We all felt like crap today. Chewed up and shat out. It stank.
And it happened twice.
Two of us thought it fun.
All of us saw something shocking.
And more than one thing simply frightening.
Hopefully we all learned something from the experience.
I’m talking about the Singapore Science Centre.
After a pretty decent breakfast of kaya toast (next door shopping centre), nasi lemak and laksa (local Tanjong Pagar centre across the road) we caught the MRT to Jurong East and walked to the Science Centre.
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| Their laksa might be cheap compared with Australia, but their pizzas aren’t! |
Fortunately, we were just in time to catch the Tesla coil lightning show as a similar facility had been closed for maitenance at Canberra’s Questacon and booked out at Melbourne’s Scienceworks during our visits. I especially like the hydrogen balloon bursting.
There were some really fantastic exhibits around the centre. Alex got stuck for ages building his own marble run contraption out of bits and pieces and I had a go on an Occulus Rift (crap resolution). We were blown by 120 km/h gusts of wind in the typhoon simulator. Not great for your hair!
We paid extra for the Human Body Experience where you travel down the mouth and through the interior of a simulated body, full of inflated organs. It’s dark and confined and Alex found it scary, but B and I enjoyed it. The intestine does stink though, like the Poo machine of MONA in Hobart.
The other extra exhibition was Monsters of the Sea which features full sized animatronic replicas of humongous sharks, reptiles and dinosaurs from prehistory. It’s scary to imagine sharing a world with them!
It’s been twenty years since my first and only other visit to the science centre and there have been a few changes. The cloud chamber, where you could watch traces of passing cosmic rays, has gone. Pity, because that was my favourite exhibit. Also the Burger King, where I had my first Whopper (it was near the end of almost a month in Singapore and Malaysia and I was starving), is now a McDonalds.
It is possibly the best science centre that I have visited, though comparisons are always hard because each place has its own special offerings. As long as you learn or understand a concept better when you come out, that’s all that counts.
We spent hours in the science centre. After emerging into the humidity we walked across to the Jurong East shopping centre, stopping by to eat some apom balik. Alex had mee siam in the basement and I was tempted by a Katong 328 laksa. We did some shopping, then B had a dinner of ba ku teh. She said her own version was better, but neither Alex nor I eat it.
Alex was exhausted and starving by the time we caught the MRT back to Tanjong Pagar. He and I had dinner at the nearby Maxwell Food Centre. Despite it only being barely 8pm most of the stalls were closing.
Based on previous experience I broke my rule of going somewhere else when there’s a queue of Singaporeans and waited for the Hokkien prawn noodles from the Marina South stall. They are so good when you mix in the sambal. Alex gobbled them up, but we had to buy him a fried rice while I finished off with a pretty good rojak.
Now satisfied, we walk back to the hotel, another day complete.