Singapore: Universal Studio Singapore - Cousins Style!

Ep.57

22^nd-24^th February 2011.

“Cousins are those childhood playmates who grow up and become forever friends.” – Anonymous.

SIN – Singapore.

who's the boss?

A little bit time travel to the past… Just two weeks before the above date, I talked absentmindedly to someone in a car, “I would love to go to Singapore”. And who knows, a week later, two of my girl cousins asked me to join them on a vacation trip. Destination? Singapore! Sweet Jesus, you always knows the exact time to answer my prayer. Sponsored by my uncle, the ticket and lodging problem has been taken care off. By that time, all I got to do was just taka some days off from my part time job. Final project could wait.

three of us

Let me introduce you to two of my cousins, Anneshia and Yunita. Well, I would say that my family from my father’s side got a really good family birth plan. My dad is the youngest of five. My brother got his 4 cousins at the same age of his, give and take a year or two. My batch is also the same. To make it more extreme, the gender spread is also great. Andrew’s batch got 4 boys and a girl, while mine got 4 girls and a boy. Such a planning, right? Both Neshia and Nita were older than me by months. Although we did fight a lot when we were kids, we get along pretty well now.

silly pose!

The trip started a day before the departure. As the departure time was early morning, Neshia and I stayed over at Nita’s house. The next morning, after we had breakfast, my uncle drove us to the airport, which took 1 hour extra time than it supposed to be, thanks to traffic jam. We checked in at the Tiger Airways counter, and there we got our boarding passes. After a quick wait in the lounge, we were boarded the airplane and took off. *phew..no delay* It took an hour few minutes from Jakarta to Singapore, that’s what makes Singapore as a very popular shopping destination for most Indonesian.

sunglasses on, baby!

As soon as we arrived, we checked into our pre-booked room, which is not in a hotel. It was a quite decent apartment room around Novena MRT station rented out by the owner for daily up to monthly, en suite. We found out later that most of the tenants in the other rooms are students. Our itinerary was obviously to shop, or at least window-shopping, and most ultimately to pamper our taste buds, which means culinary trip, baby!

ION

We headed straight to Orchard Road, ION center, Lucky Plaza, you named it, we strolled it one by one. We ate in a curry rice restaurant in ION center food court, grabbed some dessert on the way and continue on shopping. It seems that we didn’t meant to spill any minutes to rest. As the sun started to set, and it was going dark really soon, we were heading to the newly introduced as Singapore gambling place, The Marina Bay Sands. We went there to check it out. Took a lot of pictures along the way. Well, cant blame us, this was our first trip together let say in more than a decade? 1 camera battery down, easy! We got 2 more to go. We were all above 21 already and, of course we got to check out the casino. Compare to those in Macau, this might not seem too appealing. Three of us tried our luck on a slot machine. Too bad, we started at SGD 5 and finished up only SGD 0.21 on our check. We lost!

sleeping arragement

Decided that it wasn’t our lucky day, we headed to the food court to fill our tank. Chicken rice baby. As far as I remembered, the price went up so fast since my last visit to Singapore. It was barely a year ago. Anyway, after that we did still strolled around the shopping mall and finally made it back to the loft at around 11 pm. 

Es Potong!!

There was something cute about the stay. Nita and Neshia were both older than me, and the bedding arrangement decided based on that. So both of them got the bed, I got the extra bed on the floor, in the middle of two twin beds. We took turn to take a bath and we went to sleep, we got to save or energy since tomorrow we will go to the Universal Studio Singapore. At around 4 am, the air condition was really cold and, technically, made the three of us awaken from our deep sleep. It was sort of half consciously that we asked each other where the hell the air-con remote control. And I guessed it was Neshia that answered that it was on the TV desk. Since we were lazy bums, we preferred to endure the cold rather than move a muscle to grab the controller. Ha ha!

USS

Universal Studio Singapore is a theme park located within Resorts World Sentosa on Sentosa Island, Singapore. In 2011, it was pretty new and quite a big hit. We had our breakfast near the hotel area, as far as I remembered; it was a fast food restaurant. We got on the MRT to Vivo City, ate another round of snacks, and got on the sky train to the Sentosa Island. Well, Singapore is a tiny country; I guess you can cover every inch of it in a day tour. So, we reached Sentosa Island quite early. We stopped at view places to take “few” pictures and made a stop at candylicious candy shop where everything seems so sweet, literally, too sweet to be true.

stand tall

Alex!

There were no queue in the ticketing booth and we paid the ticket for SGD 72 *by that time..bet now it has been risen up*. We went into the park and yeah, baby, here we go! We started at the main street where it looks like classic American alley. Marilyn Monroe was there as well as Betty Boop. We went into some attraction that showcase how the Universal Studio made effect on some films. Then we gone wild by taking picture in every corner of the Studio. And there, yeah there, I saw my all time favorite ride in the world, rollercoaster. It called Galactica. Red and Blue railing curved around each other, but by that time, only the red one is operating, the blue one hasn’t completed yet. Three of us queue for the ride and we got the last row. (Hint: the best seat on a ride is either the first row, or the last). And as it started to roll, just like any other rollercoaster, it goes right up, up, and up, and Neshia asked me (I was the one who sit at the far right), “Which way will we go after this hill?”. I started craned my neck looking for any hint, and I found nothing, it was just as the rail end up there. I can’t find any answer and I said, “well, find something to hold onto”. The rollercoaster goes right down, not to right, neither to the left, it go straight down in a massive speed.

on your shoulder

It continuously goes up and down, right, right, left, right, until it stopped. That was, up until now, the most challenging rollercoaster I have ever ride on. We continued on to the Mummy rollercoaster, which is in a pitch black room, it was kind of creepy, and it was truly my first rollercoaster ride that turn, move backward, as well as up and down, a little bit hot when we were supposed to hit by fiery ceiling, truly amazing! After those two rollercoaster ride, everything was just mediocre. We continued on the cartoon film setting. Some souvenir shops keep appearing one after another, we checked out almost each and every one of them and bought some souvenirs or may be just took some picture with it. Haha!

Madagascar!

Next, we headed to the Far Far Away land. Guess what? Shrek, baby! I love this hilarious cartoon movie. Romantic, yet very funny! We even queued to take picture with Shrek and Princess Fiona. Then we went to the Donkey show. Some attraction was just required us to sit and enjoy the show, 3D show or just simulator. By farm this part was almost the same as Disneyland. Only the characters were different. When we went to Madagascar land, we had to queue to take picture with each of the main character and got only Alex the Lion but we did got four of them in the form of statue though. Not to mention, with the penguins and the monkeys. I love this movie. Just incredibly entertaining. Friendship and  adventure. Sometimes I prefer to watch cartoon movie because it’s so pure and there were no grey area, good and evil were separated by a clear line and you don’t have to think that much to understand the story line.

can you finish it?

We did get changed our cloth due to Jurrasic Park land. There was this area with shooting fountain and dinosaur egg. And while we go in between, pose and ready to take picture, 1, 2,…. Zssssssshhhhhh!! The fountain shot and we got soak wet. We changed in the toilet which packed with people and we continued our journey. Our tiny stomach were starving already. We went back to the main street and we went into this café selling pizza. Other groups of people ordered slice of American pizza, but for us, we go big. We ordered the whole pizza with some salad as the side dish. It was HUGE! I couldn’t hug its diameter. It was a Hawaiian pizza, by the way, and we finished it up. Yap! The three of us. We just ignore those people watching us.

SHREK and FIONA and US!

We went into some attractions and by the time it reached 5 pm, the rains started to pouring. Some of the area that got canopy suddenly jammed by people seeking for refuge. Souvenir shops were full and some character started to entertain people at the canopied area. After taking some more picture, we decided to head back home. A little run under the rain and we were ready to head to the main island. The day was still early to end, so we hit Orchard road once again, it seems that the shopping yesterday wasn’t enough. But what did we aim? Dessert shop. We were drooling over this shaved ice shop since the day before and decided to kill it today. We bought 2 shaved ice for the three of us. It costs approximately SGD 5-7 depending on the flavor it got. Yummy! Ended there? Not really.

sweetest treats

We strolled around Orchard road, got few items that we’ve been looking for and we were thinking of visiting Clarke Quay. A visit to Singapore wont be complete without Clarke Quay. We strolled around again and we stopped again at the food court. It seems like an endless journey of satisfying our taste buds. I treated myself a good SGD 11 Bibimbap. Here’s the deal, whenever you’re around your friends, you can gossiping about everything, but around your cousins, that ‘everything’ includes your family circle, and believe me, they understand and they share the same family culture as you are. That’s what makes it fun. For the three of us, our fathers are brothers, and damn! they got a lot of traits and characters in common. Got no more room to fill up, we decided to go back to the loft and rest.

ready for us?

The next day was the last day of the trip. We still got few places to go on our list. We started the day earlier because we were hungry, but by the time of 10 am, there were no restaurant open yet. So, we stood up in front of the pasta restaurant we would love to try and waited. It was worth to wait, because the pasta we ordered, were just exquisite! Delicious to the max. Afterward, we went to visit the iconic Merlion and took some picture with the Marina Bay Sands from a far and a good view of Esplanade building. We came across these beautiful copper statue by the river that was located right along the Fullerton Hotel. And still, a visit to Singapore wont be completed without the famous Es Potong, I called it “one dollar ice cream”. We pass through an Irish Pub and a Museum of Indochine. We got no idea, but still, we had fun and take great pictures.

stupidity overboard

We went to the airport few hours earlier than the scheduled departure time, and we have to go to the budget airline terminal, as we were traveling on budget. Haha! We were picked up at the Jakarta airport by my uncle and dropped by my grandma house. My Dad picked me up there and there was the end of our journey. The journey might be short, but it was surely one of the best cousin moment I have ever had in my entire life. Well, girls just need some times among one each other and do stupid things.

“No one will understand your crazy family like your cousins do.” – Me.