In desperation to finish blogging about this trip as fast as I can, I've decided to merge two days' worth of content into one entry. That's not to say that it'd be short; but I'll have to cut down on the content! Anyway, we woke up rather late the next morning and it was super hazy outside. In fact, it was worse than the day before! The weather was rather erratic. The contrast of temperatures caused the camera lenses to fog up and produced dreamland-like photos of us. We took these just before having our buffet breakfast...
...which was a blast. The food was by no means heavenly, but there was great variety. There aren't photos of the pastry, which were as delicious as they were cute. They were also sinfully-sweet; something that might cause the diabetes-strickened to get a heart attack just by laying eyes on them! We ate like kings before returning to our hotel rooms to take a rest from the food marathon.
We then headed down to Mana Mana to rent snorkelling sets, and saw some animals along the way.
Snorkelling was really fun, probably because I was doing it for the first time. I enjoyed the experience of being able to look at fish in their natural environment. I realised that I couldn't name many of the fish I saw, which is what I'd probably be able to do (to the animals) had I entered a safari. Anyway, ignorance made the experience all the more astounding. It's great to have a chance to swim alongside the fish (okay, so I did chase around one for fun) and observe them doing... fishy stuff. It's no wonder they've captured the imagination of children and adults alike (think Little Mermaid and Finding Nemo) because they live in a distinctly different environment from ours. The sea water was bloody salty though, and left a burning sensation up my nostrils when I accidentally breathed some of it in. It took awhile for me to get used to the snorkelling apparatus before being comfortable with it. Heck, breathing solely through the mouth is not as easy as it seems!
After that we took a walk around the resort, in the opposite direction of Mana Mana and found this abandoned sea-sports counter, and thus took a photo of it for future reference. It was also really cold, and we proceeded to take a photo of ourselves pretending to shiver. Arhm. We then came across this part of the resort that had just been built and "discovered" two swimming pools, which were empty.
We felt like the pool was only for us! Haha... We played frisbee in the water for a bit (yeah, that's me at the deep, far corner) before I felt the urge to go to the toilet. To our surprise, while looking out for a toilet, we found a sign that said "SAUNA". That was something Sern Hong had been longing desperately for, so we went straight in there to try it out. I think I could feel my contact lenses melting! Within moments, sweat was dripping out from every pore on our skins. Hot stuff.
We mused about the exclusivity of the place and how it felt like we totally owned it. Back in SG, we'd probably get complained, and it'd be so crowded with all the kids overcrowding the pool. We enjoyed the seclusion tremendously.
When we returned to our hotel rooms to shower, we were all about to collapse from hunger. Thus it wasn't long before we were eating piping hot cup noodles in the comforts of the bed whilst watching this movie which featured Shaquille O'Neal. It was corny, but the action scenes were damn good. He was believable as this superhero because he was built like a giant and his strength... well, let's just say he didn't need special effects to lift a lady in her wheelchair (wheelchair included dammit!). My favourite movie last year, The Island, was about to be shown (why don't I have HBO at home!) but we had to go make our presence felt at the poolside restaurant.
Do not be alarmed. My camera's not spoilt despite the many accidents that happened to it (including one that was caused by Daniel on our way to Mana Mana!). There seems to be a terrifying amount of yellow in the photos, but that's just because of the lighting of the place! It was like a mini gazebo with a table smack in the middle, set near the pool. We had a pizza, which we had every right to be sceptical about because when we finally got to see it... I think the crust was of comparable thickness to paper! We then proceeded to desert, which was ice cream. That was fab. And then somehow we got cranky with the yellow napkins, because Sern Hong's wearing yellow. He did it all by himself actually!
We then went to The Pub for a karaoke session. It had an ancient selection of songs and we ended up singing things like Xuang Zhe and Itsy Bitsy Yellow Polka Dot Binkini. It was a competition of whose repertoire included more oldies! Thankfully I knew a bit, even though I'm pretty much the "Popper" (i.e. guy who indulges in Pop music). I had Irish Cream again, but it wasn't as good as the previous day's! I guess it was lacking in the rum and chocolate. We were chased out rather early, and went to bed in preparation of the following day's activity.
We had our breakfast buffet again before heading down to Mana Mana to kayak. I enjoyed the experience thoroughly. I guess the marathon kayaking that I did during LTC at the end of J1 really helped. I teamed up with Sern Hong, who was feeling quite sick after the breakfast. Despite his lack of participation towards the end, I loved the feeling of trashing my way through the choppy waves. It's totally different because we went headed quite far in the direction of the South China Sea and it was vast. You could see the horizon. Not gonna be quite the same if I did it at Sentosa!
We had to check out in the afternoon and so went back to pack our stuff. It shocked me that our stay ended so abruptly! When everything was settled, I went to use the internet, which was daylight robbery.
It costs a freaking 3 bucks per 15 minutes! I was thinking of updating my blog or something but as you can see from the picture, with all that distraction, all I managed to do was to try to contact a couple of people back home and to leave a few notes on my friends' blogs! Our ferry was to come at late afternoon and so we had a couple of hours to burn. We decided to return to our exclusive pool.
Which wasn't that exclusive any more as you can see. Still we enjoyed ourselves, and alternated between the sauna and the pool. I talked a lot to Sern Hong about religion and all that. It's a prickly subject but talking to him gives me a clear idea about how I feel about the topic, my beliefs and where I stand with regards to the subject. It wasn't completely pleasant, but it was something I felt I had to do. Despite me being at odds with him about it, I'm still in one piece. So.
The journey back was rather long, and tiring. We tried to get these tourists to take a photo of us in front of the ferry but they took a vid instead! We then taught Daniel how to play bridge before our tiredness caught up and forced us into slumber.
Much to my regret, I didn't buy anything at the DFS and thereafter we had dinner somewhere in Ang Mo Kio, but then that's not relevant already, is it?
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