Day 78 fort silosa, mega fun, beach

Monday 19 March
Today we were heading back on to Sentosa, again using the Sentosa express. This was full until the first stop at Universal studios then almost everyone got off leaving us able to sit in comfort for the rest of the journey. We got off at the last stop, beach station and then boarded the tram which crawls down the beach road dropping people off at various stops. Its not actually that far to the last stop,Silosa Point, so perfectly walkable if its not too hot and sticky. The tram is free, as is most of the transport around the island once you are on it.
Just around the corner is the Silosa Skyway.

 A lift going up 11 storeys went to a walkway high in the trees with great views leading to Fort Silosa.

Views from the top

Island where the zipline finishes 

On the walkway

Info boards were placed every so often under canopies for shade/rain cover

This is the last remaining Fort here and has been preserved to tell the story of life in the 19th century, the fall of Singapore in 1942 and the brutal Japanese occupation until 1945.
It's completely free and includes audio reenactments and excellent exhibitions. We'd planned to spend an hour here, but we actually spent 3. There was far more to read and see than we expected, we learnt a lot and enjoyed wandering around the three trails set up to explore the fort.

Dioramas placed in strategic points with audio

Exhibitions inside these buildings

Art from WWII POWs

Samurai sword left behind after 1945

1000 cranes commemorating young girl who died due to radiation after nuclear bombs dropped.

Life under japanese occupation with war time memories

Letter home to UK from gunner in 1895

Conditions aboard ship

There are plenty of eating places along the beach.

We could gaze at the sand and sea while sitting in cool surroundings.

We'd  booked online tickets with Mega. They run 4 different activities and individually each one is quite expensive but the packages of two or more are much more reasonable and theres an extra 10% off if booked online. We chose mega climb and mega zip.
Once we were harnessed up they wrote our weight on our wristbands ( after 3 months of eating well that was a wince moment) and we boarded the little cart to take us to the site. It only takes 4 at a time. We were on the back facing the road, no seat belts and the harnesses we were wearing pushed us away from the seat. The cart rocketed up the slope and we wondered how many they lost off the back of the cart as we clung on with grim determination.

At the top we could chose 2 of the three levels for the mega climb (think Go Ape) so we went for the harder two. We got attached at level 2 and set off.
We immediately found this was much much harder than Go Ape. And much scarier!

After the first round we needed a break to let our hands recover, there was cold water to drink and we sat in the shade.
Level 3 thankfully didn't get any harder, just higher up. Although this meant the platforms wobbled as we arrived on them, not adding to our feelings of security!

This jump was psychologically scary

By the time we were half way round we were drenched in sweat
It was so hot and humid and we were putting in quite a bit of exertion.

Show off!

Not so easy now!

Then it was time for mega zip, just a short climb up the next level of the tower we were on. This was so much fun. We zipped down to the island on the beach feeling the breeze blow past us.

Base was a short walk across a bridge and along the sand to where we had signed in. We ditched our harnesses, had a cursory look at the photos they'd taken of us, decided to check what we'd caught on camera ourselves and crossed the road to the rest rooms. Here there were showers and a place to get changed in so it was swimsuits on and straight into the sea.

We laid out our clothes on the beach to dry as we were going to have to wear them home as we relaxed in the lovely water.
We had half an hour relaxing on the beach when, although the temperature stayed warm, dark clouds appeared and we noticed we couldn't  see the ships in the harbour any more: it looked like mist. We heard thunder and the lifeguards told everyone not to swim as there was a danger of lightning strikes. However the zipwire overhead continued to operate just fine!
We then experienced  Singapore rain.
Large heavy drops fell and we abandoned the beach. We picked up some of the photos from Mega (although this is not advertised, it's much cheaper to take the photos electronically, not as prints) and went to get changed.
By the time we came out it was raining properly and taking the beach tram home seemed the sensible idea. Everyone else had the same sensible idea so the trams got very packed!

beach tram- this moves at a very slow speed.

It wasn't  a long journey to the express where we had an ice-cream before boarding. Back on the mainland the sentosa expressa lands back in the bottom of the biggest mall on Singapore so we had an explore before getting the MRT home. Neither of us were particularly hungry so we grabbed a sandwich at the 7 11 to take back to our apartment.

Inside sentosa express