It has been a while since my last visit
to Singapore. I've been to this nice country twice and both of which were
on a business occasion for our case studies of existing buildings for our
projects. Singapore building construction are typically built with high
standards compared to Malaysia. Not that the latter is bad but the organisation
of logistic for construction at site and quality assurance in Singapore
are done impeccably.
Enough said about building construction,
let's get back to my trip to Singapore. Well, my trip to Singapore for
the 3rd time is to enjoy my vacation and not work. I was there on 15 till
18 September 2013 which is just a nice amount of time to cover some grounds
there. My wife and myself stayed in The Inn at Temple Street which was
a rather nice hotel in the middle of Chinatown. Once we had our stuff check
in at the hotel, we wasted no time and proceeded to Little India via the
MRT. It's not really much to see there but our intention is to grab our
lunch and surprisingly the food was pretty good maybe our stomachs are
way too hungry but nevertheless it was nice. We had briyani rice with chicken,
fried noodles, murtabak and we were pretty much up to our neck fully top
up! I must say that the fried noodles was one of the best that we have
tasted for a long time and not to mention the murtabak was quite good too.
The fried noodles was dried and the indian spice really bring a level up
in tasty goodness N finger lickin',...ahem I hope I'm not carried away
but it's that good.
After having our lunch we headed to
Mint Museum of Toys which was not far from Bras Basah MRT station. I've
heard about this museum and since we have a bit of time, I guess we should
head on to our small excursion to see some of the most expensive antique
toys collection in the world. It is all situated in this small multi level
building where you'll be walking down from the topmost floor (5th Floor
if I recall it correctly) after taking a lift all the way up. They have
a nice cafe on the outside facing the main road but we skipped it as it
was wet after raining. It was a narrow little museum with some old antique
toy worth USD15,000/item and above. You can really see some really old
I mean ancient little toys all nicely displayed in a custom glass shelves
ranging from Star Wars, Astroboy, Popeye, Teddy Bear, Thunderbirds, Batman, Buck Rogers
and the list go on. But don't expect to see Hot Toys or Sideshow Collectibles
as there won't be any here. My final verdict is if you really want to see
toys collection, my recommendation will be Penang Toy Musuem in Malaysia.
Our 1st day ended with a night walk at Bugis Junction with some desserts
and it has been a long day walk.
Our 2nd day outing can be put in 3 words
- "Extreme Nomad Walkathon" as the distance of walking which
we had was easily more than 8km. We headed to Harbourfront station and
boarded Sentosa Express to SEA Aquarium which was located at Resorts World
Sentosa Isle. Originally we planned to visit Underwater World but we changed
our minds at the night before to see the purportedly newer SEA Aquarium.
My summary is this - it's a live fish aquarium exhibit and quite a large
one that is but if you like performances by dolphins, walrus, etc, then,..Underwater
World should be a better choice I guess. That's only my assumption as I
have not been to Underwater World yet. SEA Aquarium also has 2 separate
video performances. One of which is the video introduction of the traders
coming to asia with some surprising sun lion head contraption on the huge
ship moving around above the screen. Then, we were ushered to view
yet another video performances but this time around with the sights, sound
and senses all at once. We did had a thrill with real water, wind and underseat
rumble sort of like 4D cinema. The video production is not top notch but
quite interesting and it was really fun. There's also a small exhibit about
the history of the traders in the olden days which was quite informative.
After visiting SEA Aquarium we headed
to Merlion Park upon disembarking from Esplanade station. I guess one will
not be consider as visitors of Singapore without visiting the part lion
head with part fish body landmark. We took a few shots there and over the
Sands and proceeded to Singapore Flyer. At this point, the sun is scorching
hot and walking onwards is rather tiring. We had to pit stop twice to catch
our breath and refresh with water. While we are having a short rest overlooking
back at the Merlion, we had a surpirse as it's spewing out water. What
a spectacular view and we missed it during our photo session. Nevertheless,
I manage to capture a few zoom in shots as we aren't going back to Merlion.
As we walk, we notice that everywhere is prepping up for the formula 1
street race with all the high concrete road barriers and high galvanised
bull dog fences. Every small little road patches were premix and coordinated.
It's kindda feel like you're in Monaco formula one race event. Once we
reached the Flyer, we had our late lunch there with some fried oyster and
chicken rice. We bought our tickets to the flyer and up up and away we
go. Prior to the flyer, there is a small exhibit on how the flyer was constructed
which was quite informative. The capsule for the flyer was quite
large and only 5 person was allow in our capsule including us which was
quite spacious. The full rotation took roughly 30 mins and the views are
breathtaking. As the day comes to an end, we return back to temple street
for dinner in a Chinese restaurant.
Our 3rd day was an interesting one,
we took the Sentosa Express at 9:30am and this time around we went to Universal
Studios. There is so much things to see and do there that we spent a whole
day in Universal Studios. The 1st ride we took was "Transformers -
The Ride". It was a 3D ride with lots of CGI 3D effects and the most
memorable one is actually when your car is plummeting down from a skyscrapper!
Although it's a 3D ride there is even Megatron saliva spewing out on our
faces literally! However, the fun turns into roller coaster nightmare when
we took "The Mummy " ride. At first, I really thought it's another
of those rides where you get to see some mummy or ghost but this is well
over 3 G-force ride man! No wonder we are not allowed to bring our bags
and cameras in. Imagine riding a small train cart in a real tunnel ( yes
it's a tunnel and not video show here) and there's no lights and the cart
make few sudden 3-G force turns and pretty much upset my stomach and senses.
After the ride I was totally KO and need to rest almost an hour to continue
our journey but my wife is in pretty good condition. The 3rd ride was a
treasure hunt ride and no twist and turn here. Phew! that was close. Our
fourth ride was the Shrek 4D movie which was fun but the intro before you
enter the show was a tad bit too lengthy. I strongly recommend that anyone
which have not watch this before should select the furthest seat away from
the screen to feel the 3D effect as we seated too close to the front and
the 3D has some ghosting and blurry. The highlights of the show is the
horse ride and the seat hydraulics are pretty nasty too...haha..!
There are still a few more places to
go which we missed out on this trip namely the Zoo/Night Safari, River
Cruise, Journey of Dreams, Rainforest Discovery, etc. Overall, it was a
very enjoyable trip for both of us and we really do recommend for those
who have not visited Singapore.
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