On Sunday I turn twenty two but John started celebrating me today already. I woke up by his alarm and after his regular half-hour snooze I asked if he should get up and go to work. He stays quiet and after a heartbeat I say you took the day off, right? Yes, he did, and I should not have been surprised since he did the same thing last year. Even so we were both awake and he got up to give our cat breakfast. I stayed in bed. He starts to sing the Swedish happy birthday song and enters with a silver package. Inside I found a lovely wooden five-in-a-row board game (with interesting rules) called Quixo and I beat him the two games we played that morning. A perfect game for me!
He then tells me that we are going to Universal Studios today. HURRAY! So we cuddle in the sofa watching a Dota-match (the international is ongoing) and I drink a cup of hot chocolate. We then quickly get ready and head towards HarbourFront. Clever as I am I say we should buy our lunch so we will be able to walk with it and so John suggests something from the food court. We eat while walking like time-saving experts. Halfway over to Sentosa we sit down and eat the rest of our meals.
Over at Sentosa we excitedly walk over to the over-pampered Universal entrance. We thought that since it was a Friday and everybody should be at work it should be less people and we could have the park all to ourselves. Unfortunately we asked the lady who sold tickets if there were a lot of people there - yes, yes it was. Always. Every day. Constantly. Sigh. We then go as far as we can without tickets to see just how many there were and how long the shortest queue was. TWO HOURS. Shortest... We were there five hours before they closed.
Bailed. There is much else to do at Sentosa. Small droplets hit our faces. We walked to S.E.A Aquarium - that John explained to me, after I asked why they had dots between the sea word, stood for South East Asia. I just thought it was a clever name for the aquarium - and talked to two of the staff for quite a while. Talked about what to do at Sentosa and if the aquarium was any good. We bought tickets and entered.
First there was a short, or rather large, exhibition about Zheng He and his trading ship. Huge display of perhaps one tenth of the entire ship. We read about interesting history and saw pots, coins and more, all brought back from a sunken 15th century trading ship.
We then came to the aquarium. First we walked through a tunnel filled with sharks and smaller fish. The very loud children made us hurry though that one. If you are looking at the map further down you will see the Exit and Entrance. They had apparently switched this so the entrance is now where the exit was. First we saw some pretty amazing moray eels. We crawled into a small space, probably made for children, and sat there watching them eel around in the little tank. Went past some common reef fish and jellyfish. Saw a few seahorses and a slowly circling school of fish.
After that came the big tank. We had been informed earlier that this was once the biggest tank in the world, then the Chinese built an even larger one. Inside were so many varieties of fish. Lots of stingrays, three huge that were so, so beautiful! A pair of large grouper fish that looked alien up close. A school of trevallies were swimming around, looking as ugly as they are. A fair amount of sharks, one with three fins on its tail. Never got a photo of it though, just a blurry mess.
I was amazed. We spent a lot of time here. I loved it. I really do love watching undersea creatures. They look so peaceful. It looks like they are in space, just floating around doing nothing. Well, they are doing something, I just do not know what. I wondered what they thought was on the other side of that glass wall. So many of them came close and seemed to investigate the never disappearing barrier.
When we eventually left there was not much more to surprise me. Or so I thought! After a while we came to a lit up tank, open from above, at which I also realised that it had stopped raining. I peered into it and saw shapes far away. John whispered in my ear: dolphins. Iihh! I have seen dolphins once, when I was six or seven. I do not remember much. There is one blurry photo of me sitting in a dark place and there could be a dolphin a few meters in front of me. One can not be sure. But this! I was so happy! Could not stop smiling! After just a little while they came closer, two pups came to play by the windows. The adults were swimming around upside down and kept to the surface. They were so cute! I wish I could swim with them... maybe one day.
In another tank was a giant octopus! It was the first time I saw one, a large one, up close. It was so huge. It moved around in the tank, from being at the surface looking purple to suddenly dropping down to a corner turning white! Looked so cool! It camouflaged itself and it was felt indescribable seeing it happen. I stood by that window for a very long time. People around me started to get annoyed and pressed past. I did not mind, I was done after a while.
Before leaving the aquarium we sat in another tunnel with sharks and fish, cozing and taking photos. Outside the sun was shining, even though it was supposed to be a cloudy day. We walked up some stairs, following the map towards the beach and sea. Passed an enormous Merlion, it cost twelve Singapore dollars per person to go up to its mouth. We did not. Walked down a decorated walkway with funny mirrors. Found the beach, realised it was really hot and we had no swim clothes so it was mainly torture to watch those in the water. We also went by a waterpark that looked like something we would have enjoyed. Sat down at a bench and called John's parents. Talked with them for twenty minutes. They are so lovely and kind, I really miss them sometimes.
Sidenote: we walked just a small bit of Sentosa but we could constantly hear Singapore's national songs playing on speakers. They make a new one for every year.
We walked all the way back to VivoCity/HarbourFront. The time was around five and since we had had an early lunch we were getting hungry. First looked at some games, found nothing new. Looked at some sunglasses, found some nice but expensive. Ate at Carl's Junior (for the people in Sweden, it is like Singapores MAX) which served a large avocado and bacon burger, ridiculously large sodas and very good fries (we had one with cheese, amazing). After that we barely had the strength to hold hands. We tested two massaging chairs and I had to drag John away from it. Before we left for home John wanted to check on some jewellery to see if he could spot what I liked. He showed me a beautiful bracelet with stars on it. Although it cost a thousand Swedish crowns, I would not dare to wear it.
When we came home a little cat was waiting for us by the door. Hungry and desperate for cuddles. He got all of it.
Small part of a trading ship.
You can see the tunnel in the background.
Sharks cuddling.
The wreck tank. I stand furthest to the right.
Living in a lake. Asias scary version of a northern pike.
A self-decorated crab and what we think is a shrimp on a starfish.
The second largest tank in the world.
My reaction to it.
One very large ray and two huge groupers.
John does not know how to smile when I ask him to.
No comments:
Post a Comment