After viewing Sentosa Island from afar yesterday, today was the day to give it a good going over. Wade and Athene were my guides as they had the day off again! After arriving at Harbour Front MRT station we boarded the monorail and headed over the water to the beach monorail station. I think I've wrote before about the heat and humidity, if not, it's BAD by the way. Today it was ratcheted up a notch by our proximity to the oceania and lack of accessible breeze.
Our first order of business was for Wade and I to take the chairlift to the top of the island to Imbiah, so we could get on the luges and zoom back down to the bottom. We did it a second time as well, with Wade ahead for most of the track. I tried a sneaky pass late in the piece, but came unstuck behind a whole family while Wade slowly glided past to the finish.
The initial chairlift up had a pretty good view of all the shipping on the ocean, the trees we went over, the many helmets and shoes in the nets over roads and glimpses of the imported sand beaches.
We rejoined up with Athene who wasn't keen on the chairlift and had lunch.
After lunch we went along the beachfronts, though keeping to the road to avoid getting sands all over us and eventually came to the Underwater world complex.
Wade and Athene had already visited Underwater world before, so we just had a look around the other buildings near it. I saw a sign for snakes, and ended up with two snakes draped over me, with a funny hat on as well. A good ten dollars well spent on a touristy thing. The snakes were not at all oily, and the scales actually protrude a bit when ever the snakes bends away.
We got onto the bus back up to Imbiah, where the bulk of the current tourist attractions and shops are currently located. After enjoying the breeze from a cafe perched on a ledge of the hill, we made way to the touristy rides. The first 'ride' we did had has playing wild west gunslingers, riding mechanical horses and using laser six shooters to take out the on screen bad guys. It was fun and I managed to get the top score, just pipping out Wade at second and Athene scored third out of about 20 people there. One poor girl got 0, and her face was shown on screen with a donkey's cartoon face faded in over hers.
The other ride we went on was the CineBlast, (3D glasses required) where you take the point of view of a log as it makes it's way down to the processing plant. It was very standard, with fantastical, but average quality computer graphics onscreen, and we were all sitting in moving cars that added the sensation of movement. Defiantly a case if you've seen one, you've seen them all. The line up was terrible as well, and I'd really recommend giving this one a miss.
Our next destination was the large Merlion that dominates one side of the island. I went into this one by myself as I was mostly just chasing photos from the viewing platform from the top of its head. Inside, there is a quick cartoon film talking about the role the lion plays in the establishment of Singapore, and the more modern role the Merlion plays in the image of Singapore.
According to the movie, a son of Alexander the Great saw first saw what would become Singapore. As he set sail for the island, a great storm rose and threatened him and his men. He threw his golden crown into the sea as an offering to the mer-people and the storm's fury abated. Upon landing on the beach they were challenged by a great lion and after coming to an understanding with the beast, he founded the city of Singapore.
The Merlion was created mid last century to pay homage to both the lion and the mer-people. The first story may or may not be true in general, but the Merlion is an utter fabricated that has managed to obtain myth status. I'm guessing the tourist board at the time had a hand in it.
The statue itself is quite striking from the outside, and inside it has an elevator up to its mouth level, with stairs to the very top. It's just a standard steel construction with concrete coating, but it must light up at night, as all I could see from inside all the lights hooked up to the skin through hole in it.
The view from the top was pretty commanding, you could pretty much see the entire island, the ocean, shipping terminals and far off industrial islands. The view distance as always is shrouded by either fog, rain or smog, I can't be one hundred percent sure, but I'd lean for smog on this day.
Short for time, as we had a booking to see 'Sherlock Holmes' at the movies at 4pm, we quickly made our way off the island. The cinema was really good, though the half hour of adds before the movie got a bit tiring.
'Sherlock Holmes' was excellent, a really good movie. The one off putting thing that took time for me to get over, was that the entire moving was subtitled in Mandarin, and it was about half a hour in before I could train myself to not try and read the writing as the movie went along.
I'd like to visit Sentosa Island again now that I've got my bearings for the place. There's an old fort to tour, as well as more beaches and other tourist shows / attractions to see as well. There seems to be good options for night time activities as well, with a beachfront show, as well as general nightlife.
No comments:
Post a Comment