Around Singapore - Sentosa Island

The last adventure of our holiday vacation was to Sentosa Island, which is a tiny little resort island off the southern coast of Singapore. Until recently there were no cars allowed and it was a rather quiet little place. . .but not for long. Right now, part of the waterfront is completely under construction and they are building new hotels, casinos, a Universal Studios, an Oceanarium, and more. . . so there will be even more to do than there is already!

From Singapore, you can either take a car, the tram, or a cable car to get to Sentosa and we took the cable car which was very high and very exciting. Then once we were there we let the kids choose three attractions - they chose Underwater World Aquarium, the Butterfly and Insect Kingdom, and Dolphin Lagoon. Great choices - we had a really fun time and the boys even got to feed a live sting ray and get into the water and pet a real dolphin! We'll definitely be back for more soon.

Around Singapore - Haw Par Villa

Our next holiday vacation adventure we headed to Haw Par Villa, a huge park full of hundreds of colorful cement statues and murals depicting Chinese history and legends. Originally Haw Par Villa was called Tiger Balm Garden and was created by Aw Boon Haw, the creator of Tiger Balm, for his brother Aw Boon Par. The center of the park was where the original home stood and the park also displays one of Haw's "Tiger Cars," an antique car fitted with an enormous tiger head on the front and with a tiger growl for a horn.

The boys loved the statues and murals but we probably could have skipped the "Ten Courts of Hell" museum which graphically depicts some pretty scary stuff. We made our way quickly through that display with eyes covered. Yikes!

Around Singapore - Frog Farm

One day we decided to visit one of the many farms that you can tour throughout Singapore. With all of the choices - the goat farm, the orchid farm, the vegetable farm, the koi farm, the fruit farm - the boys, of course, chose the Frog Farm, which funny enough raises American Bullfrogs! We were very excited to get there, especially since the description of it we found in the tour book looked amazing: a guided tour, a movie about frog farming, a chance to hold frogs - wow!

Well, after about an hour of MRT and cab rides, we finally got there. The description was slightly inflated. We were the only people to be seen in what looked like a desolate, dirty junkyard with rows and rows of concrete boxes. Upon closer inspection we realized that the frogs were inside these boxes. Although I was slightly mortified, the boys thought it was the best place on earth and spent the next hour and 45 minutes running frantically from box to box. Since there was absolutely no one there to tell us we couldn't, the boys would lean over the edges of the boxes far enough to grab frogs so they could hold them - big globs of slime and all. (I was a bit concerned at them touching the stagnant water that held hundreds of frogs - brown, green, one-eyed, two-legged, fat, skinny, alive, dead - but thankfully no one seemed to contract any weird tropical frog disease so far.)

When it was time to leave, we walked quickly past the smiling man in the blood-covered apron and managed to find someone who, after we refused to taste either the frog legs or the essence of frog, gave us a small plastic container and a net and told us we could catch (more like rescue) a couple of tadpoles to take home with us. So we now have our first pets in Singapore - four fat tadpoles. We are hoping they turn into four fat frogs soon. We'll keep you posted!

Around Singapore - Museums

We continued our exploring through the city and and went to the very popular Science Center! They have tons of different displays and an Imax theater - we watched the The Wild Ocean. It was great fun and we will definitely be back. We also took a tour of the City Gallery which is an amazing museum that has small models of the entire island of Singapore. Really cool!