Sentosa, yet another man-conceived and made Singapore attraction. This small island to the South of Singapore mainland was created as a huge amusement park that includes all entertainment options imaginable, from beaches to parks to hotels to various amusements. We spent several hours there, although we did not go to the local analogue of Disneyland, the Universal Studios. Instead I pencilled two activities that I had never done before. The first one was Segway riding – I really wanted to know what all the fuzz was about (well to be fair the fuzz is old news by now). In fact it turned out fun and really easy to ride a Segway, so I am even somewhat surprised that the euphoric predictions did not come true in that Segway has not conquered Western urban space as Jeff Bezos expected.
You reach Sentosa by metro, it’s the last stop on one of the lines. Afterwards you take a Skytrain which crosses the waterway and stops in several places on the island. On to Sentosa:
The waterway:
And the main island staying behind:
The second activity I decided to check out was the skydive simulation in a wind tunnel. The way it works is that you enter a kind of a vertical tube with walls of glass. From below the tube (tunnel as they call it) is pumped with air. The standard package includes two stints inside the tunnel accompanied by an instructor. Before entering you get a security briefing (we’re in Singapore, after all!) so by the time you are at the door, you even feel somewhat apprehensive. But the flight passes without any problem – and too quickly! In principle the idea is that you get to appreciate the various pressure levels as you would if you actually skydived. In our group some people had a bit of trouble keeping their balance, and they’d go round and round, but the instructor was at hand to steady them. Young girls also had some difficulty as small weight means they are more likely to be literally flown up! As you can imagine, it feels great to be in there.
But I did think it was a bit too easy – somehow I imagined that we would actually jump down the tunnel. In reality you enter the tunnel horizontally and kind of fall down to the air which then lifts you up. I doubt though that it’s anything like a real sky dive.
It only appears that I am in a zen like state here. In reality I am concentrating pretty hard to keep my balance and not to be turned over or not to start moving to the side like an arrow on the clockface. It’s fun though!
To buy the actual photos you have to pay quite an unreasonable amount. I just made snapshots of the screen where they are demonstrated after the flight – I hope iFlySingapore will not sue me!
To top off our visit to Sentosa, we went to the Capella hotel, which is considered the best hotel in Singapore. It wasn’t within our means to actually stay there, but we did have a wonderful lunch – with a view from the hill on the park green and the sea to the South.
