Singapore: Sentosa Island

We spent an incredible day in Singapore at Sentosa Island. It was one of our favorite days in Singapore.  This day was filled with seeing the Merlion, walking through the mall, going to the aquarium, sliding down the Luge, and viewing the Crane Show. It was so awesome! Sentosa has this incredible free metro rail that has four stops along Sentosa so you can easily enjoy all of the activities Sentosa has to offer.  We ended up getting off at all the stops to enjoy all the separate activities.

Waterfront Station:
This Station is where we originally started.  Our Grab driver dropped us off here at the Resorts World Sentosa.

Our first designation was the S.E.A. Aquarium. We didn't have any further plans because we didn't know what Sentosa had to offer.  We originally were just going to stay in the hotel room because we were all in a bit of a crabby mood.  We finally realized staying in a hotel room was making us worse, so we all got ready and decided to see the Aquarium.

When we walked out into Resort World, all crabbiness left and we were left with aww and smiles.  We could all tell immediately that this day just made a turn for awesomeness.  We were greeted by amazing sculptures, beautiful landscape and a huge water fountain.  We made a stop at one of the many restaurants for lunch, then made our way down to the S.E.A. Aquarium.  On our way to the aquarium we passed by Universal Studios.  There was a huge candy store right next to Universal Studios, so we stopped and had a sweet treat.

Big Sis is going to take over to tell you all about the S.E.A. Aquarium:
Hi there, this is Big Sis and I'm going to tell y'all all about our experience at the Singapore Aquarium. The aquarium was huge and had so many different animals to see.

It was a little walk to get in but we made it and the first tank was a walk through tunnel underneath the shark tank. There were at least five different species in the tank and the setup is incredible because some how they managed to get a huge shipwreck into the tank. After having fun seeing all the crazy teeth on these sharks, we went on to see more.

The next tank was a huge gallery of fish. There were hundreds of different kinds of fish in there. It was also super cool because they had giant tuna fish put in there along with four types of stingrays. We also walked past a tank with colorful fish and super beautiful and colorful coral.  It was so colorful, it looked like it was glowing.

After enjoying a long time at the huge tank, we moved onto the minor tanks.  It was such a wide variety from tiny little poisonous frogs to the largest species of deep sea crabs that were at least 5 feet long. It was so cool seeing all the river fish and sharks, the thousands of changing colored moon jellies, the hundreds of neon bioluminescent coral and fish, and the most disgusting ocean eels ever. They were so gross, ugly, and huge.

We also saw a tank were there were a fish called elephant fish. They had the nose of an elephant trunk, just really small sized, the body of a sharks fish, and the size of a large tuna. There was also a really hugely fish that had a body of a normal fish but its mouth was, no joke, a birds beak. It was the exact same shaped, size, and everything. It was the most hideous fish ever. After looking at the craziest fish in the world, we continued to go onwards and we soon found the dolphins. Little A totally freaked out every time see saw one and shouted "A DOLPIN! LOOK! RIGHT THERE!" Sadly, the dolphins didn't come that close to our glass because the best view of the dolphins was the viewing window you had to pay to go into. So after looking around for a while we moved onto the last tank which was a mini version of a coral reef with coral, fish, sharks, stingrays, the whole package. It was so beautiful to see the mysteries version of Gods very wonderful creations, including the most weirdest ones.

Imbiah Station:
After the Aquarium, we decided to walk around and explore Resort World more and walked around the cute paths until we found our way to Imbiah Station.

At Imbiah Station we found the famous Sentosa Sign.  There were so many people gathered around the sign.  Everyone was taking pictures with one or two of the letters.  We really wanted a picture with the entire sign.  It took a while, but at the most perfect moment, we all ran to a different letter, Kevin told everyone to back up and he quickly shot an awesome picture of us with the entire sign, and he successfully had just our family in it.  Don't let the picture fool you, there were a million people, we just got lucky!

After our picture perfect moment, we walked a few more steps and saw the Sentosa Merlion.  This is the only Merlion we were able to see in Singapore, because the one in downtown Singapore that squirts water from it's mouth, is currently under construction.  The entire thing is covered and surrounded by a gate, so even the hope of catching a glimpse is impossible.  It was about this time that the sky opened up to a raging war between the lightning and the thunder.  Huge dark clouds were being blown in and a big storm with them.  One super neat thing about Sentosa, is that the entire thing is pretty much covered.  We were able to walk around a little bit longer.  We tried to go to Beach Station to go on the Skyline Luge, but due to lightning, it was closed.  We were told that it will re-open once the storm passed over.

We had already paid for the Luge using Klook, so we decided to wait out the storm at the VivoCity mall at the Sentosa Station.  We got on the Metro Express and made our way to Sentosa Station.

Sentosa Station:
When we got to Sentosa Station, the rain was really coming down.  We were so grateful for all the coverings to protect us from the rain.  We walked into the mall and were amazed at the size of the mall.  It had every store we would ever want to shop at.  We were excited to find a Carl's Jr. in the mall, and enjoyed a delicious dinner. But seeing the Cold Stone was like a dream come true.  We definitely all got some ice cream there.

The mall had a cute outdoor playground in the middle of the mall.  It stopped raining while we were eating, so we let the kids play for a while.

With the weather blown over, we wanted to take our luck to the Luge and hope it was open.  The kids were only disappointed to leave the playground until we told them we were on our way to the luge.  We walked out and found a cute moving walkway that connected Sentosa Station to Imbiah Station, since we were OK on time, and the pathway was beautiful, we decided to take the moving walk-way.

Beach Station:
We got to the Beach Station and were excited to see that the Luge was open. M&M is going to tell you all about the Luge:

This is M&M here and I am going to tell you about the Luge. The Luge was a place where you could choose two trails to go down on carts. The carts were these little carts that were really close to the ground that had handles that controlled it. If you pulled the lever a little ways towards you, you would go forwards. If you pulled it all the way towards you, you would stop. If you didn't touch the lever at all, it would go all the way forward and make it on a brake so you could get in/out of the cart. Everyone had a ticket that had four dots on it. Two of the dots let you go on the skyline ride that took you to the trails where you could ride the carts down. The other two let you go on the trail with the carts and ride them down. When we were on the skyline ride, it had an amazing view! Were were almost able to see everything. We only saw the city only a little bit, but we saw a whole lot of Ocean.

The weather was really nice because it was getting close to night time. We were able to ride it up all the way and go into the carts. The instructors told us the rules and how we use the carts. After we were done, we set off. Mom really wanted to go on the Jungle Trail, so that was the first trial that we went on. It felt amazing having the wind sipping into your face after very hot day. The trail had twists and turns all around it. some turns were super sharp and it was fun turning down a hill going super fast!

We got down after about five minutes and released the Jungle trail was the shortest trail. We had two dots left, so we were only able to take one more skyline ride to take us up, and one dot to go down the last trial. We wanted to go on the longest trail, so we asked an instructor what the longest trail was and she said it was the Dragon Trail. So we hopped on the Skyline ride and got into the carts. Mom wanted to take pictures, so she speeded ahead while we waited. After about three minutes we started to go. Mom was waiting for us at the place where it showed us the way to the different trails. Mom took some pictures and we zoomed off towards the Dragon Trail.

The dragon trail was so long and twisty. It was amazing!!! We got down in about seven minutes from the start to the end. It was truly an amazing experience going down the amazing trails and seeing the view from the Skyline ride.

At the end of the day, we went back to the Imbiah Station for the Crain Dance Show.  It was a free and amazing pyrotechnics and water light show.  These huge mechanically birds moved and danced to music.  It was an amazing night and a great way to end an amazing day.

Singapore: Garden by the Bay

Before we came to Singapore we decided that if nothing else, we wanted to see The Gardens by the Bay.  We bought tickets before we came on Klook. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that the Red Dot Museum (where you are required to pick up your tickets) is so far from the metro station and the Gardens.  On a map, the museum looks just a few small blocks away, but in reality, they were the size of a Las Vegas block at about half a mile a block.

We enjoyed the first part of our walk to the museum as we were able to pass by the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.  That hotel is so crazy!  It's the most iconic and expensive hotel in Singapore, literally thousands of dollars a night, and was the main stage of the movie Crazy Rich Asians.  It has the largest rooftop infinity pool, an ice rink and high end shopping, which sure appeal to the middle class military family with 4 kids.  The place is off the hook cool though, and I really enjoyed seeing all the high end cars around this hotel. For reference, a Toyota Prius in Singapore is nearly $150,000 USD - so when you see a BMW or Mercedes, these are $300,000 cars. What?

We continued our walk and we had a perfect view of Singapore's skyline.  It was such a clear day, so we did enjoy the first part of the walk.  After two blocks, and probably more than a mile, the kids started to melt, which teaming with the fact it was over 90 degrees and humidity about that high, it was a recipe for an impeding meltdown.  We realized that the further we went, it was all the more we had to walk back to the Gardens.  So, Corianne and Heather decided to go on ahead and leave all the kids with me and Dustin in the shade, on a sidewalk, in the middle of Singapore for bribe time with candy and snacks to mitigate the melting of the children.  Cori and Heather hurried to get the tickets while the kids sat on the sidewalk with the dads. So if you plan on riding the subway over like we did, realize the ticket booth is miles away from the subway, and take a GRAB (Singapore version of Uber).

Tickets were finally acquired and we made the long walk back to the Gardens. We had to cross a bridge that gave us more amazing views of Singapore. Since it was such a beautiful walk, the kids started running and laughing again.

We enjoyed the stroll through the different gardens as we made our way to the Cloud Forest. We went through the Indian Garden, the Chinese Garden and the Malay Garden.

When we arrived at the Cloud Forest, we realized all the kids were so hungry.  There weren't many options for food that was reasonable, so we stopped at a cafe that had hotdogs and fruit.  With tummies full and happy kids once again, we went inside the cloud forest.

The cloud forest is one of the indoor attractions here at the park. It has this large 50 foot indoor waterfall that is just teaming with active plant life. When we entered we were met by the Rusts family, so we had the chance to hang out with our favorite peeps when we toured. The waterfall originated 5 stories above, and the best part was that it had a huge skywalk around it so you can get the whole view. As Singapore was super hot, this was also one of those inside attractions that was so awesome because it was super cool inside. Plus this is the time in Little Monsters life where his faces in pictures is so fun! Cheese it up son!

Not only were the flowers beautiful, but for the first time ever we got to see weird and rare plants but not like we were used too: these ones were made out of legos! 

The flowers were so beautiful, and due to the consistent climate control and hydration the flowers were amazingly exotic and beautiful, with colors that we had never seen before to include my cactus headdress that I didn't know I was wearing but skillfully positioned perfectly on my head by Heather. Nice one love! Every King needs a crown!

After allowing the heat of the afternoon to pass, we stayed for the last event of the night, the Skydome Light Show. I give Asia some props for being so good when it comes to LED light shows, but Singapore at night was stunning. The overview, as seen here, was breathtaking, and these large light covered trees danced to the music with stunning lights that made me visit Christmas all over. 

Due to running out of time this night, we came back the next day to see the Flower Dome! For those considering traveling here a bit of advice on this: when you buy entrance to these domes, you are buying entrance for the day only regardless on whether or not you actually went. We weren't told this, so even though we didn't have time to go to this dome that we paid for, I argued my way into them honoring the fact I paid for it, but didn't have the chance to execute the visit. It literally was 5 person pass off until finally a manager conceded very high irritation, but I didn't care. Give me that flower dome sister! SO IF YOU GO HERE, only pay for what you think you will be doing that day only!

It was super neat to see all the incredible root creations such as mushrooms, dragons and beautiful asian architecture. Borrowing a lot of design from Chinese influences, they really captured the "awe effect" with the spectacularly maintained grounds. Little Monster, Buddy Buddy, loved the dragons!

The Flower Dome smelled so delicious.  All the flowers and plant life made the air smell so fresh.  We loved the Japanese architecture, the deep red against the greenery was gorgeous.

We loved walking through them and seeing all the different flowers.

The girls just loved all the exotic and huge flowers everywhere; definitely not what we are used too here in Korea during this time of the year. 

As you could see from the night pictures, we were finally able during the daylight to do the OCBC Skywalk. The night before at the light show, the Skywalk was too packed, and when the light show was done they close it, so we lost out. But we totally redeemed ourselves and were able to go today. You start up an elevator at one tree and walk from tree to tree enjoying the birds eye view of the park, which was spectacular to behold.

It was from here that you can appreciate the cornucopia look of each of the domes we have highlight before. The best part, next to the view, was that being this up allowed a cool breeze to cool you off, which was sorely needed in such a warm and humid temperature!

-Kevin