Legoland!!

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Geo: 1.48, 103.75

The day started early and this is probably so far the most tiring day! We went to the Singapore flyer to check in at 8am for our tour to Legoland. It was quite easy, just telling them the name and then they checked you in. A week ago, the bus was empty but as I sat in the bus, more and more people came in and it was almost full by the time we left! Half the bus was adults and the other half, kids!! I guess Legoland is more for kids than adults.

To get to Johor Bahru, we had to go through 2 sets of customs, one to exit Singapore and the other to enter Malaysia. There is a bridge to cross Singapore and Malaysia, which I'll call the neutral zone between the 2 customs. It was quite easy and the customs officers were friendly. The Malaysian ones looked really laid back. One glance at your face and they didn't even seem to check the bags when it went through the x-ray machine!

The trip from Malaysian customs to Legoland took only about 15 minutes. Upon arriving there was already a lot of people. Everything in Legoland had the Lego colours, even the hotel. We took a few photos outside Legoland. There were a lot of people, quite a few of them were tour groups of adults (!) and a lot of children. Whilst the queue to get in was long, it moved quite quickly as tickets were scanned by a barcode reader at the entry gate.

First thing we visited was Miniature World where they created lots of Asian landmarks like the Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China, The Forbidden City using nothing but Lego bricks. Following that we went to Lost Kingdom Adventure where you basically shoot at things and get points. Next up was Dino Island, which is a water roller coaster – we got wet! And I reckon I took a couple of hours to dry off. We then watched a 4D movie – which I almost fell asleep until the special effects came on. What effects? Rain, snow and wind! That woke me up.

Lunch was next but as we eating it started raining really hard! So most of the rides were closed and we walked around from place to place looking at things. The observation tower was the only one open. So we went up there and had a good view of Legoland. We also found that at Lego Technic, Technic Twister was open. It was similar to the tea cup ride at Disney world I think, where you sit in there and you go round and round. Winnie went on out of boredom I think but she seemed quite happy with it!

After a couple of hours, the rain stopped and the rides opened again. We went on a train which gave us a tour of Legoland. It was slow but relaxing. After that we went to two rollercoasters. First up in LEGO Kingdoms was a rollercoaster called The Dragon. This was ok. It was a 15 to 20 minute wait for a 30 second ride. The ride had a few twists before finishing. Before the main event, there was a slight dip and the kid next to me had his eyes closed! Then I think he got used to it and opened his eyes. I think he enjoyed it in the end. Next stop was Lego Technic. The ride itself was called Project X. We went up 18 metres in the air and dropped down a very steep descent. I found this one was similar to Mouse Trap at Luna Park, except that the big drop was right at the start. This was probably the most fun part but after that a few turns and twists and a couple of small drops.

After that it was back to Singapore. Again we had to go through two sets of customs, to exit Malaysia and re-enter Singapore. Traffic at both customs was really bad. I'm guessing it's due to Singaporeans returning from a weekend or day to Johor Bahru since it is so close.

For dinner we went to Lau Pa Sat. We had the satay of course. What we didn't like was that as soon as we walked through, all these stall owners came up to us, ambushed us and claimed that it was the best satay. We relented to one which claimed that it won Hong Kong awards! The food was good. Not usually a prawn eater myself, I found the prawn to be really nice to eat. Somehow over the charcoal bbq, it became very tasty. Also with it came chicken, beef and lamb. To have that bbq meat and the satay sauce made the food really yummy. The flavours really came out. It was so good that we finished the satay so quick and we were still hungry and decided to order more. It was so hard trying to get the waiter's attention. We tried calling them a number of times, they would say yes then get distracted by other customers walking it and peddling them the menu. Eventually, we walked up to a waiter to order. We got more chicken satay but the food came in bits and pieces. Lau Pa Sat gets a big fat zero for service.

After that, we went to Marina Bay Shoppes to watch the light show from the other side. This time the light show made more sense as some water pumps made some mists over the bay and images were projected onto them from lasers behind the mists. Also accompanying the lights was some music.

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