Sunday, April 24, 2011

Going South Part 3

Day 3 was a Friday. I woke up in the morning with that annoying fever still there.

The plan was to go to Sentosa Island. This place was Singapore's equivalent to Malaysia's Genting Highlands, where people could gamble and take theme park rides all day.

So off we went, taking the MRT to Vivo City, the shopping mall where we could board the monorail that will take us to the island. Once we got there, we started taking pictures of the place, but I was getting less and less enthusiastic. The fever sapped all my strength, and I just didn't have it in me to keep up with them. As a result, my sister couldn't go into Universal Studios as she didn't want to go in without me. The tickets were expensive and I didn't want to waste my money going in and then spending the time on a bench, so we decided not to go in at all. We got some souvenirs at a nice little gift shop, before I persuaded my family to let me take the train back to the mall so that I could find a place for lunch.

Once back there, I realized that I didn't have the appetite for anything, even though I was starving. God I hate it when I lose my ability to eat. So I decided to walk around a bit, and I found a DVD store ;) My one weakness. My heart skipped a beat when I saw the Fight Club DVD staring back at me as I browsed the shelves. I had been looking for this for years. I also found The Punisher and Steven Spielberg's Munich. Oh yeah, this is awesome. But I was still sick.

I found a Kim Gary restaurant to have lunch at. This happens to be a place I liked going to back in KL. However, the loss of appetite made it hard for me to finish my bowl of noodles. I tried my best though. After meeting up with my family again, I told them I wanted to go back to the hotel to rest.

So I got back, took some Panadol and slept for about 3-4 hours. It wasn't even a smooth nap, the fever kept waking me up. My mum was worried about me and wanted to take me to the clinic next door, but I told her it was closed at that hour. That night I could only eat some cakes for dinner, couldn't eat much else. And later that night, the diarrhea started. It got messy. Awful way to spend a vacation, but at this point it was almost over.

More pics here:

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Going South Part 2

Okay, now for Day 2 of my trip to Singapore.


We decided to go to Marina Bay, since that's where all the unique architecture is. We wanted to take pictures of everything near the bay.

So we took a bus and stopped at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Just as I had seen it on TV, the hotel is damn tall. We wanted to go all the way up, but decided to walk down the bay instead, towards the Merlion and take pictures of whatever that looked good there. There was a bridge designed after a DNA helix, a stadium on water, an opera house that looked like a microphone and a sphere like building that I can't remember what it was called.

But disappointment hit us when we arrived at the Merlion. It was covered with construction! Apparently they're building a temporary hotel around it, and it won't be taken down till May. Temporary hotel??? I have no idea what that is, or why anyone would want that. So there goes my chance to take a picture of the Merlion, and we had to settle for the smaller version.

Oh, the walk all over the bay was damn tiring, made worse by the heat. On Ira's advice, I wore a cap the whole time, since umbrellas weren't allowed on the plane. It helped a bit. But then I got hit with a cold (which is odd since it was hot), so that took half my energy off.

After that, we walked to Suntec City Mall, which was nearby. There, we heard about this Duck ride, a boat that doubled as a road vehicle, which would take tourists around the city near the bay, and goes into the river too. So we went for it, and it was quite fun. The view of all the landmarks earlier was much better from the water, and it was worth the money since the entire ride took an hour.

Then we headed via MRT to Chinatown, where my mum and sister wanted to buy souvenirs (My mum loves souvenirs). I bought a pocketwatch and a mini Merlion table thermometer for myself while I was there. By now, the cold I was suffering from went into full mode, so I had to take a pill, and take a short nap at a McDonald's nearby.

The good news was, when I woke up, the cold was gone. But bad news: I got a fever! The air-conditioning in the place must have had something to do with that. Rats. So I was feeling more miserable now.

We headed home, and I had some noodles from the same food court near the hotel. My appetite was off, and I knew my condition was about to get much worse. More on that in my next post.

Here are some pics from day two.