"What's Your Sentosa?" -> lame brochure tagline

The island of Sentosa is quite close to mainland Singapore - you can see it in the background of some of my earlier pictures. You can get there by taxi, monorail, boat, cable car, or walking. Filled with tourist attractions and restaurants, it's a big cash cow for Singapore. But somehow when we went last Wednesday, it was deserted. Again, pictures tell the story:

I went with Yong Su (another student from U of O; we met in the dorms two years ago), Heikki (the other exchange student on my floor; he's from Finland), and Justin (also in the U of O dorms two years ago). All of Singapore has a feeling like the entire island was bulldozed about twenty years ago and built entirely from the ground up, and even with all the sand and greenspaces, Sentosa feels just as artificial. It's not a misleading feeling: the beaches are made with imported Malaysian sand, the palm trees are strategically planted to look tropical, and small offshore islands are built to hide the fleet of container ships that occupy the horizon. Nevertheless, it's a beach:

You'll notice I'm the only one wearing pants and shoes. That is reflective of years of being hauled off to the Oregon "beach" on similarly grey and overcast days. It is, of course a mistake; I was sweating immediately and had to find a place to change. The shoes were a problem too, but for a different reason. I couldn't be putting them on and taking them off all day, so I opted to go barefoot. It was fine, except in Singapore, they have these:

I'm not wearing that shoe - it's there for perspective. But that means I was barefoot - a close call with the unthinkable.

The next stop is self-explanatory:

It seemed an odd claim, though, because it looked like there was an island in every direction.... Oh well, I got the picture.

We eventually did make it in the water. It was bath tub warm and much more salty than I expected. A two hour lunch on the beach followed. We were the only patrons at the place, it was warm, humid, and felt just like I was on a white-sand beach resort in the South Pacific. Which I was. The perfect Wednesday.