Day 2, Sunday the 20th of March 2005

The Malaysians unqualified for Day 2 decided to spend the day being tourists and we headed down to Sentosa Island situated 30 mins away in the outskirts of S'pore City.

Pink Dolphin

There we proceeded to see a flurry of underwater life forms in their natural form at Underwater world, water tricks performed by pink dolphins, and pink mammals on the surf as we surveyed the topless sun-bathers on Sentosa's sun-kissed beaches.

I gotta say that last prospect would be the main reason for any return trips to Singapore! ;-p

Post-Sentosa, we headed back to Singapore's famous shopping district : Orchard Road and did lotsa retail-therapy to get over the sting of yesterday's losses. A stint in Bugis Junction (the S'pore equivalent of Petaling Street in Kuala Lumpur) led to mass buying of souvenir t-shirts and tacky jewellery (I can't resist those buddha-monk-like prayer-bead arm bands!).

side note: Last night as we were doing the regular tourist thing, I noticed that Singaporeans don't really have that much 'lepak' places in the city where they can hang out and just enjoy the company of each other ala their Northern counterparts. Malaysian cities are known for their lepak hang-outs from mamak stalls serving Indian fare, to Malay or Chinese side street stalls serving traditional favourites even up til 3 am in the morning.

In Singapore, due to the dearth in these hang-outs, regular places like McDonalds, KFC, Swensens and Starbucks have evolved themselves to take over this role and open late until 2-3 am in the morn with most of them having an open-air sidewalk cafe feel to their outlets.

Plus, 7-Eleven is damn thriving over here as well even at 3am in the morning, 'cos it's the only place in town where u can find hot (microwaved) food in the city at this late in the day.

It sometimes makes me wonder, if I opened a chain of side street burger stalls in S'pore ala the local Ramli Burger local side street vendors, I'd surely make a killing and become a millionaire within a heartbeat!

Of course, there the problem with the S'pore govt to consider as last I heard, side street burger vendors have been banned or are in hiding in keeping with S'pore's clean streets image.

Bollocks!

After an early dinner, the Triad re-converged (the highest placing for a M'sian was no. 16 followed by the next one in Top 32) and we all headed back to the train station for our train ride back home.

Malaysia beckons, and as we all drifted off to sleep in our coffin-like bunk beds, I bet we're all dreaming of those topless sun-bathers and relishing our next trip down south to Singapore!

;-p