Sentosa Island

I have been to Singapore 4 times now but had yet to visit Sentosa Island. It was raining hard last year on the day we planned to go so we never made it. This year, we were determined to go, rain or shine.

We took the subway to Harbour Front and then the cable car over to the island. The ticket office at the cable car station was selling tickets to all sorts of attractions on the island such as 4D World, Carlsberg Tower, The Merlion and Insect Park. We had no idea what any of these (delights?) were, but as there was a special deal on some of them, we ended up with tickets for Carlsberg Tower and The Merlion.

The cable car was great fun with views over the water, the skyscrapers of Singapore behind us and the thick forest of Sentosa Island ahead. “Sentosa” means “peace and tranquility” in Malay, but the place didn’t feel very peaceful to us at all. It’s a small island full of attractions. A good family day out. Rather than bitch about the misnomer, we embraced the tackiness of the Carlsberg Tower (wobbling, plastic flying saucer sliding uncertainly up a pole for views over the island). We did resist the souvenir photograph however. Apparently “Insect park” was very good. Not my sort of thing so I sat outside on a bench shaped like a centipede people-watching. It had started to drizzle and people shuffled around looking pretty miserable. A family with an Essex accent shuffled past me wearing flip-flops and skimpy beach outfits: “Dad, I fort we was getting the bus”. A bus belching out fumes pulled up. This is the island transport. The family from Essex joined the queue and got on it. What on Earth was this place?

We decided against getting on a bus packed with day trippers and instead walked in the light tropical rain to the other side of the island. It was a gorgeous walk through the forest and we wondered why we saw no one else walking. We came out at a scenic public beach dotted with palm trees, but today was not a beach day for us. We continued walking towards Fort Silosa.

Fort Silosa is a really interesting museum site set over quite an extensive area. I would go as far as to say that it was the best thing we saw in Singapore. It depicted the life of a British soldier in the barracks, war time in Singapore, the Japanese occupation and the surrender in 1945. The POW descriptions were particularly memorable. We spent over two hours there and only saw about 4 other visitors. Where was everyone? At the aquarium apparently.




We had enjoyed the aquarium so much in Monterey, California, that we paid our $20 dollars entrance fee each and joined the noisy queue. There were hundreds of school kids. Despite the crowds, it was a good aquarium. Here are some hightlights:

- dragon fish
- decorator crabs. These guys have bits of colorful coral stuck all over them.
- Sea angels – fish with propellers that look like wings.
- The dugong (sea cow)
- A tunnel where fish swam around us. Seeing an eagle ray awim over you is quite special.

And some low lights…..

- The ridiculous amount of people pushing and shoving
- The moron (adult) who came up to a crab tank we were looking at, banged the glass with his fist, saw that nothing reacted so walked off bored.
- The guy with the snake around his neck outside
- The kids crowded around the “touch tank” grabbing poor creatures

We walked back to the main part of the island on another lovely trail through the rain forest. We saw just 2 other people.

We still had our tickets for the Merlion and we knew it could be cheesy but went along anyway. We followed the signposted paths. The paths turned into escalators. Escalators in the rainforest? That’s a new one. We strayed from the path and walked down the steps through the orchid garden instead. Naturally, we saw no one else there.






The Merlion is the symbol of Singapore and there is a giant Merlion statue on Sentosa island. Our tickets entitled us to actually go inside the statue, up in the lift to the Merlion’s head which was quite a nice viewing platform. Of course, to get there, you walk through papier mache exhibitions about sea creatures.

Despite Sentosa being full of attractions and crowds, we managed to find lots of peaceful moments. I’m glad we finally went.