Months ago, we had availed of free tickets to the newly opened MEMA – Maritime Experiential Museum & Aquarium. It was valid only until June, so being the procrastinators that we are, we only availed of it until the very last day.
MEMA is located in Sentosa island, so we took a couple of trains to get there and got down at the same stop where Universal Studios is. We walked towards MEMA and flashed our tickets so we could get in. Once in, we each picked up a passport that we could stamp using dry seal machines everytime we reached a “port” on the Maritime silk route. There were eight ports in all. What a clever idea, huh?
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| MEMA passports. Clever idea! |
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| Me pushing down hard on the dry seal machine to stamp my passport |
As I said, there were eight ports to go through and each port was labelled and decorated like the actual country they represented.
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| 1. Quanzhou, China |
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| 2, Qui Nhon, Vietnam |
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| 3. Palembang, Indonesia |
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| 4. Malacca, Malaysia |
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| 5. Galle, Sri Lanka |
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| 6. Calicut, India |
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| 7. Muscat, Oman |
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| 8. Malindi, Kenya |
Eight passport stamps in one day! Woohoo! Bonus photo in Calicut below. There was one stranger who laughed so hard as he watched me posing for this photo.
After getting our last passport stamp, there was still more stuff to see.
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| Treasure! |
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| “They shouldn’t let me drive this ship. I have no sense of direction!” |
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| “I’m flying, Jack!” |
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| “I surrender! I surrender!” |
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| I am totes in love with this very tall man! |
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| Scary. :-/ |
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| Virgoes in the house! |
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| I want this purple jewelry box!!! (Hint hint!) |
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| Anglophile Alert! |
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| Totally agree! |
Then we watched a short documentary that was projected on the side of a giant ship. There was a monster head with red eyes and smoking nostrils which was kinda scary, reminded me of that monster from the TV show Shaider. The seats were very comfortable, though – bean bag chairs!
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| Bean bag chairs |
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| Watching a documentary off a ship |
Afterwards, we decided to explore the rest of Sentosa island. I have been to this place lots of times before and you’d think I’ve seen its every corner by now but no… apparently I still have things to discover. It was my first time to see this cave, for example. It’s a man-made cave, though.
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| A cave in Sentosa? Who would’ve thunk? |
Then we hopped on the first bus we saw and found ourselves in Palawan. Yeah, we somehow found ourselves in the Philippines too. What a strange day for travel. Nyahaha.
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| Palawan Beach in Sentosa, not the Philippines |
After crossing a hanging bridge and looking around, we decided that Palawan was not that impressive and hopped on a tram to get us to Siloso beach. We bought some food from 7-11 and had a picnic, sitting down on the sand and all. While on our way there we saw a helicopter fly overhead with a giant flag of Singapore in tow. Wonder what that was about? National Day is next month yet.
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| Spotted: Flag-bearing copter over Sentosa island |
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| Simple picnic on Siloso shores. This is the life! |
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| Sunset – my favorite time of day. That magical hour when the light changes. |
We ate our food and enjoyed the sea breeze fanning our bodies till the sun left the sky. We witnessed the Song of the Sea’s fireworks blast into the night before deciding to go home. It was a fun day of “travel” for us. And we didn’t even need to spend much. Life can be beautiful even if it’s just simple, just like that sunset. 🙂
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