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31 May 2010
East Coast Park Chalet Retreat!
Waa i'm back to Earth! Holiday's over. Monday blueee... I had the most enjoyable chalet experience in my life over the past three days. Its not about the chalet, but rather the people that i spent time with that made this chalet most fun.
Actually two days before our chalet, i stumbled upon a traveler's review site. This site actually reviewed that Goldkist is one of the worst chalet in Singapore, with 96% of the travelers not recommending to stay, and the latest review was April 2010. But luckily our chalet was not the same as what the reviews said. Read here if you are interested: Tripadvisor.
Our retreat started on 28 may, Vesak day, very good timing for a fri sat sun long weekend holiday. We happened to stay at the outermost end, so it was quite a walk from the main lobby to our cosy chalet, Goldkist@ East cost park Duplex Double storey A10. Cost for 3 days 2 nights is $420.
I liked our room, small and cosy. But have to climb stairs though. Only the room got air-con, downstairs no air-con, and it takes a while for the air-con to cool the room. A good idea is to detach the key from the tag, then always place the tag in the tag holder, so that the air-con will not be switch off when you go out.
After we settled our barang barang, we headed straight to Parkway Cold Storage to buy food for our evening BBQ. We agreed that we should buy more so that there will be enough food for everyone. More is really MORE! I see hands taking food from the shelves and throwing into our cold storage trolley as if we just won a 5min get all you can contest. Our BBQ food filled the trolley to the brim, as if we are buying food to eat for a week. Just the seasoning alone we took 3-4 bottles, you can imagine how much our trolley of BBQ food cost.
$300 BBQ food. - chicken wings - fish filet - bacon - Salmon - one dozen of eggs - prawns - capsicum - salad - hotdogs - squids - crabsticks - 1 packet of potatos - sweet potato - 1 tin butter biscuits - 3 bottles of wine - 2 packets of wholemeal bread - 2 packets of wholemeal wraps - starfruits and pears - Lays potato chips - 5 bottles mineral water - 1 roll toilet paper - Seasoning includes bottles of chili sauce, tomato sauce, pepper, salt, wine, soya sauce, mayonnaise, butter, honey
Preparation for the BBQ started as soon as we got back. So many things to do, wash utensils, wash food, cutting, marinading...
Prata is the man! Our BBQ chef! Watch him meticulously bbq the food you know he will be a very good househusband! haha.
Nice beautiful sunshine egg!
Capsicum with mushroom. Taste nice man! But can't taste the capsicum strong smell anymore.
Scrambled egg.
Unedible sweet corn...
Uninvited guest! o.o Prata captured this cockroach in high definition!
Bbq food is still bbq food, can't escape the unhealthy facts: oily, fattening, over cooked. This is one of the blue moons you will see me eating unhealthy. I make friends with a big and fat black cat there. I fed it with fish, crabstick but it only touch the bbq chicken wings, only after i tear the chicken wing into small pieces.
Shiok leh the cat. Got nicely peeled BBQ chicken meat from me.
After eating, we had our live singing performance by Chris. He sang 方炯镔- 坏人. We recorded and uploaded to Youtube. :)
Our first day past quickly. I got jiou for a mid night run by Joe1. Joe0 and me was sporting enough to run with her. This was the first time i ran with these two girls, lucky i am able to keep up with their pace. Haha. Stress you know, these two girls every time go to run at gym one. We 3 had a slow jog to 7eleven. It was not a good run for joe1, she was sicken by the smell of oil from the sea.
We did not sleep well for the night, it was 5.30am before we can even rest. Its time to watch sunrise! We had Mac Donalds breakfast and waited for sunrise at the beach. It was a long wait until the sun finally came up around 7am.
Second day was more fun. We went for a swim and suntan. The curse was finally broken. You know every time i bring my suntan lotion, i would never get a good sun for tanning. Finally i got a nice tan here! Prata turned black, Joe0 and Chris sunburnt. Shiok!
Rollerblading lucky still got Joe0, if not no one to rollerblade with me already. All too tired after the swim. Respect! Iron woman! The two of us saw a girl doing nice parallel slide at the rink, and we got the motivation to try parallel slide again. We observed the way the girl did parallel slide, very systematic step by step. We went to our secret area and tried out. It was much harder than we seen how the girl could did it so easily. I was constantly doing a sharp parallel turn instead of slide and Joe0 was doing a spinning haha. We fell alot but our spirits was high, tried and tried over and over again. 豁出去! It was no easy feat for a girl to keep falling and still climb on her feet to try again. Salute! We decided to continue rollerblade after dinner. During our skate back, we saw an amazing moonrise. The moon was super low in the sky with an orange glow, it resembled like the sun rising from the sea. I could even see a rabbit silhouette on the moon. Interestingly the moon really did rise higher and higher as we skate back.
Dinner was BBQ again. We were too tired for another round of rollerblading, nvm still got next time. :) Tonight we had a heroine: Joe1. She went for Adidas 10km Sundown run tonight and she got herself a medal! She never trained for this run but still can finish the run in 1hour. Power! Look at the smile on her victorious face! Her next goal: Standard Charted full marathon.
Drinking wine is always one of the best part of gathering. Surprisingly tonight red wine session kakis was out of the expected. Our drinker Joe1 went to sleep after drinking a cup, our red wine connoisseur Crispy also went to sleep after few cups. We only left Chris, Prata and Joe0 to finish 3 bottles of wine! 4 of us who hardly drink wine to finish 3 bottles of wine wtf! But this was when i saw their true powers haha. Prata suddenly turned into a wine monster, keep on drinking wine like drinking grape soda. Joe0 also confessed her wine session with her boss. Chris said enough, but keep on refilling his cup. All fake fake one...
See 3 bottles of wine? These two faking sleep only.
It was real fun, high but not drunk. Cheers and keep cheering. 3 bottles of wine mixed and drink also tried. The last cup was the ultimatum show-hand, one shot drink finish whole cup! No words can describe the hearty laugh that came from our heart at that moment. This was the moment i felt that my money spent on this chalet was worth every cents.
Waa busy busy packing my stuffs. Holiday loh! Tomorrow going to chalet! Eat liao play, play liao sleep! So many things to bring. I made a packing list so that i won't miss out the important things to bring. Haha. Some of the events i'm be anticipating are running, suntan, rollerblading, watch sunrise (Wow never seen sunrise after my secondary school days!). Shiok.
What is the next upcoming Donnie yen's movie that will make the blockbusters? I think this might: 大闹天宫
picture taken from http://movie.ifensi.com/article-254079.html
This monkey god movie is going to be in 3D-IMAX, so lets anticipate the awesome graphics. Seems that Donnie Yen was chosen instead of Jet Li. Jet Li monkey god was good too! lets see how Donnie Yen will be different since their fighting style are totally different.
Video of Chris singing performance at The Barnyard Chinatown.
Everyone still remember Chris singing performance at The Barnyard Chinatown? I finally uploaded it into Youtube. If you had already forgotten the previous post, you can recap here.
Yay finally made a trip down to Marina Bay Sands to look see look see. Today went with Prata and Crispy. Long time never saw Joe1 and Joe0, they were busy preparing for their exams. Ok, to start off, the nearest MRT station is Promenade station. It is just beside Millenia Walk, from here just a 10mins walk to reach Marina Bay Sands. Here's a nice artwork at Promenade.
True enough, it was a stone throw away. We reached the Helix bridge leading to Marina Bay Sands. The design is quite artistic, but not really impressing enough. End of the bridge was still in construction. Any idea whats the building going to be? One good point about this bridge is that it has a perfect clear view of the floating platform. So i'm sure this bridge will be packed with people during National Day Parade, those people without tickets. Standing at this bridge you can almost see as clearly as if you were sitting inside the floating platform, and of cos, the fireworks! Other than that, i think this bridge will be a nice quiet hangout, beautiful night sky, calming sea, arousing wine...
Actually i always thought Casino is the 3 buildings. But i was wrong, the 3 buildings are actually hotels. Casino is inside The shoppes at marina bay sands, which is right opposite the hotel.
The shoppes at marina bay sands. Inside this big expo, at this moment there is really not much things to see. The shops are not fully opened yet. Mostly branded retails opening soon. One thing to note, i did not see any decent eating place here (Ignore the mini canteen stall). There are no fast food restaurants or decent eating restaurants here. There is coffee bean, if you must say.
The second thing that i cannot forget is the air pollution in this building. This place is full of dust! The renovation is not complete, but the chunk of dust and sands in the air is really sickening. I saw sands on the floor, in the air, even inside the toilet. Cynically it suits the name Bay SANDS. But the ground level got something interesting. This looks like it is going to be a water trail? There's mini bridges for people to cross too. Lets come back again when this place is all done up. :)
And yes this is the Casino. Stand outside take a picture enough already, enter must pay 100 SGD.
Picture to be upload later.
Across the street, we reached the magnificent Marina bay sands hotel, the 3 buildings. Inside was very spacious, tall ceiling and many artworks.
Right up hanging on top, Drift.
Wall Drawing.
Rising Forest.
There were more artwork, but i didn't managed to capture them. Some other interesting structures.
The lift.
Jin Shan Lou.
Restrooms also nicely done with see through glass to nature.
Daringly, we took the lift to explore the hotel rooms. We only met another family of 3 who dare to come up here to explore hehe. We can't enter the rooms, but we took very nice bird eye pictures from the windows here. Here is 22nd storey.
Highest room should be 57 storey, if i'm correct. But too bad the top storeys were not open to public yet, the lift only serve as high as the 35th storey. And so this is the view from 35th storey. The view takes you far far away, i should stay here some time.
Last but not least, playing as a role at Registration counter and Bell desk.
How to get there: Take MRT Circle line to Promenade station and walk 10mins.
