Everyone’s races are over, most got a new “personal best” (as how they refer to a “personal record” in Singapore), it’s time to celebrate!  We haven’t gone all out to save our strengths for our respective races and now, we can!  And where do adventure-seekers in Singapore go?  Sentosa!

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Sentosa is the southernmost territory of Singapore and as such has the southernmost coast of continental Asia (since Singapore is connected by land to the Asian mainland via bridges to Malaysia).  You may think of Sentosa as Singapore’s playground as it centralizes a lot of attractions here like Underwater World, Tiger Sky Tower, Palawan beach, and Southeast Asia’s first Universal Studios theme park (opening first quarter 2010) among others.

From the mainland you may get to Sentosa via a cable car (under repair) or the monorail.  The obvious choice for us was the monorail and interestingly its station was inside a mall (like many MRT stations in Singapore), Vivo City.  Getting to Sentosa (Imbiah Station) takes only a few minutes from Vivo City Station as it really wasn’t that far away—from a Filipino’s perspective you may compare it to crossing a slightly wider (and much deeper) Pasig River.

As much as we want to explore this entire island and enjoy everything it had to offer time was not on our side as we only had less than half a day!  Some of our friends would also return to Manila later that night so all we had was the entire afternoon.  Without spending much time thinking we started with the obvious: the Luge and Skyride.

Travel Tip: As many who have tried the Luge would tell you, “once is not enough.”  Take our word for it, get the combo!

At first the Skyride doesn’t look intimidating; I mean it’s just an open cable car, right?  But later on it proved to be a “screamer” for the ladies—it gets really high so it isn’t exactly for those who are afraid of heights.  It was quite enjoyable though as you get to see the island from a high spot but it’s a little too short (get the combo!).

After the rides we settled to touring the area on foot as it was also getting too late for us to visit other attractions.  But before we left we were visited by the free-roaming peacock that just walks about the place.  Interesting.

Upon returning to Vivo City I was quite tired to roam around the mall’s rooftop garden (I just did a marathon earlier so it was reasonable) so I just settled with lying on the grass.  I realized that our Singapore trip was coming to its conclusion so we had to maximize the time we had remaining.  All three of my “housemates” would be leaving that night and for our last activity together we decided to have a somewhat fancy dinner, back near our hostel in Bugis.

Finally that night I had to say goodbye to my friends.  I was so tired that I didn’t even had the chance to think that I was alone in my room and just fell to sleep without trouble.  Tomorrow I’ll be checking out and be returning home, alone.  I wasn’t even able to think about that before I got to sleep…

Travel Tip: Watch out for the word “spicy” if you’re not used to it.

Special thanks to Carina for some of the pictures that appeared here.

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Singapore Special:

• The “Perfect” Race: Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon Primer
• Southward Bound
• Pre-Race Tour
• The Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon
• Sentosa
• Solo Flight