Sentosa

I've now been swimming in the pacific - well, the Singapore straits anyway. Close enough.

Today I decided to see what the beach was like in Singapore. There's an island called Sentosa just off the coast of Singapore (literally just off the coast, you get to it by bridge) which has been turned into one big huge holiday resort. According to the guidebook, it's one of the things in Singapore you have to see. SO, I went to see it. Took the MRT to some big-ass shopping center at the end of the line, then took the monorail across to the island. The beach itself is all artificial, and you can easily tell. It's like a shelf of sand that goes out into the water, and you can tell by the feel of it under your bare feet that the sand is artificial as well. The beach itself is pretty steep once it gets in the water - like nearly 45 degrees! You walk out on step, you're at your ankles. Next step, your knees, next, your waist nearly, and after about 6 or 7 steps out you're pretty much nearly over your depth. Not sure do I like that! Th water itself is lukewarm - it makes some difference not having to steel yourself against the shock of the cold water hitting your toes, and you can still feel them even when the water is up to your waist!

The strangest thing about going swimming there tho is the view. Once you don't look out to sea it's ok, you have the beach, the palm trees, the sea, the people playing frisbee or volleyball (my first time seeing chinese chicks in bikinis - nice!), the beach bars etc. Then you lift our gaze to the horizon - and all you have is huge container ships as far as the eye can see! Last time I saw anything even remotely like it was off the coast in Hong Kong, but this was way more crowded!



Apart form the swimming, my guide book warned me that Sentosa was tacky, loud, tourist-trappy - "". Maybe it was because it was a weekday, after a few days of rain, coming up to the end of the off-season, but there wasn't much going on there. I didn't get hassled with guys trying to sell me stuff at all! I decided to see what the view was like from the top of the island, so I took a chair lift up to it. Was a sort of strange feeling, getting on a chair lift without skis on my feet, both getting off and getting on (getting off is harder actually, you can't just push off and let the skis do the work)! The view wasn't that much better than from down on the beach, so I decided to go a bit further and take the cable car to Mt Faber, apparently the highest point in Singapore. Waste of time, you can't see much from there at all, isn't like the view from the Peak in HK at all! Coming back it was getting dark, and the big Merlion statue on the island was lit up in purple light with lasers coming out of its eyes. Now that was tacky!

At least getting down from the cable car stop to the base was more fun. They have a thing called "the luge", which is basically about a 650m long go-kart track down the side of the hill. It was late in the evening at that stage, so I nearly had it to myself. So, "brakes? What brakes? Let's see how hard I can hit this chicane!" :-)

All in all, Sentosa: nice, but you're not going to go to Singapore just on the strength of seeing it.