cable car to Sentosa
April 20 - April 21
Decided to forgo the night safari last night. Too expensive and too many connections to make to get out there. Besides, after Bob woke up at 7 o'clock we would have had a late start at the whole process. Instead walked through the botanical gardens this morning, delighting at every new and unusual site and throughly enjoying ourselves. The place is actually a national park, with no general admission charge, that goes on for 54 hectares. It had the feel of Seattle's arboretum and was similarly busy with numerous joggers this morning at 8 o'clock. The arboretum may not have as many doing their morning Chinese exercise routine, however, The highlight of the place is the orchid enclosure, with over 12,000 examples of 2,000 species and hybrids. As we've heard, the impressive thing about orchids is not the size some hybridizers (?) obtain, but their myriad variety and their ability to thrive by fastening to any number of hosts. In the park orchids grew in the ground, on living trees, on (?) stumps, on moss walls and elsewhere. As we had done at Jurong Bird Park Saturday, we beat the onslaught of tourist groups to the botanical garden this morning, but almost felt driven out after they arrived. Luckily they were beginning their clockwise loop of the park as we were ending ours, but we finally left with a throng at our tail.
Next on the agenda was buying cool but mostly enclosed shoes for Bob. Now that it's our third day here I'm beginning to understand that shops don't open until 11 o'clock. We left the garden at 10 with a general notion we'd head to Holland Village, the area in which a large enclave of expatriates live, to find a shoe shop that catered to large western feet. Fell into conversation on the way to the bus with an expat who directed us to a shopping center building just a couple blocks down. Bob snagged a dandy pair of soft leather shoes with comfy rubber soles and leather straps across the top of the foot for good ventilation for a mere S$115. Big bucks well spent, I say. They are far more apprpriate than say sneaker type shoes available now days, and have a smart European look that tickled me. Most importantly, Bob's feet are comfortable, which they haven't been before.
Now back at the guest house listening to Bob snore. Have washed out my clothes and put my water bottle in the freezer. We got back here about one and intend to go over to Singapore's resort island, Sentosa, yet today, so I think I'll give Bob 'til 3 o'clock and no more.
We're ready to move on to Sumatra. We've read what the books say about sea passage to Sumatra, specifically the river portion of the trip to Pakanbaru, and have decided to forego this most rustic approac, involving at least 39 hours on a typical Indonesian boat 'with cramped conditions and abysmal food.' One traveler wrote to our guide book editors.
We agreed the malarial swamp and abysmal food, per the editors, were not significant issues, and none of the conditions would be a problem for a few hours, but also agreed that the toilet conditions would be too much to bear for 39 hours. So we'll skip the Pakanbaru to Bukittinggi bus trip, which has magnificent scenery, and fly from Palom Batam, an Indonesian island 45 miles south of Singapore, directly to Padang. Some day when we can tear ourselves away from the Padang beaches we'll do a day trip up to Bukittinggi. Maybe a few days, in fact, since Bukittinggi is in the low mountains and is much cooler. The flight to Padang will cost us S$129 each, about S$100 more each than the boat ride, but that must be why we took a loan before we left home.
Shortly after 3 o'clock we boarded the bus to Singapore's world trade center, where we caught the cable car over to Sentosa, the resort island. Before we boarded, the height of the cable and towers put me off and I wondered why I had suggested such an outing, but the ride was absolutely smooth and silent, no waving from side to side and not a sound or bump when passing towers. The view, of course, was remarkable. Singapore harbor, we were told, is the busiest in the world. Bob pointed out that it must have the cleanest water for such a busy port. We could clearly see bottom for many feet off shore, and there was no foam. (I have also not been aware of any air pollution these days in Singapore; no exhaust odor, no haze when looking over the city from higher elevations)
Sentosa is home to many fee-charging entertainments, eg water slides, volcano multi-media center, but we took in only the butterfly park and the Merlion. The butterfly park had mounted exhibits at the beginning and end of the tour, but in the middle we walked through 150 metres of lush garden covered with mesh screening twelve or so feet off the ground, in which numerous lovely butterflies swooped and dove, fluttered and landed on the many honeysuckle, borganulli, bird of paradise, hibiscus, frangipanni and other blossoms in the garden.
The Merlion is a 75 foot high hollow replica of the smaller statue that welcomes guests to Singapore on the waterfront in the financial district. The Merlion has, naturally enough, a lion's head and mermaid's tail, and is based on the legend of such a creature that saved the villagers on the island from a terrific storm. An elevator inside Sentosa's Merlion takes visitors to two lookouts, at the top of the head and in the lion's open mouth, from which we viewed Singapore and the numerous southerly islands. Most pleasant.
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