Singapore: Sentosa Island

On July 8th we decided to spend the day on the Singaporean island of Sentosa. It is an island off the coast of Singapore that is known for it’s beaches, resorts and attractions. It also is the location of Universal Studios Singapore. It is a small island, only 3km by 1km in size and is packed full of tourists related venues. It reminded me a bit of the Toronto Island mixed with Canada’s Wonderland.

We took the cable car over to the island:

From the cable car we could see there was a lot of construction going on to build a new area of the park (this was not uncommon in Singapore as we saw construction everywhere throughout the city as they build new, cool, architecturally awesome buildings):

Once on the island we decided to check out Underwater World Singapore, an aquarium which is the home of a number of pink dolphins in addition to sharks, sting rays, turtles and many many different varieties of fish!

We then watched a dolphin and fur seals show where we saw the animals jump and do different tricks.

The fur seals were adorable!

The dolphins were also amazing, they are such graceful animals!

During the show they asked for a volunteer from the audience, so naturally I put my hand up! I entered into a hula-hoop contest with a dolphin. In the photo below you can see the dolphin behind me twirling the hoops around his nose.

After my hula-hoop debut I went into the dolphin tank to meet my opponent (and evidently… the winner of our hula-hooping contest):

We had a great time at the Underwater World, and on our way out we ran into some monkeys:

We spent the rest of the day on the beach:

The beach was different than the other beaches we have seen so far on the trip. Kuta beach was packed with people and the sand was semi-fine, with some very small rocks, while Lovina beach had very dark sand which was much coarser, but this beach had super fine sand, almost like powder. But there was a lot more pollution around this beach, and we could see water bottles and other pieces of garbage floating in the water. It was really sad.

We really enjoyed our time on Sentosa Island, and in Singapore. I would have really liked a few more days in Singapore to explore more areas and to go inside some museums, but unfortunately there isn`t time for everything!

One thing I would not miss about Singapore are the highly elevated prices! The prices in Singapore are almost equivalent to prices back in Canada, which was a major major shock for me! The past 6 weeks I had been used to spending $3 – $5 (CAN) on a full meal everywhere else in Southeast Asia, but in Singapore meals can be $10 - $15 (CAN)! I was excited to be going back to Thailand (and my cheap $3 dinners), and exploring the Thai islands! We had a flight leaving Singapore going to the island of Koh Samui for the following morning!