Morning
Afternoon
Night life
Saturday was the first free day of the study tour. That means that the group was split up into smaller groups that all did their own thing. The previous days the groupchat was filled with a variety of proposals on how to spend this day. In today’s blog you will follow Twan and Timon on their last day adventure.
My (Timon) group went to an island called Palau Ibun. This former granite mine has now turned back to a beautiful island with lots of wildlife and nature. The group that went there even saw wild troops of monkeys!Another group went to Sungei Buloh wetland reserve where they saw otters, snakes and monitor lizards.
In the evening most groups went back to the Marina bay, where some enjoyed the gardens by the bay and others went up the Marina Bay Sands to enjoy the view. At that point an unexpected fireworks show appeared! The different groups of Japies enjoyed this show from different angles, but the group on the Marina Bay Sands definitely had the best view.
My (Twan) day started off with a large coffee and a sandwich at a bakery. After breakfast we went to the aquarium. The aquarium was noted as one of the best ones in the world and it lived up to its name! It had a huge ocean basin and two underwater tunnels, going under separate aquariums. We walked around in the aquarium for a few hours and had a great time.
After we were finished at the aquarium, Sander, Mathijs and I decided to have a walk around the peninsula where the aquarium was located. There was quite some nature and a large resort with a beautifull beach and some small islands. While the view on the islands was quite nice (as you could see Jurong Chemical park in the distance), the beaches were a bit of a mess as someone had done a small oopsie involving leaking 400 tons of crude oil into the ocean.
After our nice walk it was time to visit one of the most popular attractions in Singapore: the botanical gardens! Here we walked around for about 5,5 hours and saw turtles, otters, lizards and more. The gardens also had a separate orchid garden filled to the brim by orchids. They even had a shop selling live orchids in a small tube. After considering to buy one of these orchids, I opted not to in the end as having to go through the ‘I have something to declare’ line at three different airports and declaring my tropical plant seemed like a lot of work for one orchid.
We ended of the day at the marina bay sands hotel, where we first watched the light show in the gardens and then went on to try our luck in the casino. It was at this moment that I decided to invest all of my remaining cash into the roulette wheel. So after 30 seconds I was down $2 and ready to leave. Many more stories can be told about this day as all groups spread over Singapore, but most of us went for a good night of sleep.
Luckily the hotel also had a club that we decided to visit. The club was quite nice as it had multiple floors, a ferris wheel, a slide and they were blasting techno music. They also had a large sign displaying people’s birthdays, which was cool as it also happened to be Sander’s birthday. One of us informed the staff that it was Sander’s birthday and asked if his name could be displayed as well. Once we were informed that this would cost us a mere S$10.000 (~€6900) our enthusiasm quickly dwindled and no one ended up loving Sander enough to make this small sacrifice. We ended the night in the hostel were 2 to 4 hours of sleep was awaiting us. Written by: Timon Roose & Twan Scheres
