Holiday feeling

This post will hopefully give a vacaional feeling to all my friends in Europe who are suffering under the bad weather associated with this time of the year. I took some pictures of the touristy places on the Island of Sentosa. I'll walk you around. 

I am not sure if I have mentioned the merlion so far. It is a mix between a lion and a fish and it is Singapore's mascot and national symbol (how was this explanation not enough? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlion (I am expecting Wikipedias bill for quoting them in every second post any minute...)). The most famous statue is in front of the Fullerton Hotel (the ugly one I showed you) but the biggest one is on Sentosa. You can actually go up until you reach a balcony that is in the mouth of the lion. Sounds like a good plan until you hear the prize of this trip and you decide that this thing looks the best from the outside anyway. 

Don't let the letters fool you. They may look really easy to photograph but you need some time to find the right angle (and some time to wait until the 10000 chinese people had enough material posing with (on/between/under) the letters to fill up a few terabytes) or you end up with this:

As you get to the end of the word you get kind of a headache trying to figure out where one lettern ends and the next one starts.... The decoration on the island is very beautiful. There are plants and sculptures and fountains everywhere:

Sentosa is not far away from Singapore mainland. As shown in the picture you can see the harbour from the island (you might not be able to distinguish it, but there is a little boat stationed in the harbour located somewhere in the middle of the picture)

Of course what I showed you of Sentosa so far is not enough for an island. As a tourist you want more than just numerous hotels, beaches, stores of all kind, a Hard Rock Cafe, a giant Merlion... So let's build the Universal Studios theme-park there, too.

From what I have heard it must be pretty cool. However for the prize they request at the entrance you can probably go up and down the gigantic merlion so often that you are legally allowed to register it as your secondary residence. So unless some really rich guy goes nuts and starts paying the entrance for everyone that walks by I will only see it from the outside.

As I mentioned in some earlier post there is a train that connects the mainland with some stations on the island and with the beach:

If everyone in the world was as happy to turn 40 as this sign...

In case you were wondering, this is what the train looks like. And this is the one with the most regular color. There are others that are bright pink and purple etc. I think the guy from the candy-shop (the designer of the candyshop on sentosa, not 50 cent (badam-psshhhhh)) might be involved in the styling of these vehicles.

Talking about bright and shiny things. This is probably what the merlion would look like if a 8-year old kid was its stylist (or Agatha Ruiz de la Prada for that matter...):

So if you should have some free time during the next 5 months and become incredibly rich by then you should totally come and visit this place (otherwise you can join me and wait for the rich entrance-buying guy to go crazy...)