Feeling Like Sushi

You might notice that sushi bars have that conveyor belt that always moving carrying plates of sushi. As you all know, sushi main ingredient is seafood and at Singapore's Underwater World they turned the table around. This time around, you are the one who's on the conveyor belt with those sharks and fishes looking at you. Thankfully you are separated from their watery world by a glass tunnel so they can't pick you up and much you, haha! Such a ridiculous thought, but that's what I remember most of Singapore's Underwater World (SUW).

Frankly speaking, SUW is dissappointingly smaller compared to Langkawi's with less exhibit tank and species. But the good thing is they have a dugong on display and a pod of adorable pink dolphins (which is kept at a lagoon which is quite a distance away from the main building). Those dolphins pull of pretty much standard tricks but the duration of the show is a bit short. But bear in mind that dolphins is not a purely show animal and with high intellignce they can also get stressed up as we do so that's why they have to keep it short. Other interesting exhibit? The touch pond which houses several starfish, small skate and box fish. The admission fee of SGD17 is quite steep I might say but for the sake of experience just shut one eye and fork out the money. ;)

Speaking of steep price the cable car ride to Sentosa Island from Harbour Front is way, way overpriced. For such a short ride of 5 minutes you have to pay an exorbitant price of SGD14.30 (add a few dollars more to scare you off with a transparent bottom). The scenery? Pretty much a typical cityscape and harbour with a lagoon tainted with iron oxides at the bottom. Yuck! Langkawi Cable Car is much more worthy and give you such a thrill especially when the wind is a bit strong and your gondola sways a bit, hoho. And you get to the top of a mountain effortlessly as opposed to Sentosa Island where you climb up a tower (by lift) just to coast down to an island.

Furthermore, where is the beauty of white sandy beach (I suspect that it's man made), calm water, sunny day when your view is those hideous cargo ships? Man, what an eyesore! But if feasting your eyes on skimpily clad women is your definition of beach then maybe Sentosa Island beach is for you (dosa tanggung sendiri - :-P). For me, I'll choose Langkawi over Sentosa Island any day.

Anyway, if you do have a lot of money to burn you can easily get to Sentosa Island by taking the MRT to Harbour Front on the new MRT line. Then you can either take the very expensive cable car or the free bus ride. As you can see, I'm definitely not statisfied with Sentosa Island but it's unfair that there's nothing good over there. For one thing, the island is very clean with helpful staffs that can give you information and assistance. The island is also efficiently serviced by a fleet of bus, a monorail service and a beach train. Once Langkawi have such system in place surely it will be the place for holiday and recreation. Plus a good media campaign of course, as what Sentosa Island with their ad which make it seems so good and lovely. Enough said about Sentosa Island, I don't want to be banned from entering Singapore. :-P