Jake Gordon

Night Safari, The Beach & Underwater World

23 February 2001

Last night I decided to go on the night safari, which was pretty fun. Got a bus and a tube (called MRT - mass rapid transport) which is just like in England, but a little more snazy and modern. The safari was basically going around a tropical rainforest in a train/tram and looking at all the animals, and then getting out and walking around. It was pretty cool - saw girafes, lions, rhinos, bats, snakes, deer… you know, the lot, but especially nocturnal animals. The best bit was going through a free-flying bat enclosure - a fruit bat was hanging two inches above my head at one point.

This morning, I set off on a long trek (about 3 hours) through town to get to Mt. Faber (it’s only about 100m high, but still the highest point in Singapore). On the way, I was distracted by an IT mall as you might expect - and started looking at wicked laptops and stuff like that, much cheaper than in England.

When I arrived at Mt. Faber I got a cable car (you know, like at ski resorts) which I took to get down to Senosa Island which is just south of the main island, and is quite small. Amazing scenes of Singapore from the cable car - could see all the sky-scrapers, dock area, rainforest bits and stuff like that.

Sentosa Island is like a pleasure island, with themed zones which you have to pay to go to, and an entrance fee as well. I decided just to go to the beach there, and to go to the underwater world and Dolphin Lagoon. Went to see the Dolphins first - bloody hot weather - I had to keep looking at the floor because the sun was so bright. The dolphin show wasn’t very amazing.

Walked a few metres to The Beach - white sand and basically no-one there. Had a quick dip, then decided to cross the excellent wooden bridge over to the even smaller island, which is the southern most point of the Asia continent, only a couple of hundred kilometres from the equator. Absolutely amazing there, such an unspoilt (and probably totally artificial, but hey, I didn’t mind) beach - like out of the film The Beach - that’s how it felt.

After the beach, I went to the underwater world, where you look at fish and things like that, believe it or not. The cool part was where you go through an acrylic tube where you can see fish all around you, like you’re under the sea, hence the name. That was pretty sweet.

I’m thinking of maybe going to Malaysia tomorrow - I’ll go as far as Kuala Lumpar up the West coast, then cross over to the many wicked beaches on the east coast, and see if I can find some nice islands to visit as well.


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by Jake Gordon, some rights reserved