Port of Lost Wonder @ Sentosa

I had a one-on-one date with Emma, brought her to Port of Lost Wonder at Sentosa to catch up with some mummy friends who also had kids around her age. There are 3 slides, the big green and blue ones and a simple straight orange slide. Emma was hesitant to go onto the slides, but after some observing and prodding, she went down the slides with me. There was also a separate area for foam play, which Emma enjoyed and requested to play again when she saw the foam bubbles activated. The foam area is open for 30 mins per session and opened every hour, costing 30 curio coins. Everyone is given 10 x 10 curio coins upon entrance. You can use the curio coins for balloon play and some other activities, but only the foam area caught Emma's attention. So we still have 40 curio coins leftover. There's also a sand area, but the sand is too grainy and the area too small. Also the Palawan beach is just outside, so if I were going for sand play, it makes more sense to play outside. 

Overall, I would say the place is most fun for kids aged 3-7 years old. Older kids would probably be quite bored after an hour or two max. 

Foam party!

"Mummy you want bubbles?"

Clovis, Melissa and Emma

Staycation - Marina Bay Sands + Children's Garden at Gardens by the Bay + Banyan Tree Spa

Thanks to Emma's favourite grand uncle Chong and grand aunties Hock Neo and Joon, we got to stay at MBS for 3D2N from 21-23 Mar. This was our second time staying at MBS, first time also thanks to Uncle Chong and Aunty Hock Neo. We previously stayed for 1 night last year (can't remember exact date, which proves all the more the point of this blog... to keep track!). 

On Friday I brought Leanne to check in first in the afternoon. Then we went up to the Skypark to take some pictures. After which I went to fetch Emma and we managed to go swimming, while waiting for everyone else to reach. 

We went to Din Tai Fung for dinner. They are famous for their xiao long baos which we ordered about 36 pieces in total including their Steamed Pork, Steamed Pork and Shrimp, Chilli Crab one, and some other one. They all taste the same to me though, except the Chilli Crab one. Plus some dishes here and there. While their Fried Rice was nice, never really felt that they had very substantial dishes. More like having lots of xiao cai rather than main dishes. 

We went back to Aunty Hock Neo's Suite room which was definitely spacious, where their bathroom alone was about 3/4 the size of our Premier room. There was a console wall separating the living room and bedroom, with a TV on each side. There was also a partition wall on each side where Emma had lots of fun playing with, and she also had a ball pretending to wash everyone in the bath tub. Aunty Hock Neo was tempted to have Emma stay with them for the night. Well, they ended up going to the casino after we left so I imagine that they had more fun there than if they were stuck in the room with Emma lol.

Next morning we headed to the Children's Garden at Gardens by the Bay after breakfast. I knew that it opened last year but didn't want to go immediately as it would surely be very crowded. We started off in the dry area for toddlers. They were having some performers in costumes to entertain the kids. I was bored but Emma was somewhat entertained. There were also 2 overaged girls who had been playing in the wet area, and now came over to play in the toddler dry area. They were making the see-saw, the swing, the balance beams, etc. all wet, dirty and slippery for the other kids. Other kids could not sit on the see-saw after they vacated, as they were dry and the seats were wet. The balance beam became muddy and slippery after they went onto it. The mother was either inconsiderate, ignorant, or just plain stupid. Andrew had to go and politely tell her that the kids should not play in the toddler dry area because well, they were wet. At least she had the sense to bring them back to the wet area after that. 

Daddy teaching Emma to drink milo the old-fashioned way... on a saucer

After Emma had her fun in the dry area, we brought her to the wet area. The toddler wet area, the Fish Fountain, is just made up of several fish spouting water out of their mouths. Nothing really much you can do differently after the initial 5 mins. So we headed to the main wet area. 

Curiously moving forward when the fountain sprays are off...

Running for cover when the water starts spraying!

At first Andrew and I were pondering whether to just let her get wet in her clothes then change her up, or to change her into her swimming costume. We decided to be lazy and just let her play in her clothes. However, seeing everyone else in swimming attire, Emma also wanted to wear her swimming costume. My goodness, self-conscious at the age of 2! 

Daddy braving the waters with Emma

There were a number of parents who brought huge-ass DSLRs with long zoom lenses to capture the moments of their kids playing in the water. Well, I just wonder how many of them would just put aside the cameras and just head in and play with their kids. I only have the shots above, because after that I put my phone with my helper, and went into the water to join daddy and Emma. I ran one round with Emma into the water and we came back out. Then I asked her if she wants mummy or daddy to go into the water with her, and she took daddy's hand with her left hand and my hand with her right hand and the three of us ran into the water together, round and round. Yup, we ended up very drenched and only Emma had a change of clothes. Fortunately our room was only 10 mins walk away. 

After playing, we quickly headed back and changed up. Headed to the food court for a quick lunch. As we were finishing lunch, a woman started screaming at her helper at the next table. 2 kids were seated at the table with the helper eating, while she came back with her 3rd kid carrying a tray of food each. She yelled at the helper to help with the trays, and said that "she don't know how to help is it". When she placed the food on the table, she gave the empty trays to the helper and muttered loudly "you don't know how to take care of the children then you got to take care of these". The helper, who looked Indonesian, also had her hair shaved like the $2 haircut that army boys get on Tekong. While my helper noted that the Indonesian helper was not taking initiative to help, I can't help but wonder:
(i) What is the woman teaching her 3 children by screaming and yelling at the maid like that? The maid is also human, and deserves to be treated with respect and not like a slave.
(ii) I doubt the helper shaved her own hair like an army recruit willingly. 
(iii) She is only causing the maid to resent her more, and if she has to leave her kids alone with the maid, hmmm wonder how the maid will treat her kids in her absence? 

Surely she could have just gotten her helper's attention and asked her for help. After all, the maid may have been engrossed in eating, hence just simply did not notice them approaching the table. I really hope that this is not a common behaviour of how Singaporeans treat their helpers; she really reminded me of a slave-driver. 

After which, we headed back to the Hotel. On the way back to Tower 2, Emma fell asleep on Andrew's shoulders; perfect. Just in time for me to head to Tower 1 for the Banyan Tree Spa where I arranged for a 90mins Lomi-Lomi massage. The masseuse was from Thailand and she had cracked joints in my body that I hadn't realised existed. I hadn't had that cracking sound for quite a number of massages. With her knees on my back, she grabbed the sides of the massage bed and pulled herself towards me. My upper back cracked. Of course, the ambience of the Banyan Tree Spa was lovely with the typical wooden poles, and scented with essential oils. Halfway through my massage, I heard a baby cry, and thought it sounded suspiciously like Leanne. True enough, it was Andrew bringing Leanne as she was hungry. Sigh, the sacrifices of a breastfeeding mother. Fathers can happily go off "molesting" Lego mini-figurines in 7-11 stores, but mothers are constrained by the 2-3 hourly schedules of their feeding babes. Luckily she is a fast drinker and took only about 10 mins or so. My masseuse tried to make up for lost time, but unfortunately she did have another appointment immediately after. After I was done with my massage, they also provided some refreshments to enjoy at their tea lounge before heading back to the bustle outside. 

Reception

Massage room with lovely view, though blinds were closed when massage started

Tea lounge

After my massage, I went back to the room and Emma woke just as I came back. We sent our helper to the MRT where she could make her way back home. It was a nice balance, having her for one day especially where she could help take care of Leanne while we were playing with Emma in the Children's Garden, and one day just the 4 of us having some family time together. We had some time before dinner, and decided to have an impromptu picnic at the Skypark. 

Cake first...

then smile for photo!

We headed to Imperial Treasure for dinner where Uncle Chong had made reservations. The corridor lead to this area where we could overlook the casino, and I had my first glance into the Singapore Sands casino. It looked exactly the same as the Macau Sands casino. Oh well. Aunty Hock Neo's sister Aunty Jenny and her family also joined us for dinner. The bamboo clams were good. Leanne however was not, so Aunty Joon, Andrew and I took turns to carry her during dinner. Sigh, the disadvantages of having a baby. After dinner, those without kids under the age of 18 went back into the casino, aka everyone else. We, poor sad sods with kids not allowed into the casino, headed back to our room for the night. 

The next morning, we headed to Rise for breakfast. While the variety of food was not as much compared to Silver Shell Cafe at Shangri-la Rasa Sentosa, I must say the quality was better. The cold cuts, cheeses, dim sum, smoked fish... nice! Emma ate A LOT, enough to go without lunch before her afternoon nap. 

All in all, the Hotel does live up to expectations, with its huge bathtub (large enough for 2 which sadly now means me and Emma rather than me and Andrew), nice amenities (including TWG tea), spacious rooms, and of course the rooftop infinity pool. They now have people to check the validity of the key cards before allowing access to the pool, which has greatly reduced the number of gawkers and restored some of the pool's allure. I was also able to check-in at the Sands Lounge instead of queuing up at the Front Desk, so that was a better experience. As mega hotels go, it is quite nice. For more personalised and VIP treatment, there is the Paiza club. For tourists, this is the glam version of Singapore, where the Shoppes are out to empty your wallet by the thousands, if not by the ten thousands. There is still plenty to do around the area, and hopefully will bring Emma to the ArtScience Museum for the dinosaurs exhibition before it ends in July. 

Disney on Ice: Treasure Trove

We went to catch Disney on Ice on its opening night in Singapore Indoor Stadium. Maybank had a promotion where tickets were flat $20 across all categories. Cat 1 was fully sold out so we ended up in Cat 2, which was still 50% cheaper as the original price was $40 per ticket. 

The show left a deeper impression on me this time, compared to 2 years ago when we watched it. Back then Emma was only 7 or 8 months old, and fell asleep halfway after latching. I don't remember much of the show either.

When we entered, as usual, tons of Disney merchandising to empty the wallets of parents. Daddy asked Emma to choose, and she chose Mickey Mouse binoculars. Daddy asked her if she wanted anything else, and she was happy with just the one item. So proud of her! 

This time, the props seem to be more impressive, especially the animal props on the human skaters with the wilderbeasts and giraffes and zebras and birds and ostriches. It appeared they had taken a leaf or two out of the Lion King musical which had tons of such human props. They also had a special mechanism that allowed for flying Peter Pan and Tinkerball, as well as a flying magic carpet for Jasmine and Aladdin. Very nice!

Emma liked the Princess segment, where there was a castle in the background and the various Disney princesses came out with their princes. She liked Snow White especially, and I was also impressed by their stunts that they performed. However, when subsequent princess/ prince pairings came out, it felt repetitive. After all, how many different stunts can you perform based on a duo?

All in all, not bad for $20 worth of entertainment!

Emma and her Mickey Mouse binoculars

The Disney Princesses (see Mickey and Minnie near the castle?)

Club Med Cherating

I've been wanting to try out the Club Med concept of an all-inclusive vacation since back in my uni days when we discussed Club Med in Marketing class. Since Leanne is still young, I wanted to go to someplace near where we can take it easy. I opted for Cherating over Phuket, Bali and Bintan due to the fact that it had a Baby Club Med. As it was free for kids under 4, and there was a 30% offer, the bill was $1369 for 4 of us for 4D3N inclusive of membership fees. 

To get there, you can either drive up or fly to Kuantan via Firefly. Since we don't have a car, and because Emma loves to take aeroplanes, we opted for the flight. There was a promo going on, and it cost MYR874 in total for the 4 of us (infant fare for Leanne was MYR100, so it was MYR258 per pax or about SGD100). Flight was also inclusive of 20kg baggage allowance per person. The plane was really small, 19 rows, each row having a 2-2 seat configuration. The door of the plane at the back opened downwards to form the steps up to the plane. Yep, that's how small it was. 

It was Leanne's first flight and she looks to be on track to be a good traveller like Emma. She latched on during take-off and slept throughout the flight. Emma didn't sleep but Andrew kept her entertained with Kinder Surprise Eggs (recently she's into this toy egg thing, fascinated by youtube videos showing the opening of toy eggs). Anyway it was a pretty short flight of 1 hour. 

The entire tarmac for our flight

We arrived at the airport. They seriously have like 2 flights a day, one MAS that flies to and fro KL and the other our Firefly flight to and fro SIN. We were out of the airport within 20 mins, and that's because we took our time. There were 4 counters to clear 25 passengers (yes that's the grand total of passengers on our flight). Such a busy airport.

Upon exiting the airport, there were 2 taxi counters. One was for budget taxi and the other for limousine. Upon further enquiry, the price was RM75 for budget and RM80 for limousine. Since the price difference was negligible, we opted for the "limousine". It's not like a Mercedes, just a Proton that was 2000cc and above. The ride took about 45 mins from the airport to the resort.

Emma fell asleep in the car while Leanne continued sleeping, so we had two sleeping beauties on our hands when we arrived. We checked into the rooms and placed the girls on the bed. The room was sparsely furnished with simple curtains and a sofa bed; reminded hubby of the rural huts we saw in Malapascua. Half an hour or so in the room, we realised that the bed was infested with bed bugs! We got freaked out and requested to change room immediately. The reception said the new room would be available in an hour's time and asked us to stay in the room. We were too freaked out and didn't want to risk the bed bugs spreading to our luggage, stroller, kids, so we just brought everything to the reception on our own. 

While waiting for our room to be ready, we headed to the Snacking Noodle Bar for a bite. We sat on this sofa seat with a window ledge behind us. I didn't notice it at first, only when Emma woke up and started to stand on the sofa and explore the ledge, looking out the window, then I realised that the ledge was filled with cobwebs and dead insects. This is not a remote corner in the resort where yes understandably there are bugs and insects around. This is in a very accessible ledge in F&B restaurant where kids can play and explore with their hands, then turn around and feed themselves using the same hands, especially if parents don't pay attention. Not a good start. On a separate note, the noodles were not bad, typical hawker fare like shredded chicken or malaysian curry noodle with choice of noodle (kway teow, vermicelli, lau su fen, yellow noodles). 

We went back to the reception, where they apologised for the bed bugs and upgraded our room to Deluxe (instead of Superior). The room appeared similar to the Superior room, only instead of where the sofa bed had been, there was a big shelving with the CRT TV and fruits. Apparently, bath robes are provided for Deluxe rooms but not Superior (didn't see any in the first room). There was more substantial furnishing (at least there was now a proper headboard instead of just flimsy curtains) and no more termite-eaten corners in the bathroom. I would say maybe like a 3-3.5 star hotel. To their credit, they also included a baby bath tub for Leanne. 

Finally we are ready to explore the resort. We went swimming. The pool is really catered for kids. 30% of the pool was 1.45m for adults; 50% was 0.7m (waist level); and 20% was knee level with some fountain jets. We went swimming everyday as it was quite fun and one of the few activities Emma could do. 

The village also had nightly performances at 9.15pm performed by the G.O.s. They really have a very tough job. Not only do they need to be professionally trained for the respective day activities to teach guests, they need to mingle and eat with guests during meal times and perform 3 times a week (they take turns to present a performance every night) and party after that. Anyway back to the performances. The performance on the first night was a musical medley with impersonations by the staff. Hilarious good fun!

Emma engrossed in the performance

Audience participation in mass dance

We didn't watch the performance on the second night as it had ghouls and skeletons on the backdrops. For the third night, it was a Circus show which was impressive. The staff are really multi-talented! A Korean lady called Bonnie was a boutique staff by day, and at night she was a mermaid twisting and dangling in the air with two ropes. Another Japanese lady was also very flexible, definitely had been professionally trained for such acrobatic acts. During the entire act, Andrew had already drilled Emma so much not to do the stunts on her own, that the people were professionally trained, that Emma was telling me, Emma cannot do, not for me. After the show there was a white party and fireworks too (which we saw from our room)! 

That's Bonnie!

Staff dressed in various white costumes for White Party after performance

Food wise, the main restaurant food is hit and miss. Not fantastic but not horrible either; just edible to fill your stomach before you head off to the next activity. I love desserts but their cakes are quite unappetising. I took a small bite out of each of their normal cakes and had no incentive to take a second bite. The tiramisu is horrible, not the usual light alcohol-infused sponge but a pudding texture. But the white chocolate tart and cheesecakes are decent. Also you might want to give the coffee machine a miss. The coffee machine needed to be emptied while Andrew was waiting for coffee, and when the staff opened the machine to clear it, he saw 3 cockroaches running out. Yikes. 

They have another restaurant by the beach, Rembulan (I think). This is more a fine dining option. Reservations required for dinner, and we managed to eat there once. Fortunately the night we ate there, the restaurant was quite empty. Andrew and I both had the tenderloin medium rare which was good, and Emma had spaghetti. I wished we could have eaten here more as the quality of the food here was definitely better, but it was a 10 mins train ride from the lobby so not very convenient with the 2 of them. 

Activities wise, we only managed to try out the trapeze and archery. I would have liked to try out windsurfing / sailing as well, but perhaps next time. (We did windsurfing before in Four Seasons Maldives and were precariously trying to balance ourselves.) Why could we only do two activities? Because dear daddy had separation anxiety and didn't want to put his precious princess into Petit Club Med. There was only one other kid when we went to put her in, so daddy thought it would be more fun for her to stick with us. As for Leanne, she was 2 weeks shy of the 4 months minimum age requirement. But even if she had not been underage, we would not put her in as well. She is still breastfed and I didn't bring my pump, which meant I would have had to keep going back every 2-3 hours; and the daily rate for Baby Club Med was RM300. 

So on Friday afternoon while the kids were sleeping, we brought them out so we could try archery and trapeze. We wanted to use FaceTime as baby monitors and leave them sleeping in the room, but the Internet connection was too spotty and kept breaking off. So in the end we placed Emma in the stroller and carried Leanne to the archery range. I was not too bad a shot, but more luck than skill, resulting in very random shots from bulls-eye to the green colour (i.e. off the board and into the green sheet to prevent arrows from flying too far). Andrew was more consistent hitting the red and blue zone. There was also a tournament arranged and we were supposed to hit all colours on the board. Me with my random shooting managed to hit all colours in the 3rd round, and Andrew got all his in the 4th round. We both got bronze medals... yippie... Emma had a kick going on stage to collect the medals during the prize presentation. 

Leanne sleeping on the bench and Emma sleeping in the stroller

See the green sheet behind? Yep, many of my arrows ended up there...

Our medals! Lol... cheap thrill!

Next was the trapeze. The idea is to climb up to the platform, jump off and swing to hook your legs on the trapeze, after which to try and sit up on the trapeze, and do a flip on landing. Right. I just aimed to swing on the trapeze without falling off prematurely. At least we managed to try it. The climb up alone drained 70% of my energy already! 

The gift shop was also nice, and we bought the 45/88 shirts on sale. Most importantly, the shop had good aircon, unlike in our rooms or in the restaurant where we could still perspire. 

We didn't do anything on Saturday afternoon as we were too tired out and just slept together with the kids. We just took a nice stroll along the beach when Emma woke up (Leanne was sleeping on and off). The beach was also nice to walk as the breeze was nice and strong, but the waves too choppy not suitable for swimming. We headed for dinner then went for the Circus performance. 

Finally on Sunday morning, it was time to check out. 

Emma's "sad pout" that we are leaving

The profoundly busy Subang airport

Overall, I think we had fun. However with Leanne, someone had to handle her at all times, and she was too young to go into the pool or even hold her neck up properly. After all, Emma's first trip was to Angsana Bintan when she was 7-8 months old and was more stable. I think it may be fun to try Club Med again when Leanne is 4 and Emma is 6. Maybe we will try Club Med Phuket or Bali or Bintan then. :)