| Leaving the HarbourFront MRT station puts one right next to the entrance to the Sentosa boardwalk | Lots of interesting ponds and fountains in the downtown area. Guinness examines this one. | It’s just a half kilometer along the boardwalk to cross the water to Sentosa | The recently upgraded gondola offers another way to make it across from the main island | Just off-shore at Sentosa is this structure, the purpose of which we haven’t figured out | We made it! |
| Of course, once we got through the entrance at the end of the boardwalk, it still was not clear how to navigate to any other part of the island. Eventually, we wound up walking down to the parking garage and starting our visit the way most people do, getting on a bus from there. | First stop, the Merlion | Sentosa has changed a lot since our last Singapore visit. It’s much more “theme park” now, and not nearly as quaint. | Chinese New Year rabbit | One can still go to the top of the Merlion, but the view is much different now | Family photo |
| Sentosa now has high-rise hotels, a monorail, and even a Hard Rock Cafe and Hotel | As a small city/state, Singapore must keep its industrial infrastructure very close | It’s a very busy port, with large numbers of ships always anchored off-shore waiting | Customer service, even at Sentosa, is not Singapore’s strong suit, so imagine our surprise when their souvenir photographer (taking pictures to sell you in the gift shop) was offering all the tourists to take photos with their cameras too | The view from the Merlion’s mouth | Behind the Merlion, they’ve installed this really fun fountain. It runs the length of the path, with little pools, waterfalls, waterspouts, etc. all done in bright, colorful mosaic. |
| After the Merlion, we took the beach tram to Underwater World. On the ride, Innaias takes a look at one of the souvenir fans we got at the Merlion. | We decided to eat lunch first, sitting at some picnic tables near the food stand | These peacocks were attractive and seemed like a nice part of the scenery. Until they started aggressively begging for food. | The hands-on tank at Underwater World | They also have a large tank of different kinds of rays, which you can hand-feed. It’s lots of fun, but having them slurp fish meat from her hand kind of freaked Debra out. ☺ | There were other fish, of course |
| A smaller spotted ray | Mollusk | Spider crabs | Innaias enjoying some of the more colorful fish | The kids are fascinated by the giant deep sea isopod, a sort of huge, underwater pill bug | One of the jellyfish tanks had black lights, under which they fluoresced |
| With the low light, it was hard to get a clear picture, but the glow was very pretty | Another tank with lots of different jellies | Checking out anenome fish (such as the clown fish), which live in the stinging tentacles of the sea anenome | Tropical fish are often very colorful ☺ | The shiny new gondola cars | The gondola at Sentosa was always nice to ride, but the updated one is much more comfortable, with lots of glass for a wonderful view |
| Not done building yet (this might be the Marine Life Park attraction that’s been advertised as “coming soon”) | The Hard Rock Hotel at Sentosa | These kids are worn out, again. | Climbing away from the island | Arriving on the other side | HarbourFront, seen from the gondola |
