Day 4 began with a pathetic attempt to find breakfast at Bugis Junction, a place that catered more to the night life. Well, it was on our way to the MRT station anyway.
Oh yeah we also saw the front of Raffles Hotel. Moving on…
It took us no time to arrive at VivoCity (another big mall) and to buy the light rail tickets to enter Sentosa. But first thing first, we got some kaya (semi-raw eggs with coconut spread) toast and otah (fish paste) toast to fill the tummies.
Food not pictured.
Sentosa was a resort and theme park combo island. There was even an Universal Studios on it, along with a Hard Rock Cafe. We took Sentosa Express over the strait, kind of resembling the Disney World experience.
It’s important to read the map and figure out which attractions (99% of them) to skip.
The coolest thing about Sentosa was the (self-declared and disputable) “south-most point of Continental Asia”. It was a tiny little island connected to Sentosa by a suspension bridge. From there, Sentosa connected to Singapore by a bridge, which connected to the Malaysian Peninsula by two bridges. It was weird to think that three islands removed from actually connected land mass could still be regarded as part of the continent, but I guess what mattered was that you could in theory walk here from Siberia without ever needing a boat or a plane.
You could balance on that palm tree to get further south, technically.
People love talking about burning bridges and, if that were to happen, the island would no longer be part of “Continental Asia”.
We stared over the row of ships in South China Sea and most likely saw the Equator. It certainly felt like it, though. So, after snapping a couple of pictures, we declared ourselves done with Sentosa. Got an expensive ice pop to share in front of the giant Merlion structure, and we jumped on the train heading back to VivoCity.
The largest Merlion structure in Singapore.
So cute. It’s kind of like “lion head” (meat ball) stuck to shrimp cocktail.
Damn it’s hot! You bought this whole thing for me, right? Right???
Lunch took place in the retro-themed food court: nasi lemak, barley water, and ice kachang. I was hoping to eat this Singaporean shaved ice, although I still could not get used to having corn in my dessert.
If you haven’t noticed yet, any mention of lunch always immediately precedes dinner. Well for dinner we ate at the mall-next-door, Bugis Plus. It was noteworthy but not particularly Singaporean: Ireland’s Potato (a Taiwanese French fries chain), and Japanese ramen. The group of ramen restaurants apparently were on this TV show that had to do with Eric Tsang. I picked the one named Buta God just because the name was so awesome.
I know nothing about the Japanese dude but trust Eric when it comes to food
After dinner, we went to the Vegas-styled Marina Bay Sands hotel. This hotel not only had a badass architecture that complemented Singapore’s skyline, it also had the world’s largest and highest infinity pool, with an incredible view of that skyline. The pool was for hotel guests only, so we walked through the long lobby that turned out to be quite underwhelming. Then we proceeded to Gardens by the Bay, situated on the other side of the hotel.
Marina Bay Sands, one of the most famous things about Singapore. LEGO made a limited-edition model of this, and it reportedly sold out really quickly.
Gardens by the Bay was a large botanical garden with some ultra-modern architecture. Hard to categorize it under “nature”, especially because all we saw was a light show orchestrated with the man-made “super trees”. The evening breeze by the ocean was amazing, though. Totally loved it.
Not sure how I felt about this. Really weird but cool? Space station?
The awesome Double Helix Bridge. I was too lazy to get to higher grounds for a better picture.