So we’ve been spending the past three weeks describing (in some detail) our Taiwan trip (you can see the entries here, here and here). This week we return to our adventures in the sunny (note: very sunny) island of Singapore; this week’s place of interest will surely ring a bell (and even tug the heartstrings) of Singaporean everywhere!
The Underwater World at Sentosa was opened in the early 1990s, and was one of Singapore’s popular attractions. The 28-hectare oceanarium housed over 2,500 different marine animals during its lifetime. We both remembered visiting the Underwater World back in our primary school days, and as young, curious adolescents we were enthralled by the numerous sea creatures on display!
When we found out that the Underwater World was closing for good (possibly due to the newer, modern iteration that is the S.E.A. Aquarium at Resorts World Sentosa), we knew we just had to go there (following our tradition of visiting places that are about to close down!) We were anticipating huge crowds, seeing that we were going on the last day of its operation. Turns out, we were right!
Happy faces visiting a familiar place…… Only to encounter this! Yes, the queue was madness, but the crowd inside would be far worse.😦Upon entering the premises, a huge aquarium holding coral reefs and fishes was there for Sandra to snap!Caught it!Stingray!A throng of curious visitors hoping to ‘pet’ the rays!A whole array of unique-looking fish, nautilus and the horseshoe crab; just some of the more interesting marine animals and fish found at the Underwater World!Featuring the spider crab!The view of the iconic travellator that passes through the oceanarium… from the outside! It seems as if the visitors were the exhibits themselves. Hmmm…A rather striking seahorse!Yeah, it was that crowded Nemo… or the clownfish, as it is properly called.Dory… as it is properly called, the Blue Tang.The travellator! This passage brought back memories of our younger selves enjoying the slow-moving pavement, with ‘ooohs’ and ‘ahhhs’ echoing through the clear tunnel.It really felt like we were… underwater!It has to be said, but these sharks really look lazy, just lazing at one corner of the oceanarium eh hehThe giant grouper! It is really as big as you can imagine (almost the length of a human being).
Oh look, a jellyfish!
Hello there! We caught a picture of a diver, feeding the fishes in this aquarium.This is a guaranteed attraction for the visitors of the Underwater World!
Stepping outside, we spotted the turtles swimming in a huge pond. This one was coming to the surface to take a breather!
As is known amongst the locals, peacocks and peahens can be spotted around Sentosa. Thankfully the colourful birds were not aggressive, but we have heard of stories of attacking peacocks!
We brought our Instantflex camera (which was recently refurbished) to test out the new brightened screen, and we were not disappointed! It really helped us to compose our shots better, and our results are shared below!
Very murky-looking, fitting for a mysterious underwater environment!Shutter capturing the fast movement of the fishes swimming!Nemo furiously following the water current!Damian – the handsome photographer 🙂Peacocks!
Visiting the Underwater World allowed us to reminisce our past memories. It is sad to see such an iconic attraction be closed down. Ironically, they probably had a lot more visitors during the past 2 weeks or so (and yes we were one of them too).
Damian with Sandra 
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