Staycation @ RWS (Part 3)

Sorry for the lack of posts and effort in blogging. As in the previous posts, I’m busy planning for the exchange (sometimes I feel so fed up over it that I don’t want to go already). Don’t get me wrong, I love travelling, I just don’t like to be constrained when travelling/overseas. It’s hard to elaborate further on this constraint thing, well put in a 2 words: TIME AND MONEY.

Anyway today’s post is gonna be about our staycation before National Day! Read the previous posts here and here.

So after the Bailey’s and movie session that night, we went to sleep at 2plus! So much for wanting to stay up right. Fail sia. Honestly I didn’t sleep much, I prefer my own bed! But we woke up at around 8 to 8.30am (thanks to my alarm hehe) and surprisingly everyone woke up too. We went to The Forum for breakfast. Initially we wanted MCD (I think) or toast box but we saw that Ruyi (Basement 1) had breakfast sets so we went there! You can choose either Fish/Chicken Porridge or fried rice and they come with a cup of coffee/tea for $5.50!

Shared the chicken porridge with Rachel, together with peanut toast from toast box. And of course you got to mix all the ingredients in the porridge! Personally I didn’t like the porridge. It’s quite grainy and not the smoother and silkier kind of porridge that I anticipated. Furthermore the chicken taste like it’s leftover from the night before. The tea came in quite a small paper cup. It would be better if it’s refillable. I think for $5.50, it’s not worth it. They do have the non-breakfast menu available as well.

So after not-so-nice breakfast at Ruyi, we went to Starbucks to have some coffee fix! This Starbucks at RWS is different from all other Starbucks in Singapore as it sells coffee that are made from more exotic beans. I thought that it would be quite expensive to have a cup of coffee made from these exotic beans, however, the price range is about the same as a cup of normal Starbucks coffee. I love the vintage feel of the storefront, makes me want to go in and explore! It’s located on the first level at the Forum.

A close up of the menu for the reserve coffee, in case you think I’m kidding you that it’s the same price as normal coffee. I was a little disappointed that they don’t have Kopi Luwak. Kopi Luwak is otherwise known as cat shit coffee, a very direct term for it. But despite the name, the coffee is actually very nice but it’s so expensive! One cup can costs up to $20+ in some countries or even more. But I can never forget the taste of it because it’s so good on its own, even without sugar.

A description of what we ordered. We ordered the Guatemala Finca Los Caballitos, Pour Over type @ $6.50. Difference between pour over and French press? I’m not sure too, pour over as the name suggests, it’s just pouring hot water (of a certain temperature) over a piece of filter paper with the coffee powder on it. French press is like pressing coffee taste out from the powder. So one is press, one is pour.

The barista showing and telling us how she actually made the coffee. It was really nice seeing how she actually make our cup of coffee and she also advised us how we should go about drinking it. She got us to try the first sip before deciding whether we want to add milk accordingly. It was quite bitter so we asked for milk and sugar to taste. The original taste of the coffee tastes like a milder version of black coffee and with a very light tinge of sourness. The barista told us that we’re supposed to taste some lemon but we aren’t coffee connoisseurs so we didn’t really taste that. Anyway after drinking many mouthfuls of it, I think the taste wasn’t too bad! Just add some milk and sugar!

doing the pour over, fascinating that the “cup” has a little hole below for the coffee to drip into the cup

Staycation @ RWS (Part 2)

HELLO!! Ready for Part 2?? We initially planned for a dinner at Jamie’s Italian, so we got Rachel and Amanda to set off after they’ve bathed to get a queue number first. But alas, Alicia and I didn’t pick up the phone, we didn’t realised that they hadn’t left sentosa at all until we were about to leave. Turns out that the monorail queue was snaking long and it will take even longer to reach sentosa. So they waited for us at the Forum and sigh we sort of had a debate/argument over where to eat because I really wanted to try Jamie’s Italian. Stubbornness sucks. Anyway we went to vivo by RWS8, my fault for not mentioning over the phone that there’s a bus to get out of Vivocity. When we reached Jamie’s Italian at 8.20pm, we were told the earliest we can get a seat is in 2.5hrs time. And they closed at 10pm -.- WHUTTTT. So anyhow, we settled dinner at The Soup Restaurant, where the famous plate of chicken reigns. I’ve seen it far too many times on instagram but I haven’t tried it.

Soup Restaurat
Vivocity, 1 HarbourFront Walk #02-141
Tel: 6376 9969
Opening Hours: Lunch: 11.30 am – 2.30 pm, Dinner: 5.30 pm – 10 pm, Sat,Sun,PH : 11.30 am – 10pm http://www.souprestaurant.com.sg

Anyway we got a table quite fast cz I think it’s quite late. I love the Chinese, vintage feel of the place! I didn’t order anything off the menu, Amanda and Alicia were the one ordering because they always eat there!

OMG the Samsui Ginger Chicken (Small, $15.90). The big one costs $30+. But there’s only 4 of us, so the small one is enough! HEHE so happy to be eating this, it’s my first time eating it. At first when it came, I thought, “like quite ordinary hor, but why so many people always order it.” It comes with a plate of vegetables. WHY? It’s for you to wrap it with the chicken, ginger and cucumber. You can of course choose to omit any of the last 2 but the chicken is mandatory! I’m not a fan of ginger, but Alicia said that it’s nicer to put ginger with it. For my first wrap, I ate it with only a little bit of ginger and then I know what Alicia meant by putting more ginger. SHE’S RIGHT. So for my second wrap, I put half a teaspoon of ginger, and it’s damn good. The crunchiness, cold and refreshing taste of the vegetable is such a good combination with the ginger. If you must know, the ginger doesn’t taste like the ginger we usually eat, it has a milder ginger and less raw taste though. THANKS ALI FOR THE RECOMMENDATION! (I’m salivating at the thought of it. I want to go back there again!)

Samsui Ginger Chicken

see that plate of veg??

They ordered Claypot Tofu (Small, $8). Despite it being small portion and just $8, we all ate 2-3 pieces of the tofu. But it’s abit sweet for me though.

Claypot tofu

I cannot pass up sambal dishes. So for the veg, we got Ah Kon Fan Shu Leaves (Small, $8.90). I think this one is not kangkong right?? I’m so bad at vege names, so I just call them vege altogether. The sambal was of the right spiciness for us and it tasted really nice and appetising!

sambal ah kon fan shu leaves

They also ordered this Steamed San Yu Fish Slice ($10.90). I cannot comprehend why the fish dish only costs $2 more than the vege -.- But anyway it’s sliced fish steamed with ginger and nice soy sauce! I think it’s quite nice, very generous amount of sliced fish leh!!

The order form, which shows you what dishes there are!

Verdict: In total we paid $57.60 for all! Not seen in photos are the FOC soup that we got because we paid via OCBC card, our 4 plates of rice ($0.80 each). Plain water -> FOC!! I think for around $14 each, the meal is quite reasonable. The dishes were all nice and we didn’t have to wait very long for it. What left a deep impression on me was the chicken (oh gosh I’m hungry). It’s a must try!! Soup restaurant: affordable Chinese cuisine with good atmosphere. Service was quite good too, all the staff were efficient!

Went to walk around after dinner, we went into Pull&Bear so I can check out the jeans. End up it was Amanda and Rachel who both bought something there! Then we went to Giant to get some food for the night! We got Greenfields Milk (1L), Nestle Yoghurt drink (1L), Calbee potato chips (small), Calbee Prawn Crackers, 3 Nissin Instant noodles. Initially we wanted to get Sara Lee cake or cookies but decided not to because we want the MCD McNuggets!! And I doubt we can even finish so much. HAHA. Took the monorail back, it was 10plus by then and the last train departs close to 12mn I think. The hotel gave us complimentary passes for the monorail (which lasts for 3 days, one tap each day). Decided to take a group shot there since we didn’t take any at all from the start of the day till night -.-

was testing the phone camera to see if the lighting is ok

NOOBS STAYCATION

We started our night with some movies, but we kept changing until we stopped at “Letters to Juliet” HAHA. Horror movies are kinda boring at the start so we scraped that. We ate nuggets, ate chips and drank baileys. Rachel and I didn’t know that baileys can be drunk with milk added to it (so as to reduce the alcohol taste). But it tasted quite nice though!! Amanda added too much milk for us so we added more baileys! We went to sleep after the movie ended.

Staycation @ RWS (Part 1) X Adventure Cove Waterpark

Happy birthday Singapore! 🙂

Long weekend! In fact mine started when my intensive German lessons ended on Tuesday! I shouldn’t have gone for the Tuesday lesson because I didn’t learn anything new at all -.- Anyway joined the noobs at Adventure Cove @ RWS in the afternoon! We stayed for the night at RWS too! We could have gone overseas but because I was watching Phantom of the Opera on Wednesday, we couldn’t getaway -.- the staycation was decided only about 1 month in advance. Thanks to dad who got the room for us at a discounted rate, we all got our own bed to sleep in, unlike the previous time at Carlton where we got a 2 person room at the same price.

I’ll start with a personal review of our room first before moving on to the waterpark.

We stayed at Festive Hotel, the theme was orientated towards “family”. As such, the rooms were designed for a family to stay in. Some rooms have the loft bed (for kids), but some don’t. I’ve stayed at Festive Hotel previously and I stayed in a room with 2 single beds and a sofa bed. The sofa bed is actually for 1 person to sleep in but if you’re tiny/skinny enough, 2 persons can squeeze on it but not comfortable. The view from the balcony was splendid, it was overlooking to vivocity!

Anyway the room we had this time was different. We did not have such a big balcony but we have a loft bed! Ya, even though the design is for kids to sleep there, but it can fit one adult too! The room seems older than I last saw in March 2011 but at least each of us have a individual sleeping space, king sized bed, sofa bed and a loft bed. Oh, the bathroom was smaller also, instead of a shower, it had a bathtub, probably that’s what made the toilet smaller than the previous room I had. The loft bed as we tried, was very comfortable! But it’s such a bother to climb down though, because it’s so comfy you want to stay up there forever. Amanda didn’t even go toilet despite being very urgent because she was too lazy to climb down.

Some grips about the room that I had:
– the heater wasn’t working perfectly when we showered after coming back from adventure cove. I thought I was the only one but apparently Amanda, Alicia and Rachel had the same problem too. So we went down to feedback, and when the technician was checking it, the water was hot -.-
– I asked for extra spoons and forks and they said need to charge $5 because they have to transport the things here and there. sigh, end up we went to MCD to get the forks.
– The tv cannot be connected to the MacBook even with the HDMI plugged in. There seems to be no remote for the tv but only for the mio tv.
– we didn’t have a very good view from the balcony as it overlooks the carpark/car porch and the ‘forest’ but it you look sideways, you can see vivocity.
– NO FREE WIFI IN THE WHOLE RESORT. I can understand if there’s no wifi in the room, but no wifi in the lobby too??

The perhaps redeeming factors:
– Ice bucket for ice (to be taken at the ice machine near the lift)
– Tea was from TWG (haha why the tea so atas)
– Rack at the balcony to hang your clothes
– enough beds for all of us
– quite a number of power plugs

I didn’t take much pictures though.

the loft bed. had quite a hard time climbing up.

OKAY gonna write about Adventure Cove now!! It opens from 10am-6pm, costs $25 (using mastercard, original price was $29) for non peak periods. Here’s the link for the website on all the information you need to know!

Because it’s hard to find information about what you can wear there, I’m going to write it here for everyone’s benefit. Basically if you’re too shy to wear just your swimsuit only, you can wear a tank top, a tee over it. FBT shorts, beach shorts are allowed too. I actually saw some people wearing denim shorts. Lol. As for googles, I don’t really think there’s a need for them unless you’re wearing lenses. But we all wore lenses and when I went in, the 3 of them said that googles are quite useless. Googles is only useful if you’re going into the water right? The chances of you being completely in the pool (meaning the face too) is quite low, unless your float overturns when you’re coming down from the slide. And no slippers allowed on the rides, we placed our slippers in the lockers and literally burnt our feet when walking to and fro during the hotter part of the day.

RIDES VERDICT: (LONG POST AHEAD)

I didn’t try a lot of them because I went in only at 1pm and I went out from 2.20pm to 3.20pm (to check into the hotel) so I tried 6 rides in all. All the queues were really long. 😦 I am not exactly a swimmer, I haven’t been in the water for 5 years, haven’t swam for 8 years, and had the experience of drowning, so I wasn’t really keen to go to the waterpark. But not to spoil everyone’s mood I gamely agreed (like what was I thinking right -.-)

For starters, the 3 of them brought me to Adventure River first. It’s just like a river that meanders around the park, and you can stop halfway to go to other rides instead of walking (because it hurts to walk without shoes). We meandered for about one round and abit more to the next stop: Whirlpool/Spiral Washout. It’s actually 2 different rides and we only realised that after we queued for the longer ride. Subsequently people realised that there’s two queues. There’s only one float going down at one time despite being 2 slides. Not enough manpower bah, and also to ensure no collision of 2 floats. Each float can hold up to 2 persons, you can also ride it as a single rider! We did Whirlpool Washout first. No lifejackets allowed. Anyway me being a semi-non swimmer, found the ride super fun!!! HAHA. It is just like a rollercoaster! After that Amanda and I went to check into the hotel and I went back 1hr later without Amanda because she wants to sleep! ><

Rachel and Alicia tried the Dueling Racer while I wasn’t around. When I went back, we went to queue for Spiral Washout and it was freaking long -.- And two groups of ATs cut our queue, gosh. Anyway IMO, I think Whirlpool Washout seems to be the more thrilling one. Then we went for Pipeline Plunge and Tidal Twister. The queue seems super short but you have to wait for a float (from the people coming down the slide) and then take the float and walk to the queue that’s further up. To make it short, we didn’t do both consecutively, we did Riptide Rocket in the middle. My verdict for the former two rides: Pipeline Plunge seems to have a steeper plunge than the other (a lot of people were screaming) but Tidal Twister was indeed a twister ride, twisting around and around. We waited 1h for Riptide Rocket. Sit on the float and the travellator takes you up before going up and down like a roller coaster. IT IS INDEED THE MOST THRILLING RIDE IN THE WHOLE WATERPARK. It goes up and down 4 times, whooshing through the dark tunnels with endless spraying of water. It’s so dark you can’t see much, so fast everything’s a blur, so much spraying that you won’t even want to open your eyes. HAHA GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TO ALICIA AND ME? The ride was so fast we didn’t catch much and the next thing we knew, we were in the water. And I was struggling to find ground. YA OUR FLOAT OVERTURNED. Everything happened so fast! So you might want to consider wearing googles for this although you’ll look rather ridiculous because no one wore it. Our lenses shifted we went into the water and opened our eyes, yeah that moment, luckily it didn’t come out!

the photo they took during the day

when we were leaving

Anyway that’s all, we went back to the hotel to bathe before going to vivocity to eat. Was so surprised to find MCD in RWS!! Haha and a lot of nicer food places opened up at the Forum. Till Part 2! 🙂

PS: 1417 words. LOL one of the longest post I’ve written ><