Mandy takes on Sentosa!

DUN dun dun dunnnnnn....

*Drum roll*

Last Wednesday, I entertained myself while Joy was at work by venturing outside of the Singapore mainland to an island on its south side called Sentosa Island. (There's a map here, which also shows Pulau Keppel, where Joy and I had our Girls' Nite last week.)

Sentosa is a naturally beautiful island.

Unfortunately, it's also nauseatingly touristy, which has its pros and cons.

I spent half a day there and had a lot of fun, but it was a bit boring and awkward to bum around there by myself, so I didn't stay the whole day.

Here's a good-looking guy!

(As Alia would say, "RAWRRRR!")

This is the merlion, which is the symbol for Singapore. There is a smaller statue of the merlion along the river, which spews water out of its mouth. This one is much larger and can be climbed up to the top, which is the main reason why I'd wanted to go to Sentosa.

The first step in climbing the statue involved watching a short animation of how the first explorers landed on Singapore ("Temasek"). Apparently, some sailors from Malaysia were stuck in a ferocious thunderstorm, and the leader threw a magnificently jeweled crown into the ocean to appease the sea monster. The sea monster was satisfied, and the storm ceasesd. Then, when they landed, the sailors were met by a ferocious lion. The leader again saved the day by offering peace to the lion, who agreed and walked away. Thus, the sailors decided to honor the sea monster and the land monster by creating a crossbreed of the two creatures as a symbol of appreciation.

Something like that.

Personally, if I had been one of those monsters and seen half of my body mixed with another monster's body, and I would've gone back and eaten the sailors.

Oh well.

You can read the details here, if you want to.

Hangin out with the sea monster

View from on top of the merlion

View of the city from the merlion's mouth

This was called the Merlion Park, which was just a walkway behind the merlion, filled with these weird-looking, mosaic creature, spewing water out of their mouths.

Cute!

I started to enter this because it looked like potential fun, and also because it was actually free.

It's better for people who like birds and trees.

And birds.

And trees.

I'm more interested in doing active things, rather than trying to identify dozens of leaves, trees and bird calls!

The Tiger Tower, from a distance

You can click here for more information about it.

The top part slowly swirled down to pick me up, and then it slowly swirled up for a 10-minute spin of the view.

Apparently, I saw Malaysia and the northernmost island of Indonesia. I didn't know where they were, though, so I didn't take any photos of them.

I took these other ones...

Over-industrialized, uber-touristy Sentosa island

Happy, maritime photos of life on the ocean

A close-up

As you can see, Singapore is a highly industrialized city nation. There's much beauty here, as well as zillions of skyscrapers and high-rise apartment buildings.

The country's also in the process of building what will soon be southeast Asia's first Universal Studios on Sentosa, which may or may not be the mess in the foreground of this photo.

The beauty of getting lost in Singapore is that it didn't really matter that I usually had no idea where I was going. I'd aim for going to a certain place initially, and I'd inadvertently hit up 3-4 cool places in the process of getting there, mainly because I took my time looking at cool things instead of at signs and/or my map. :-P

This Skyride was one of these accidental incidents of fun. I'd wanted to find the beach on the island for sunbathing/sun baking purposes, but I thought it was further than it looked on the map, so I wasn't making any plans to actually find it.

After eating my second ice cream cone (which dripped all over my legs faster than I could eat it, literally), I found this cool Skyride. I thought it was just a ride to see the treetop views of the island, so I got on it.

Silly me. It took me straight to the beach. Woot!

*YIKES!*

It's a long ways down, and I don't have a helmet!

I'm walking on treetops...again!

(Man, my feet are ugly...)

I'm climbing higher and higher...

....almost at the highest peak on the Skyride!...

...I'm almost there...

Yay! The beach!

(That's not me in the photo.)

Yay! I succeeded in taking another centered photo of myself! I got a nice, pink sunburn this day, which promptly faded away by the next day. :(

And then there was this guy at Sentosa, who had this HUGE, NASTY, SLIMY, yellow-white python that "doesn't bite". He was playing a flute and letting people play with it and letting it crawl all over them.......uck...........

*shudder*

My week in Singapore, after New Year's

The main reason I wanted to be here in Singapore for New Year's, besides wanting to hang out with Joy and loving Singapore, is so that I could ring in the year first in the world. :)
Joy and I headed downtown later in the evening, right before midnight, so we weren't able to get any fantastic views of the fireworks.
Here are the 2 that turned out for me:

It looks like the building's exploding, though, haha!

Pretty cool what my camera's flash does with fireworks...

We rested at home on New Year's Day, except when we went to the pool for a few hours, where I finally got my Asian sunburn. :)

It's a good thing we rested, b/c on Saturday morning, Joy and I went on a hike. She didn't tell me much about the hike beforehand, only that it would eventually involve a treetop hike. That was fun, but it was only a small part of a torturous expedition.

She and I walked 7-something km. (4.3 miles) on the moderate-intense hiking trail, which is where the treetop hike is located.

It was fun, I think, but you'll see absolutely NO photos of me b/c I looked so horrible. (I look bad enough on a Saturday morning, but looking at me after this hike was disgusting!)

Along our treetop walk, we saw some great views of the trees...

...a fantastic view of Crocodile Lake, from a distance...

...some monkeys...

...and a snake.

It's amazing how such a small snake can incite such passionate conversations among strangers. I was the one who discovered it crawling along the tree stand, b/c I was walking in front of this slow group of people. I screamed and ran to the other side of the tree stand to wait for Joy, who was still taking photos of the treetops. Meanwhile, the women in the group loved taking photos of the snake, who was "a nice, lovely shade of green", and the men were debating about whether or not it was poisonous, based on its head shape. (Does it really matter???)

Joy's posing on one of the treacherous sets of steps.

There were dozens of these sets of steps.

Don't be deceived; they weren't as easy to climb as they look! They were hard to climb b/c it was so humid and sticky outside.

Just a random branch that I thought looked cool...but it looked much more interesting in person than in this photo. :-P

Some signs we read along our trek...

Haha! Singapore's so polite about issues on the signs here.

Yikes!

We had a Girls' Nite a few nights ago. We took the train to the southern part of Singapore, and then we walked across this bridge to one of a few random islands that lie across from Singapore.

Here, you can see my nice sun-kissed face. (Read: slightly sunburned)

We ate at a really nice coffee house/restaurant along the dock.

This was a pretty Christmas tree in the foyer in the mall along the dock.

My week in Singapore, prior to New Year's

Happy New Year!
I've been having a grand old time in Singapore for the last week and have either been too tired or gone too much to write on my blog yet.
Here are some photos of my adventures from last week...

This was an art museum that I was able to tour for free because they offer free tours during the Christmas season. Yay!
The building was incredibly cool. I don't remember when it was built, but I do remember that it used to be a Catholic boys' school, back in the day.
(Down the street from the museum is another building that used to be a Catholic orphanage, but it's now a "strip mall" for expensive restaurants and bars. I think that's a bit sacrilegious, personally...)



See? Isn't it cool?


I think it'd be an ideal place to play Hide-and-Seek, because I really did get lost in it a few times.


These statues were outside the art museum. They represent how laborers used to eat in a rush, but now that these kind of laborers are becoming fewer and fewer, this kind of eating is a lost art. (That's what the plaque said, anyways.)

I also went to a place called Fort Canning. My dad would appreciate this place! It's mostly a historical garden to walk through, but it has some historical buildings to tour, too.

This was an underground fort, used during WW II. I think. You can read more detailed information here.

This small building used to be the headquarters for the head military people, whatever they're called. Now, it features multiple news clippings from history and a ticket counter for tours of the underground museum. I didn't go on this tour because it didn't interest me that much. (Sorry, no photos, Dad!)

A sally port, which is why I think playing Hide-and-Seek in Ft. Canning would be loads of fun!

Sally port explanation here

I thought this photo was pretty funny- a cannon aimed right for the skyscrapers.

Some subtle hints that I'm in the Arabic part of the city. :-P

(And, yes, I restrained myself from buying belly dancing and Ali Baba gear...)

Here's the biggest mosque in Singapore- the Sultan Mosque, or Masjid Sultan, in Bahasa. Its last reconstruction was in 1928.

I chose to take a tour of this mosque because

a.) it was free,

b.) I've never been in a mosque before, and

c.) it was along my walking route as I wandered through the city on Thursday.

When I entered, I had to put on a dark green, button-down robe because I'm a woman, even though I wasn't wearing anything scandalous. (Women aren't allowed to enter if they're dressed immodestly, like anything short or low-cut, which is not appropriate to wear in public, anyways, in my opinion.)

I was greeted by a tour guide, who was very enthusiastic to talk to me about Islam and the great things about the mosque. The tour wasn't much of a tour at all; all we did was walk in the foyer, where I took one photo. He wanted to show me the grave in the mosque of some sultan that died a hundred years ago, but I didn't think that was necessary.
For a better view of the outside of the mosque, you can click on this link.

(Random note: The golden dome on the top of the mosque is supported by soy sauce bottles! Haha!)

Here's the view inside the mosque. The rectangles on the floor indicate where people should kneel to pray. It can accommodate about 5,000 worshippers at a time.

Getting ready to learn about the Malaysian culture! (In reality, it's 97% the same as Indonesian culture, though.)

I went to a small Malaysian heritage museum on New Year's Eve, while Joy worked in the morning. I would have done a cultural activity and taken photos of it, but the museum wasn't doing any activities on account of it being a holiday. So I just took a few photos of the museum's surroundings.

This is a traditional Malaysian building structure, which is practically the same as a traditional Indonesian building structure. (I know this because I have a beautiful book at home that explains how Indonesian architecture and home decor has evolved over the past few hundreds of years.)

A traditional Malaysian fishing boat

This was a cute little shop where I rested my feet and drank a Ukranian coffee. (Although, it was amazingly delicious, and I'm not totally sure it's an authentic, Ukranian drink...)

More photos will follow in the next few days, during my last week of Singaporean life... *sniff sniff*