I woke up just before the alarm at 9 and my plan was to check out the electronics store from yesterday if they had a charger for my watch, before Jonas got up. But the comfy bed and a game on my phone kept me a bit too long. I managed to get to the store (the proposed charger didn’t work) while Jonas took a shower and almost made it back.
We went to a nearby café for some breakfast and then off via cab to Mount Faber Station, to take the Singapore Cable Car to Sentosa Island. The driver was really talkative and we spoke a lot about the development of Singapore, the goal to have three trees per inhabitant, recycling all water, creating reservoirs, and so on. He suggested we should visit the URA Gallery (Urban Redevelopment Authority) so we wrote it down.
It was S$7 cheaper to buy tickets to the cable car online so we did that and then joined the queue and eventually got on together with a mother and her daughter and a man who was on Facetime the whole trip. I don’t really like heights and it took a couple of minutes to get comfortable. When we reached the peak and suddenly went rather steeply downwards, I felt it in my stomach. The kid beside me however was so cool so I had to keep it together 🙂
There are three stations on this line and we just passed by the middle one and reached Sentosa station, on the island. We walked around for a bit and stumbled upon the end of the line for the other cable car line, the one that runs on the island itself. We jumped on (no line here!) and went to the northwestern part of Sentosa Island, Silosa Point Station.
We entered a beautiful beach and I regretted not doing research so I didn’t have my swim shorts with me. At the beach there was (of course) a restaurant, an Italian one so we sat down for some lunch. The pizza was quite nice but I prefer the crust to be thicker. We also ordered a “jug” (would guess about 1,5 liters) of a mocktail. Not that often I order drinks in that size 🙂
We walked back to the cable car and returned to the Sentosa Station and then back to the mainland. However, while riding it across the water, we saw dark clouds on the horizon and the closer we got, the more lightning strikes appeared. We decided to step off the station halfway, felt safer that way.
We took another cab to the URA Gallery as mentioned earlier and it was much more interesting than I expected. Since they have a limited amount of land, surrounded by sea as they are, they have to think a lot about what they should use it for.
Also being a city as well as a country creates a lot of different demands that normal big cities don’t have to think about. The exhibition contained lots of interactive screens and projections, movies, and models that kept my interest at a high level throughout the visit.
We walked back to the hotel via the park Fort Canning Park. At the top we were met by a quite large fence and signs clearly station we shouldn’t try to get any further. We asked an employee and she said it was an underground water reservoir. I can see why that is heavily protected.
We found our way back to the hotel and decided we both needed to do some laundry. We asked in the reception of our hotel what was the easiest way and they said we could use the laundry machines in the hotel across the street cause they had a cooperation. However, you needed S$ 1 coins for the machine, and even though the reception had coins, we couldn’t buy them without cash. So Jonas had to find an ATM to withdraw S$30 and then exchange it for S$ 1 coins. I’ve been quite happy with the hotel so far, but this could have been resolved much easier, by putting it on our room tab or just allowing us to buy the coins by credit card at their terminal.
Anyhow, we got our coins and headed to Hotel V and their third floor. The laundry machines were in the same space as their pool, meaning outside. So we put our stuff in, started the machines, and then borrowed a couple of sunchairs to wait. Washing took 35 minutes and the dryer another 45. We spent the time watching some lectures and writing this blog post.
After returning with the dry laundry we set off to find Raffles Hotel and Long Bar. For some reason, these are quite famous and my father wanted a picture of the hotel. And apparently, you should have a Singapore Sling at Long Bar if you are visiting the country. After walking a lap around the block we found the hotel entrance and took this picture:
Now to find the bar. We asked inside the hotel and got directions out and around it, just to find that the entrance was in the corner we almost passed by when coming from our own hotel. One floor up, we found the legendary bar:
There was however a queue and it seemed to be one out, one in. Didn’t take long though, maybe 15-20 minutes before we got a table. It’s not a common thing for me to wait in line to get into a bar… Jonas ordered the normal Singapore Sling and I got the Teetotalers Sling, basically the non-alcoholic version.
It was a nice atmosphere and not too loud. Nutshells were all over the floor since nuts were offered free on the tables but with no place to put the shells. We sat for an hour just talking about stuff, it’s interesting to see how we still manage to keep conversations going after spending quite much time together since the 22:nd of July (even if we didn’t see each other at the Jamboree site).
Time passed by and at 22 we realized that we still needed to eat something for dinner. We ended up at the same place as two nights ago, Brozeit. We asked if there still was time to order some food and if we made a decision in like five minutes, it was possible. We quickly decided on currywurst and some drinks. We stayed until they closed at half past eleven and slowly walked back to the hotel. Tomorrow is the last full day in Singapore.
