Even though I had got plenty of sleep that night, I slept until nearly 09:00 that morning. Graham was still fast asleep. I read for a while. At some point, I gave Graham a little prod, but there was no sign of life. Just before 10:00, I was itching to get going. The pool was calling me. I got up, had a quick shower, and then put my swimsuit on. This was when Graham woke up. He teased me relentlessly that I was going off in a huff. However, now that he was awake, I was only too happy to wait for him to get ready.
Once he was good to go, we headed down to the pool. We put our stuff on a chair. Graham mentioned that there was a ramp into the pool at the back. This sounded good to me. I got into the water bit by bit. Once I was in, the temperature was perfect, but it still felt cold getting in. An added bonus was that it was quiet and shady down this end. I still made my way into the pool when something caught my eye. There was a bird flitting around that looked vaguely like a parrot. It came closer and I realised that this was a member of the cockatoo family. Soon he or she was joined by a buddy. They did not seem to be bothered by us at all and came quite close. I decided to head back to our room to get my phone and the waterproof pouch. Unfortunately, in the short period that I had been away, a gardener had turned up with a leaf blower and had scared our feathered friends off. I did learn my lesson though. I will never be out and about without my phone again at this resort. This definitely paid off the following day. I did check what it likely was what we had seen. There are actually four kinds of cockatoos in Singapore. The ones we saw are the smallest of the four and are called Tanimbar Corellas. They are endemic to the Tanimbar Islands in Indonesia and are classified as globally near threatened. They do however rather like Sentosa.
I paddled around the shady end of the pool for a while, but ultimately, I was tempted by the sheer size of the pool. End to end, it is 85 meters long. I decided to swim to the opposite end of the pool and then back again. I spent a bit more time down the shady end and then the hot tub called. We had some quality time there until we felt thoroughly waterlogged. We then headed back in the general area where we had left our stuff. There was one thing I wanted to do before we headed back to the room though. At the end of the pool that was closest to reception, there were two water slides. They were nothing particularly exciting, but I still wanted to have a go. Graham was drawn to the waterfall that was just behind the slides. There was a shallow pool, and you could walk underneath the waterfall, which according to Graham provided a nice massage. I decided to check this out but did not like it as much as Graham did. Then we both headed down a slide.
After this, we were really done. We headed back to the chair where we had left our stuff and got dried off. Then we headed back to the room. Our room had been made up while we were in the pool. We both had a shower and got changed. Then it was high time to get some food. We decided to check out the café on the ground floor. This was nothing fancy in terms of ambience or menu, but there was something for everybody and the pricing was fair. Graham had some cucumber mint iced tea and fish and chips with waffle fries and salad. I had lychee mint iced tea and island fried rice which came with chicken satay, peanut sauce, and salad. The food definitely hit the spot. We had some entertainment during lunch. As soon as we sat down, there was a major downpour. There were some tables outside the café on a patio. I was looking out when a huge water monitor turned up and sought shelter underneath the tables. This made some people jump. This was easily the biggest water monitor that we had seen that trip. Unfortunately, I could not get a clear shot of our companion.
Thankfully by the time we had finished our lunch, the rain had eased off. We decided to go exploring. There was one last thing that was on my must do list for this trip, which was a visit to Mount Faber. Mount Faber is a hill of about 94 metres (308 ft) in the town of Bukit Merah in the Central Region of Singapore. This is on the mainland. However, the easiest way of getting there is on the cable car from Sentosa. Mount Faber is meant to be a great spot for birdwatching. It also features a series of murals that depict Singapore’s history and development from fishing village to international hub as well as an observation area, Faber Point. Faber Point is also home to another merlion. There is a cable car station pretty close to the hotel. However, as the weather was still somewhat iffy, we decided to take to the free beach shuttle. The original plan had been to take a loop on the beach shuttle to see what the weather was doing and then head to the cable car. We did not have to wait long until a beach shuttle arrived. When we got to Beach Station, we were told to get off the beach shuttle and change onto another one. At this point, the rain at stopped and we figured we may as well head for the cable car first. We walked across to the Sentosa Express station. The Sentosa Express is a monorail line connecting Sentosa island to Harbour Front station on the Singapore mainland. It has three stops on Sentosa and is free to use within Sentosa and also from Sentosa to the mainland. If you take Sentosa Express from the mainland to Sentosa, there is a charge, but people who are staying at one of the Sentosa hotels get a QR code which allows them to travel from the mainland to Sentosa free of charge. We did not need this as we were only going for one stop to Imbiah station.
When we arrived at the other end, we followed the sign to the cable car. It did not take long until we saw the first cable car. However, the starting point is actually up at Imbiah Lookout. Imbiah Lookout is Singapore’s biggest cluster of attractions. I was quite surprised by this and thought that accolade would have gone to Resort World, which is also on Sentosa. However, whereas the attractions at Resort World are on a larger scale like a water park and Universal Studios Singapore, in terms of numbers, Imbiah Lookout beats Resort World by some margin. There are multiple escalators that take people up towards the attractions at Imbiah Lookout. The first attraction we came across was Madame Tussauds. This is located in a beautiful building that used to be a military hospital.
Shortly afterwards, we reached the ticket office for the cable car. There we spotted an issue. I figured that we could just get a roundtrip ticket to Mount Faber. However, the only tickets that sold were all day tickets for both the Mount Faber and the Sentosa line plus SkyHelix Sentosa. SkyHelix Sentosa is an open-air panoramic ride with a gently rotating open-air gondola that goes up to a height of 79 metres above sea level. On the top, this provides some panoramic views. The prices were not crazy by any means, but I still did not trust the weather, and we figured that we would not get the full value out of this. We decided to come back for this later this year and make a full day of it. Instead, we went exploring. This paid off.
We had not left the ticket plaza for the cable car behind for very long, when we came across Sentosa Nature Discovery. The Sentosa Nature Discovery gallery occupies one of the old stations of the previous Sentosa monorail line which was discontinued in March 2005. Inside are various exhibits about habitats, animals and plants that can be found around Sentosa. This was very interesting. One of the highlights was a re-creation of the World War II bunker found on Imbiah Hill. The actual bunker is home to two species of swiftlets and is off limits to visitors. In the recreation of the bunker, you can learn all about the swifts and their habitat. This was really well done and definitely worth a visit.
At the end of Sentosa Nature Discovery is Imbiah Bridge, which is a walkway built over a stretch of the old monorail line. This provides a unique view as you are almost at eyelevel with the tree canopy. There are also a number of displays explaining what you are looking at. We saw all kinds of interesting birds, some lizards and also something we initially thought were chipmunks, but they were actually plantain squirrels. They are too cute for words and can be found in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. We had great fun watching one of those guys.
By the time we got to the end of Imbiah Bridge, it had started to rain again. Thankfully, it was not raining heavily, but it was enough for us to decided that we would give the Imbiah trails a miss. This is definitely something I would explore in the future as this takes you deeper into the forest and to three waterfalls. For the time being, we sat down on a bench that was covered to see what the weather was going to do. When we realised that we would get away with a light drizzle, we retraced our steps. We were nearly back where we started when something caught our eyes. We were looking down to the grounds of a hotel and saw two beautiful birds Graham had brought his mini telescope and checked this out. The birds happened to be salmon-crested cockatoos. They are such fascinating birds. We just stayed and watched them until they got bored and flew off. Then we headed back towards the cable car. On the way, I took a photo of a colourful tiger statue on the way.
When we got back to the cable car, I checked out the gift shop that was in the area. There were all kinds of interesting things. I did however manage to resist and did not buy anything. We did however stop at a cafe nearby. We had a Thai milk tea each and also some ais kachang. Ais kachang means bean ice and is a common dessert in Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. Originally this dish consisted of shaved ice and red beans. Today it tends to consist of palm seed, red beans, sweet corn, grass jelly, roasted peanuts, cubes of agar agar, shaved ice, and various syrups. I had some of this in 2019 and enjoyed this. This time round, I was not too sure. I found that I prefer the simpler taste of cendol. Graham finished mine off for me. I did however love the Thai milk tea. There were a lot of peafowl wandering around the cafe. I am not overly keen on peafowl as a rule, but I was amused by their antics.
Once we had finished our snacks, we started to head back towards Sentosa Express. I stopped to take a photo of the building that is home to Madame Tussaud’s. Suddenly Graham pointed at a pylon for the cable car. A sulphur-crested cockatoo was perched there, and another one took a ride on top of a cable car. I was ecstatic. There are four different kinds of cockatoos in Singapore, three of which can be found on Sentosa, and we found every one of them in a single day.
Eventually, we headed back to Sentosa Express and Beach Station. When we got there, we had a short wait for the next beach shuttle. However, we were soon on our way again. The turnaround point in this direction was Palawan Beach, which is home to the Southernmost Point of Continental Asia. I tried to get a clear photo of this, but that was a challenge on a moving shuttle. There was however something interesting in plain view. Explorers of Sentosa is an art installation by Danish sculptor Thomas Dambo. There are four statues around Palawan Beach which are made from reclaimed wood materials like pallets and crates. The shuttle driver referred to them as monkeys, which did make sense considering the location. However, when I wanted to find out a bit more about this after the trip, I found some references to monkeys, but most sources referred to trolls. Considering that the artist has created around 180 recycled trolls, this makes more sense. The sculpture we saw was called Curious Sue and apart from the recycled wood that forms her body, a recycled shipping container had also been incorporated. Shortly afterwards we definitely saw monkeys. There was a whole troop of monkeys sitting on a roof near Palawan Beach. I tried to get a photo, but I just could not get an angle on them.
When we got back to Beach Station, we had to change shuttles again. However, the connecting shuttle was already waiting for us. We just had to get off one shuttle, walk a few meters, and get on the second shuttle. As we pulled out of each Station, all hell broke loose. I had never seen so much rain in so short a time. Thankfully, the beach shuttles have thick clear plastic panels that roll down from the ceiling and can be zipped into place. This worked very well. Visibility was very limited, but we still completed the circle as the shuttle on the way back from Siloso Beach stopped right in front of the hotel whereas coming from Beach Station, the stop was a little further down the road and on the other side. We managed to get back to the hotel without getting drowned in the process.
Once we were back at the hotel, we went straight back to the room. We were both tired. We were hoping that the heavy rain would put paid to outdoor activities at the beach clubs. Looking at the weather forecast, the heavy rain was due to hang around until the early morning hours. We got ready for bed. Graham fell asleep straightaway. I read for a short while, but soon my eyes started to fall shut as well.
Dolphingirl’s Travels 
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