Beware of the Merlion!

Grrrrrrrrrrr....it's the ferocious Merlion. Wait! What the hell's a merlion? Well, I'm glad you asked. Let me 'splain.

Singapore has traditionally always had the lion as a symbol of their nation. In fact, in Malay, the name is Singapura and actually means "Lion City." As the story goes, when Prince Sang Nila Utama first landed on the island of Singapore and began to hunt, he saw the likes of an animal that he had never seen before. His advisors said that said animal was in fact a lion. Thinking that this was a sign of good luck, the Prince decided to build a new city on this island and call it Singapura.

So, from the outset, the symbol of Singapore has always been the lion. However, one of the most important aspects of the Singporean culture is, of course, the sea. As a result, a new symbol for modern Singapore was developed, and that is the Merlion. The Merlion is a mythical creature that mixes the head of a lion with the tail of a fish (similar to that elusive mermaid that I have heard so much about but not yet seen during all of my diving adventures...of course, she doesn't have the head of a lion). The Merlion has statues in its honor in many different places around the island. The picture you see above was taken on Sentosa Island where I was able to spend most of my day on Saturday.

Sentosa Island is a great tourist attraction that has many, many different areas to explore. I was fortunate enough to get over there and meander around for the day. Inside this Merlion, they show you a lovely ~10 minute animated clip detailing a very brief history of Singpore and how the Merlion came to be. And then, to top it all off, they even let you go up top and look out it's mouth! Here is a lovely picture of me thinking about life inside the Merlion's mouth.

On top of this attraction, I was able to see many other attractions including:

Images of Singapore - This consisted of a 5-10 minute video about Singpore and then pictures and/or 3D models of Singapore throughout the years. The models showed things from the time of the founding of Singapore all the way through the current modern Singapore. It was very well done and enjoyable to walk through!

Sentosa Cineblast - This is a 3D "roller coaster" ride where they pile you into the cars of 6 people and take you on a ride. In this particular case, we were a log that was basically going through a Rube Goldberg device. We started off as a long log that got cut into many different smaller pieces. Then, for unknown reasons, we decided to fly down this series of different chutes and slides and the sort, many times we ended up flying in the air to get to the next slide. I'm still not sure of what the purpose of our ride was, but it was fun none the less.

Sentosa 4D Magix - This was probably one of the coolest things that I saw on Sentosa Island. This was a 4D Cinema experience. You may ask, "Andrew, how are we supposed to witness anything in 4 dimensions?" I was wondering the same thing when I went in and it did not disappoint. The 3D part of the experience is pretty obvious...3D glasses allow the film to come out at you. The 4th dimension is actually that of touch. That's right, there was a big element of touch to this show. So, this adventure took us along with the story of revenge of one of Captain Lucky's old crew members...just a little cabin boy. See, Captain Lucky (played by Leslie Nielson) left his former crew on this island to die. One of the cabin boy's, Davey, survived and set up booby traps all over the place for Captain Lucky and his new crew when they came back. Included in this wonderful cinematic experience are indiviually controlled seat movements (whenever a character get hit or falls, the seat moves accordingly) and personal "environmental controls." The environmental controls will spray water on you or air at your neck when there are flying beasts (bats, birds, etc...) in the area or when characters get covered in some sort of liquid (one character got the brunt of a flock of birds that apparently hadn't relieved themselves in some time). The touch of the moving chairs and other environmental controls really made this attration enjoyable. It was something that was out of the ordinary that I wasn't expecting when I went in.

Sentosa Luge - This "ride" consisted of a simple luge type sled. The sled would stop as you pulled backwards on the handles and as you let go would allow you to go forward. The piste wasn't that long and there were quite a few people on the road that you had to look out for, but it was a good, fun ride down. The big problem I had on this ride was that I was just clearly too big for the whole thing. First of all, the helmets that they made us wear didnt' fit at all! My head was just too big for them. <> This made for uncomfortableness all around. Then, to top it all off, when I got into the luge, there was a spot for my feet to be resting, and I was told numerous times during my wait that my feet had to stay in these footholds. However, when I started to go down the piste, I tried to pull back on the handlebars to brake and it wouldn't work. My knees were in the way! So, I decided to make an executive decision and allow my feet out of the footholds so that I could actually brake and not run into anybody/anything. I think this was for the best in the end.

Songs of the Sea - This was a live song show that lasted ~25 minutes. The premise was that a handful of local people went down to the beach (~7 people I think) and they "just happened" to see us all sitting there. What on earth were we doing there? So, they decided to sing some songs for us. When one of the main characters sang for the first time, there was a vision of a princess that appeared over the ocean. The rest of the show was all about the search for this princess and trying to get her to wake up from her deep, deep slumber. The really neat part about this show was the use of lights and water. Instead of using a screen on which to project many different animations, they would just use lights (lasers more like it) that would then project onto the spray of water. The effects when the water spray was stopped, but the lights were still ongoing were really cool as the images would just fade away as the mist from the spray began to diminish.

Overall, the trip over to Sentosa Island was a lot of fun. Many of the attractions really seemed to be geared towards children, but it was really a great way to spend the Saturday. It would have been a lot more fun though if I would have had some family or friends to hang out with and share the experience with.

Beyond that experience, the rest of the weekend was good fun as well. On Friday night, I was just out to dinner and trying to enjoy myself. I chose my restaurant of choice solely because they had TVs there and there was a ton of room. That way, I could watch some sports while I ate, and I can't think of a better way to spend the night. But then, a young Australian couple invited me over to join them. This was truly a blessing because I got to meet some new people and enjoy the evening even more. They were just finishing up a 2 month trip to Nepal and India (1 month in each location) and were about to head back to Australia. We went out for a drink or 2 after dinner and had a really good time. Of course, the night didn't last nearly as long as most of my weekend nights in Korea, but that was really another blessing. So, by 12:30, I was back in my hotel and ready for bed.

On Sunday, it was just a relaxing day. I started out of the hotel around 11:30 and went for some lunch and some reading. Then, I just meandered through the Orchard Rd. area and tried to find some things I needed. I had to take a brief detour ~2:00 for a drink at a local Irish Pub because it was poring outside. So, I enjoyed a couple of pints of Kilkenny and a bacon butty sandwich (thanks Hazel for introducing me to those!). And then it was on my way back to the road. It was an early night getting back to the hotel where I continued to read and watch some TV.

All in all, it was a great relaxing weekend. Now I'm ready to get back to work...or at least go to the office for now. Hope you all are well and thanks for checking in. Sorry if this was way too long for you, but sometimes when the fingers start typing, they just don't stop!

Peace, I'm out.

Mez