Beachliness Part 2: Sentosa Singapore

Having established the increasingly popular Laura in Singapore Beachliness scale, it's time to use it on our local beaches. Singapore is not known for its amazing beaches compared to the rest of this region, but Sentosa beach (Siloso, Palawan and Tanjong) has some key redeeming features, so let's see.

First up, sandiness. Pretty good sandiness, but there are minor issues with ship detritus and less than pristine water. So half points.

Secondly, boatiness. Singapore's beaches have an excess of boatiness, which is interesting for ship nerds, but reduces one's view of a pretty horizon. Again. we'll go with half points.

Prettiness: the palms are very pretty and the coves and islands are nice too. The main beach is only 3.5 km long, but I think I still need to give full pretty points.

Desertedness. Sentosa ain't desolate. The pictures here are misleading, in that it was quite early morning, and in May (not tourist winter). No points for desertedness.

Wildlife. Well, we saw an eagle. But unless you count tourists, again, nope.

Did you say fun activities? Sentosa has them all: zip-lining, aqua park, bungee, luge, cycling, hiking, history, VR, iFly, volleyball, and much more. Full points.

Finally, cocktails. Sentosa says she's got'em all overdaplace. Full points again.

Sentosa Singapore Beachliness Review

Sandiness: 0.5

Boatiness: 0.5 (excess boatiness)

Prettiness: 1

Destertedness: 0

Wildlife: 0

Availability of activities: 1

Availability of cocktails: 1

Total: 4/7

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Beachliness Part 1: Jervis Bay Straya

My critics have brought to my attention that Laura in Singapore does not provide enough coverage of beaches. This is not surprising, as we're not really big beach people. But I do aim to please!

Upon extensive consideration, I am hereby launching the Laura in Singapore 7-point Beachliness scale!

We were repeatedly educated, mostly by strangers, on the whiteness of the Straya beaches near us, particularly Hyams beach (pronunciation varies: Strayans seem less sure of this). Here is a pamphlet for colour reference.

Apparently, white sand is good, but I'm uncomfortable that this seems unfair to brown or darker-skinned sand. I was a bigger fan of this multi-coloured mosaic of shell sand. See what I did there?

The second point on the LiS Beachliness scale is boatiness. Here, you can see an extensive view, along with a navy boat. Reasonable boatiness.

Here, however, we saw a real actual submarine. This is clearly full boatiness points.

We hiked longerfars to see a very old boat.

This beach was cold for Strayaland, but shipwrecks get bonus boatiness points. No one was harmed in the making of this shipwreck, which is the S.S. Merimbulla from 1909, built in Scotland.

The third measure is prettiness. While clearly a subjective measure, I'm the only judge. Here is a good one.

The fourth measure is desertedness; people are not desirable on a beach. Bonus points for completely difficult to reach.

The fifth measure is wildlife, which is a more core LiS value. Straya had a few good rockpool creatures.

The sixth measure is the availability of activities, which can include anything from hunting for treasure, to sportliness. For Straya, I will count rock-hopping and dolphin watching, especially since we saw dolphins twice. Struggled a bit with sun protection, mind you.

The seventh and final beachliness measure is availability of cocktails. Here is where Straya's beaches fell short. Yes, I realize some measures can be paradoxical, like many things in life. No cocktails here:

Jervis Bay Straya Beachliness Review

Sandiness: 1

Boatiness: 1.5 (submarine/shipwreck bonus)

Prettiness: 1

Destertedness: 1

Wildlife: 1

Availability of activities: 1

Availability of cocktails: 0

Total: 6.5/7

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Straya Foods

In Straya, we went to Pelican land.

Strayans think pelicans are boring, but they're actually really cool, and we saw one turn it's flappy beak-pouch inside out while preening.

The pelicans showed us the way to the oysters, fresh from the oyster farm. They were so good that we went back for more. There were escapee oysters all over the beach, which does not make for good swimming.

We tasted the wines, which is always a bit silly, since obviously they taste good, being wines. We also tasted the Ethiopian food. And by tasted, I mean ate it all before breathing, since we love it so.

In the land of Straya, there are no Quakers, so the oats were made by multiple uncles called Toby.

At first, I was concerned with this image of one of the Uncle Tobys, but I realized it was just his spouse helping him to sober up and pull himself together before marketing the oats.

Of course, you can eat the 'Roo, but it's gamey, so you don't really want to.

Then we explored the land of Strayan candy. The secret of the Caramilk is that it has an imposter! Clearly inferior to the real Caramilk. (Turns out there are actually 3 separate bars for 3 different countries, and that Cadbury is uncreative on names or cheap on trademarks.

Here are the more interesting local delicacies. Violet crumble is neither violet nor particularly crumbly. The Curlywurly is a half sized chocolate bar sold for the same price, the Chokito involves a suspicious amount of puffed rice, and the Caramello Koala is just what you give whiny children.

Looking for sexism and the glorification of the crime underworld in your candy? Try Big boss candy sticks. Minimal flavour and bad fashion.

The re-emergence of nerds is both surprising and delightful. Wait, that sounded sarcastic, yet I'm very serious about nerds. Delicious.

I'm less enthused about Wallaby poo bites.

And the worst candy in Strayaland was Yoghurty. Even the mascot isn't worried you'll want to eat these things.

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Why aren't people more excited about Spear Lilies?

The land of Straya has unusual landscapes.

This is our best selfie. You may spot an animal if you look carefully.The xanthorrhoea, which sounds like an uncomfortable infection, is the grass tree, which has exceedingly pleasing symmetry. However, if you touch it, which is hard to resist, it will try to cut you. It's known for its ability to resist fires and droughts.

Got dirty bottles? The bottlebrush plant's flowers want to help. They turn into a seedy pinecone looking things after a while.

Ah, zen-ful symmetry.

Gum tree seed pod, which is in fact not Strayan, I think, despite them having gum tree songs.

This plant is mired in mystery, since the plantdentification app says it's aquatic, but we were decidedly on land.

Here's a vermillion waxcap mushroom, which knows it's cute.

But my absolute favourite Strayan plant is this one, taller than traffic lights. They should put it on their coat of arms, except the Emu and Kangaroo would be dwarfed.

Thank you to Pat for helping me to identify the giant spear lily (gymea lily), whose rosette can grow up the 5m in height, and its leaves 3m. Look at that rosette action!

These plants gave us the idea that Straya should grow the similar-looking agave in their arid lands to make tequilla-like hipster agave spirit. But then we found out that they already do.

Given our lack of plant knowledge, we went back to the city.

Here, they had fancy drinking fountains with doggie spouts. Very nice, but not suited for cold climates.

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