May 24th, 2005
Home: The Only Uncrowded Space
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We decided to visit Sentosa last Sunday. It was crowded. We wanted to go to Fort Siloso, but couldn’t find any parking lot near it. All the car parks were full and closed. The only car park near and available was the one at the gateway.
If only the monorail is still operational, we would have just left the car there and took a ride to our destination. Taking the Sentosa bus was out of the question. All the buses were packed. It was like during my NUS days when we have to push ourselves onto bus 151 and remained sardined for the rest of the journey. And after overloading the bus with sweating people, there were like another 5 bus load of eager tourists waiting for the next bus to arrive. Some of the visitors were obviously reluctant to wait any longer and decided to do some “trekking” on the road. I can see that the scorching sun melted their merry making good mood.
How I wish to have the monorail back! Hey, we grew up with it. It might be slow and old, but couldn’t it be upgraded? The queue for the monorail might be as long compared to the bus, but it definitely provided a more comfortable waiting experience. Try waiting for the bus, it simply kills whatever high spirit one has.
Sentosa is suppose to be our major tourist attraction, how can the transportation to various part of the island turned into an experience of frustration and inconvenience? How do we expect our tourist to enjoy their trip if they aren’t able to travel to the various attractions comfortable and efficiently. I wonder what meausres the management is putting in place to tackle this problem, especially when the casino is ready.
So much complains, I think I just miss the monorail badly.
By the way, we left the island without setting our foot on it and headed towards West Coast Park. It was our first trip there and I didn’t know what to expect. I was told that it has a big playground there. I was expecting to see a nicely done beach, just like East Coast Park. But after seeing containers and more containers, we didn’t manage to see the coast after all. Is there a coast at all? Or we missed it totally?
Anyway, the playground is really quite impressive. An older child would love it. But however big the playground is, when every Singaporean headed to the same spot, we see another full house event again. It was an interesting sight to see all parents securing a premiere spot to lay their picinic mat just outside the playground while the children crowd around the various stations fighting for a chance to climb onto something.
There was nothing much for us to do there except walking. The air was awfully warm and humid. We seek refuge at the only McDonalds there. The fries were killers, so tasty. I wondered if they soaked them with the sea water at the park; they came with extra serving of salt.
Next time, visit Sentosa and West Coast Park only during week days, well, unless you enjoy crowd.
May 25th, 2005 at 5:40 am
STPB ( What it was known ages ago) invited us to research and come up with ideas to promote Sentosa Isle when i was doing my finals in Temasek Poly. At that time, they had wanted to keep Sentosa as rustic as possible. Even private cars are not permitted to gain entry to this island. We came up with the idea of hot air balloon, dining experience on the cable car, opening up the beach for sporting activities, etc.
To my dismay, this day, not only are air polluting cars and buses allowed in there, the ‘non polluting’ monorail has been done away with. They have indeed changed their business direction and looking at the crowd, i must say that they are very successful in marketing Sentosa.
May 25th, 2005 at 9:24 am
this has got nothing to do with your post…. but WAT HAPPENED TO MAMA SEAH’S BLOG????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BLOG NOT FOUND?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! WAHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…………. DECLANNNNNNNNNNNnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn…………….
all the best!!
cheerio,
yl.
May 25th, 2005 at 10:55 am
Though I love driving around, I still remembers fondly the the old Sentosa which did not grant entry to private cars. Seeing more cars and buses only makes me more unwilling to roam around the island on foot. So, the cable car dining experience was the brainchild of you guys? Though I think it is a funny idea, I do have the urge to try it one day!
yl, i think ivy’s site is still around, probably some problem with blogspot. it happened quite a couple of times. your site was once like that too…for about a week or so.
May 25th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
lol… we even thought of putting a retirement village there with yatch etc for the high profile retirees. Thought it would be good to roam away from the bustle of the city. Sentosa has indeed changed. Really miss the old days
May 25th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
Pasir Ris Park is another place to try if you’re keen - big playground, children petting zoo, nature walk trail, the works. Somehow I still prefer our quiet ol’ neighbourhood park. Nice playground and exercise area and no rowdy crowds. I saw a link http://www.singaporeforkids.com, maybe there are more suggestions there.
May 25th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
It’s not the transportation issue, I think it’s the weather that’s making everyone sweaty and frustrated.
I went when the monorail was still there, and boy, did I curse the wait for the monorail too. And the ride too was hot and slow, like a slow cooker. It felt sooo sooo cool stepping out.
I think they should first think of cooling the whole island before building the IRs.
Build a force field round the whole island and air-con the island or something. Cheaper than air-con individual place.
May 25th, 2005 at 2:35 pm
my site??? got ar????? sigh….. so its blogspot’s fault lahz…….. managed to visit it now…… :$ got a tad too hyper when i couldnt get to read abt any of the babies….. so cute……
all the best!!!
cheerio,
yl.
May 28th, 2005 at 11:59 pm
aiyoh yl!! mai kanjiong!!! we are still around still around!!!
June 11th, 2005 at 3:50 pm
Sentosa: a big flop because those who plan did the planing and then stop at there. There isn’t any effort to redress problems that happen when something have been implemented. Take the bus stops as an example. There will always be crowds at weekends, being the few touristic sites that’s available in our tiny island. Many tourist do not like to queue up or pretend that do not know what’s a queue for. This creates a big mess whenever a bus comes along, you will see throngs of un-civilised people scrambling to get into the already packed bus. What a sure way to fire up your day if you had seen the cool Sentosa adverts on TV. I would be scared off especially when your kids are small and someone might thread on them! The bus stops has fans but blows super hot air, aggravating the already packed bus stops. A simple thing the planner could do is to build BIGGER stop with lots of Tall Trees around to provide natural shade and cool the whole place down. A simple water cooler would do the quick job to quench one’s thirst while waiting. To have better queue management, there should be marshals on crowded days to instill orderliness. One of the sad thing is we do not plan our poor Sentosa with the weather in mind. If our architects were creative to do their bit, it would only mere shady tress planted at the most crucial waiting areas to cool the place done. Forget about putting more bricks and anything that absorbs/repels more heat than needed. Nature has it’s own method to repel oppressive tropical heat, trees are the only way to way about. Another frustration is our signage, it’s takes time to know what colour of buses to take. Why don’t they have a more direct way to show what buses to take to the attractions using visual maps or pictures intead, forget about using colours as they do not make any sense to where the places they ply. There is hardly any seats for the tired, enough affordable eateries for the hungry , cool shades for the heated souls, or any reasons why you should come back for more? Dolphin show is nothing but getting wet in the sweltering heated metal shades with only less than 1 minute of glimpse at the pink creatures and having to decode the heavily accented talk from the local presenters, then realising you paid for all these, having having figured out how you got there in the first place? I guess the good old days in the 60’s did have a lot more to remember with places like Changi beach or even the Katong Park.