Singapore: Sentosa

My trip to Singapore would not have been complete without a visit to Sentosa, the popular island resort.  Think of it as a sort of theme park with a beach.  In addition to three different beaches, Sentosa boasts a number of attractions including the Tiger Sky Tower, Butterfly Park and Insect Kingdom, Underwater World and Dolphin Lagoon and Fort Siloso, among other things.

You can access Sentosa from the mainland via cable car or a bridge.  We opted for the cable car, which stretches from the middle of a tall office building across the water and onto the middle of Sentosa. From the cable car you can see views of downtown on the mainland and the construction of the newest casino resort on Sentosa.

View of the cable cars from the mainland.

View of Downtown Singapore from the Cable Car

View of Sentosa from the Cable Car

Once you arrive at Sentosa, the theme park resort vibe takes over.  Make sure to grab a map of Sentosa when you exit the cable car station.

I highly recommend that you wear shorts and a tank top on your visit here, even if you are just walking around checking it out. It gets HOT! Lest you forget it, this is the tropics!

Sentosa also hosts several hotel resorts.

We took a walk along Patawan Beach and saw it in all its imported sand glory. On the beaches themselves, there are restaurants, shops, beach volleyball courts, a flying trapeze, a luge, and more. The bathroom facilities are extremely clean.

While on Patawan Beach, don’t miss the special island just off the coast.  From the rope bridge, you can reach the southernmost point of the Asian continent.  There are two pagodas with observation decks on the little island that are worth exploring.

Climb up the pagoda for beautiful views.

Connecting the different beaches and activities on the island are conventient free buses (more like large vans) that drive along the main street.  There is also a monorail, but we didn’t take it.  Outside of the beaches, there are also a lot of cute little areas to explore, such as this Gaudian series of fountains.

Since we didn’t want to go into any of the attractions that charged admission, we just explored the beaches and nearby areas until it got too hot.

After declaring too hot to go on any longer, we returned to the mainland via cable car and walked to Vivo City, the huge shopping mall. Singaporeans love shopping, but I suspect that half of the reason they go to these shopping malls is just for the air conditioning. After the hot and muggy air, the cool blast is heaven!

And of course I have to include this KFC in Singapore:

So ends my tour of the wonderful city-state of Singapore. While I heard a lot about Singapore from P while we were working together, it was still an exotic location for me and actually visiting was quite a wonder. I have never been this close to the tropics, and it was fascinating to see both the skyscrapers and the beaches existing side by side. In any event, if you ever get an opportunity to visit Singapore, you should definitely go.

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