baby G was very excited as he loves his army tanks & helicopters. He's always said he wants to be a soldier when he grows up.
The Open House was held at the F1 area, thus the name of "In the City".
The sky was quite overcast when we were about to leave, but we decided to risk the weather and go ahead with our plans.
At the main entrance, many different types of vehicles greeted us. The displays had the 'old version' and the 'new version' side by side and it give us a good comparison of what it was like then and what it is now. I believe Alex recognized many of the 'old versions' of vehicles that he used to see during his NS days.
Here are some of the vehicles on display.
Some of the vehicles that were on display also allowed you to get up close and personal. However, most of them had pretty long queues, so we only managed to get onto one of these.. a real army tank.... something that Baby G loves so much.
Even I had a chance to get on top of one of these huge machines.
And his all-time favourite is the helicopters. Too bad his Chinook was not around on display, but still, he was still quite happy with the Super Puma and the Apache.
They had a section just for kids too. There was even an obstacle course, but the queue was simply too long so we chose another course for Baby G. He quite like it actually, even though he fell quite a number of times.
After a short rest, we continued on. The next area on display were the support vehicles. They had a mobile kitchen, mobile toilet, mobile laundry... pretty amazing. Although majority of these support vehicles were used in missions in other countries to lend a helping hand to those who really need them.
The queue for the LARC-V was almost 1hr. I was not allowed in as I was wearing open-toed footwear which was not allowed. So only Alex & Baby G were allowed to board the LARC-V. The wait was really long, it really tested Baby G's patience. By the end of the line, he was practically complaining but in the end, when he finally boarded it, he enjoyed himself a lot.
It was a really enjoyable and enriching 5hrs at the Army Open House. I think I learnt quite a fair bit about the army too. I think next year, it is the Navy's turn, so we're definitely looking forward to that.
San
