Cable Cars and Badoodles

We checked out of the hotel in the morning, and bought bus tickets back to KL before heading to Sentosa. This way we can spend more time in Sentosa.

For breakfast, we shopped around for the Indian Roti but the stores nearby didn’t serve any. Our walk led us to the McDonalds near the Bugis station, since we had another thing to confirm about the McDonalds in Singapore anyway. It’s a sin to eat Mcdo in a country that prides its hawker culture, but it’s a pretty interesting sin. They say it’s a twilight-zone-like experience to see older people serving your cheeseburgers and fries, especially if you’re used to the disturbing perkiness of McDonalds cashiers in the Philippines and their below-25 age limit. Indeed. But what was also expectedly disturbing, is that we paid 12SD for hotcakes and sausage and a big breakfast set.

We walked to the Little India station. It was our first time to ride Singapore’s MRT and we can’t help but be impressed with how their train terminals and facilities are incomparable to ours, and are even better than airports in Philippine provinces. The system for train schedules and locations was easy to figure out. You can buy tickets from touch-screen machines. There was even this 40” monitor that indicated the number of minutes the next train would arrive, the time, and flashed a George Elliot quote. Inside the train were smaller monitors like that. And there was orderliness all around.

You can tell it was Sunday since the train was filled with families, lovers holding each other’s hands, groups of thin young girls clad in mini-skirts and boys who probably looked too young for their age.

The train ride was a quick one and we got off at the North Harbor station. The cable cars were already visible when we were walking. Laughing at the idea, we just had to look at where they were all coming from to find out where we could get the ride. It came from the top of this building, with tickets sold at the lobby. Being one of the highlights of a trip to Sentosa, it was a good price at 10SD per person, back and forth.

The scenery from the cable car was marvelous, since you can see the ports of Singapore, the thick greens of Sentosa Island and some skyscrapers from the city. All this from a tiny booth hanging on a wire. Cable car rides also have a way of making your badoodles feel funny; I had to hold my balls for a while to check if they’re still in tact.

By the time we arrived in Sentosa, we shopped a little for souvenirs. I thought the beach was just outside the shop. It turns out that it was a bus ride away, the one with “blue” color-coding. The good thing was that bus rides around Sentosa didn’t cost you anything.

Singaporeans have it easy, if not perfect. There’s even a concrete parking lot beside the beach. Along the beach were young couples in their Roxy and Billabong bikinis and board shorts, basked in the sun, reading magazines, eating take-away food, maybe making out a little. We laid a sarong on the beach and just hung out for around for a few hours, taking pictures. There were restaurants and liquor/drink stores around the beach with comfy wooden beach chairs and billiard tables. I had another Heineken (cheaper now at 5SD) and D. had a Vodka Cruiser.

Some travel books and travel websites describe this Island as “plastic,” and I half-expected it to be that artificial. Even the beach sand was imported from another country. They had a Palawan beach here, but we didn’t feel that it had even half of the authenticity of Palawan.

We took the cable car ride back, and a train to Bugis station. We had lunch at one of the bigger hawker centers. We had noodles whose name we didn’t bother to translate but it an unspeakable, universal language we hummed “mmmmm.”

The only regret perhaps, is that there was no time to go shopping for electronics at Sin Lim Square, and we missed SunTec city. But considering how far we got in Singapore in a span of 24 hours and less than 200USD, I’d say we’ve gone a long way.