week end trip to singapore

We had been to Singapore last week end. Singapore being a very small country, I thought I had seen every thing which a tourist/visitor should see and so would spend time with my son at home.
But this Singapore never stops surprising me. Last year when I went there and visited Sentosa Islands for a fifth or what ever time, I had not expected to see so much change and new things, but I did see lot of things , which really impressed me. Singapore is short of land, being a small island and it's space being limited.
This time when my son offered to take us to a new mall I thought it will be yet another mall.
But this vivocity which is near the harbour is really a different one. This was opened just two months back I was told. First the structure was very unique with so many curves and levels added to it. The location was also very good. It is just facing the Sentosa islands. In each level there is an open terrace from where you can just sit and watch the island and the view is superb. These terrace(s) have eating places, some small water parks for kids and lots of place to sit and relax.
The Sentosa island was connected to the main land by ferrys and ropeways when I visited it in the 90s. Later two or three years back it was connected by road and we could just drive inside.(by paying entry fees of course). Now this time from this mall Sentosa can be reached by monorail. I sat in the terrace and was looking at the rope way on one side going up and down, the mono rail moving like a caterpillar, the ferry fetching and dropping people, and also some cars and buses moving along the road. What improvement over the years. Who said malls are places where you shell out your hard earned money. It is a place to sit and relax also. Of course you do spend for reaching there and the drinks and eats you have also cost money, but that is not wasting your money. The concept and the execution is superb.
My blog would not end without comments about railways. We went and came back by train, managed by Malaysian Railways. The coach in which we travelled was AC 2 tier compartment. The berths are very uncomfortable. It is perpendicular to the coach unlike ours (in India) which is horizontal. Both sides are berths and there is place in the middle to walk. (our trains have space in the side for a meter gauge train also) The berths here are fixed unlike our side berths in the broad guage which can be folded. So the upper berth person has to be in his berth all the time as the lower berth is designated to the person travelling in it. Even though it is over night journey invariably the train is late and it reaches both ways only around 8 a.m. There is no space under the berth to keep one's luggage (as the fixtures for fixing the berth abstructs the space, bad design) and so one has to keep it in the next to the berth in the walking spce provided. We both were appreciating the design of our coaches back in India (though there is lot of things to be said about the maintainance of these coaches back home). Looks like it is a great period for Indian Railways and its minister too, getting appreciated all around.