OUR LAST DAY IN SINGAPORE

Today was our last day in Singapore & we had a tour to Sentosa Island booked. Sentosa is basically an island full of theme parks. It’s connected to the mainland by a causeway & is about a 10 minute drive from Singapore. We got picked up from our hotel by a guide who spoke English & Mandarin; a very unusual little man. We went by bus to the one mountain that’s left in Singapore & jumped on a cable car which took us over to Sentosa. The scenery is really spectacular looking out to the ocean, across to the harbour & port & then across to the island. What a way to get over there!

We were taken to the Asian Historical Centre, the butterfly & reptile house, Songs of the Sea dolphin & seal show (pink dolphins) & Underwater World all of which were quite interesting but it was so rushed & we missed out on everything else on Sentosa. It looks such a beautiful place. If we did come to Singapore again we'd book a night or two on Sentosa.

We’ve never been ones to do tours but we didn’t know how hard it would be to get around Singapore & we didn’t have a lot of time so we booked a few. The only one we needed to book was the one to Malacca; the zoo & Sentosa we could have easily done on our own.



As it was, we stayed at the zoo & made our own way home but we couldn’t do that with Sentosa as we had to get back to our hotel & check out. If we’d known we’d miss out on so much we would have booked out before we left. The guide was in such a hurry that every time we went somewhere he’d tell us what time we had to meet like 11.50 then he’d point at his watch & say “you know 1,1, 5,0, you understand?” Everything was “you understand?” & rush, rush, rush, he was a royal pain. It was such a pity. Sentosa also has Universal Studios, Resort World, water slides, pools, a Typhoon Theatre, beaches with heaps of activities, a wave house, golf course, shops, gorgeous hotels, restaurants & we missed them all.

Raffles Hotel
 



We got the bus back to our hotel & had one last swim in the hotel pool to cool off. (we’d swum a few times & even used the gym; aren’t we good people?) Of course it was usually followed up with a drink at the pool bar! We booked out, feeling very relieved that our bill was as it should be after the initial problems. We’d half expected it to still have the extra $1000 plus all of our breakfasts on it. We went for a walk & finally found a coffee shop where they knew what a flat white is! We've had horrible coffee all week! (next time we'd bring come Nescafe too!) By now we’d worked out which direction to go to get almost anywhere we wanted so  we headed for the river.

We had a lovely walk along the riverbank & then crossed over one of the numerous bridges to the harbour & sat & had a last relaxing drink at a bar overlooking the water. 

We walked back to our hotel, savouring our last impressions & were then picked up & driven to the airport. The driver was very talkative & we learnt a lot on the way. It was him who explained how they’d bulldozed all of the hills into the ocean to reclaim all the extra land they now have. There are CCTV cameras all along the expressways & he told us they’re there to catch the truck, bus & taxi drivers who stop to have a pee on the side of the road. He was funny; he said “Singapore is a ‘fine’ city”! “It’s just fine” he’d say, “if you jaywalk you get fined, if you chew gum you get fined, if you piss in the street you get fined, if you drop a cigarette butt you get fined, it’s a fine city!”

Looking back it would have been good to take a few more days then we could have gone up to  Kuala Lumpur & done a bit more of Malaysia including the elephant sanctuary in Pahang. We could have had a bit more time in Singapore too, but it was an awesome trip & a welcome interruption to our ‘top end’ trip. We were very lucky to be able to do what we did & we both had a ball. We think it’s a FINE place!