Mt. Faber Cable Car + Sentosa Island

On our second day, we woke up excited to explore the city state of Singapore. Our cousin's apartment is in Pasir Ris, the town next to the Changi Airport, but is several towns away from the city center. In fact, it takes us one hour to get to the city center either by bus or train. While commuting may take long, I did not find it too much of a hassle mostly because the transportation system is efficient. The sound of the school bell and children buzzing woke me up. Turned out, my cousin's neighbor building is a community school. I instantly loved the place because it reminded me of my grandma's house, which is located across our town's elementary school

After a breakfast of Ikea leftovers, kaya toast, and kopi-o, we started our day 2. But first, let me show you how their communities and housing looked like.

One of the several food courts in their community center. Just a five minute walk or less from my cousin's.

Our first order of business was Vivo City. We arrived there at 11AM. It was open but still deserted, which was okay because it meant no photobombers in our photos. Haha. We did not explore Vivo City that much because most of the stores there are here in the Philippines. We did enjoy watching the pier from the deck though.

If you can see the small dots suspended on air, those are the cable cars.

Our second stop was the cable car. We walked a few meters to the building at the back of Vivo City. We exited from the KFC store at the 2nd level of Vivo City. There was no line at all and I presented by Klook voucher. I also made sure I saved the Klook voucher in my mobile phone just in case. The transaction was fast but I noticed a line was building up after me. We then proceeded to take the elevator to the cable cars (I think it was the 25th floor).

My husband, my siblings, and my cousins super enjoyed the rides (eight in total), while I was left almost fainting every time we are suspended on air. Looking back, the view was great, I just felt dizzy especially when I look down at the glass door. NOTE: Singaporeans are efficient and may seem to be always in a hurry. When riding the cable car, move fast as the cable cars move fast too. You have to jump into the car quickly or else one of you might not be able to board it and get injured in the process. The cable cars served as our entrance to Sentosa Island. If you go by foot or car or taxi, there is a separate entrance fee. Sentosa Island is managed by a private company, which explains why it charges an entrance fee. We went to the tip of Sentosa, to Siloso Beach. We found there was nothing we can do there except pose by the Siloso signage, so we decided to go to where Universal Studios was.

The world's busiest harbor.

Nearing Sentosa Island, if you can spot the small Universal Studios globe.

Across Universal Studios, we had lunch at the Malaysian Food Centre. I was trying to stick to my budget of SG$5.00 per meal so I bought nasi lemak for SG$5.00. I did not like it and ended up spending more for my snacks later that day.

After this rather disappointing lunch, we just passed time in one of the benches near Universal Studios and people watched. We also found a kababayan and her baby and, turned out, the kababayan and my brother worked for the same company at different periods, so they had a lot of things to talk about. After a while, we explored other parts of the island and brought ourselves to the merlion (climbing to the top was not free so we just stayed on the ground) and the mini-park at the back of the merlion.

The city state just celebrated its 51st birthday, thus the birthday messages.

This was behind the Merlion. There was a colonial building.

Our tour of Sentosa Island began at 12:00 noon and ended about 3:00 PM. We opt not to go to Universal Studios because majority voted not to go. Maybe we would go when we bring our nephews with us. After our tour, we board the cable cars again, and off we went to Mt. Faber (will write about this in another post).

Because we already paid for the cable car via Klook.com before coming to Singapore (Php908 each), my expense for the Sentosa tour was about SG$10 for lunch and snacks.