April 12th, 2005
A few weeks ago we decided to check out Sentosa Island. It's one of Singapore's South Islands and is considered a resort island and a place for the whole family. There is a butterfly park, Underwater World, Dragon Walk, a beach, The Merlion, a 360 degree rotating skyview, gardens, food and entertainment.

We were able to get a free bus from the Harbor Front MRT Terminal over to the island, as the only methods of getting there is the free bus, the cable cars (which is an impressive site), or a taxi. There are no personal vehicles allowed on the island, which makes it pretty nice for getting around. You can get on and off the free bus whenever you like and get to where ever you want.

Our first stop was to the beach area, and the Southernmost Tip of Asia! The beach was a nice white sand and the water in the lagoon looked really nice and blue, but when we saw all the tankers just off shore we thought that maybe that's not a great place to swim.


Beach at Sentosa Island


This is the bridge to the Southernmost tip of Asia, and just off of Sentosa's main island.


Map of Sentosa Island


This is the bridge we walked across to get to the Southernmost Tip of Asia!


We just had to take a picture at the Southernmost Tip of Asia!

Then we decided to walk to the Merlion, Singapore's symbol, which is a combination of a Lion and Mermaid. Not too sure how they came up with it though. We had wanted to get up into the mouth of the Merlion so we could see the views, but found upon getting there, that you had to pay to go up. There is also an observation deck on top of his head too. I also learned later, that the eyes of the Merlion glow firey orange/red at night and we actually did witness this!


Merlion front view


Merlion side view.


Aw shucks, why not get our pix taken at the Merlion! We took someone else's pix, so they offered to take ours.

As we walked around the Merlion, we found behind it an amazingly creative fountain made of tiles. It had squirting smaller fountains all along it and it was really long! Very fun place to hang out and splash in the water.



After our visit to the outside of the Merlion, we walked to find the Butterfly Exhibit but when we got there, we also found that you had to pay to enter. What we were quickly discovering was that you either had to pay entrance fees of $8-$10 per exhibit, or at the very beginning you needed to buy into a package to see everything. We hadn't planned on spending quite that much money for our visit to Sentosa, so we passed on everything that required entrance fees. However our next little adventure took us to the Dragon Walk!


Entrance to the Dragon Walk

The Dragon Walk was a nice walk in the woods with some Dragon Interpretation and sculptures. Everything we saw, from 'remains' to waterfalls was man made, so we just decided to have a nice walk in the woods and check out the plantlife and see if we might see any creatures.


Near the beginning of the Dragon Walk, we had to walk over the head and body of a sleeping dragon...


Another Dragon in the woods.


Dragon 'remains'...


Monitor Lizard

Now our walk did yield some real dragon meetings. We came upon a very large Monitor Lizard off the side of the trail. We took a short movie, but the quality isn't that great. This was the best pix I could find. He turned and decided to go the other way, when Jeremy began to approach him for a photo opp.

After the Dragon Walk we went to see one of the War Memorial sites, with a view out into the harbor. The pix didn't really reveal too much intersting and the second War Memorial we tried to visit, we again, had to pay to get in, so hence, no good history pix. But, we did end up at the entrance of Underwater World. And finally I get to see a real live sea turtle. There was an exhibit outside that housed about 6 of these huge turtles that just leisurely swam around, or let the Koi fish eat the planktons etc. off of their shells. The big attraction to Underwater World is a tube that you walk thru and are completely surrounded by water on all sides so the sharks and fish and sea life swim all around you. Again, we didn't want to pay to get in. : (


Giant Sea Turtle

Later that night there was going to be live Jazz music on the beach which sounded really cool, but we decided that we had had enough of Sentosa and decided to catch the Free Bus and head back to the Harbor Front MRT...

...and finally back home!

© December 6, 2008