Marina Bay: Carnival, Art Zoo, and iLight Festival

Recently, my boyfriend and I visited the Marina Bay carnival! I had been wanting to go there but I didn't have the time. Then my boyfriend informed me that it would end on the first of April so we finally made the trip down to town.

First stop: The Star Flyer. It cost $10 and it was just a leisurely ride which allowed us to enjoy the scenery. When we arrived at the carnival, it was still pretty early. There were no queues and some booths weren't even open yet! We took the ride with only three other people and to be honest, it was kind boring. I bet the Viking Ship and Mach 5 were more thrilling! However, since the rides were pricey, this was the only ride we took. And of course, dear John did not actually enjoy himself. While we spun around in the air, I was trying to have a nice little chat with him but he was too busy gripping the handlebars as tightly as he could.

Next, we had some ice-cream! I think the one on the left was salted caramel and mine was pina colada, which basically just tasted like coconut. Unfortunately, the skies turned grey and we had to seek shelter at Marina Bay Sands.

We also went to the restroom there but it was disgusting! I thought that since MBS was a touristy place, they would have nice toilets. But no! The first one I tried to enter had such a long queue that I did not bother waiting in line, and the second one only had four cubicles, out of which only three were in working condition as the fourth was under maintenance. The worst part was how rubbish was strewn everywhere and there was no toilet paper. Ewww... I really hate using public restrooms!

It was still drizzling but we decided to walk down Helix Bridge and look at the iLight installations along the way. We caught a glimpse of the Art Zoo from a distance! Everything looked so cute and colourful! But I didn't think that it was worth it to pay $18 to enter and jump around on cute balloons. I think it would only be okay if (a) I was rich, or (b) I had a kid. Moreover, it had just rained, so all the balloons would have been wet! Wouldn't that be gross and slippery?

I was content to pose in front of the cute colourful unicorn.

The sunset that day was magnificent!

I was extremely excited to get my hands on a drink from one of the stalls outside the Art Zoo! There were ice-cream floats that literally came in mini unicorn or flamingo floats. The drink in the picture above was lychee flavoured and it came with a light attached to the bottom of the bottle, which I kept fiddling with. 

Look at all these vacuum-packed plastic water bottles! I think the description wrote that you could get claustrophobic, but I seriously doubt it. The sheets of plastic waste were arranged in such neat rows! It would have been cooler if it had been an actual maze. 

You would feel like a little ant while standing in the midst of dancing grass! But perhaps I look more like a green alien here because of the light.

A field of cows that were made up of milk bottles! How cute!

We were drawn to this installation from afar because it made such mesmerising sounds. There were sticks provided for us to hit the metal bars, which produced different notes.

My boyfriend remarked that he would hate it if he was stationed at this installation, and I couldn't agree more. This huge mailbox would be "sleeping" and the crowd would scream at it to "wake it up". Basically, when it wakes up, the colours change and obviously the sleepy face seems to be jolted awake by the loud noise. Ugh, the screams and shouts were deafening! Then it would switch to this Twitter thing, which allowed people to tweet an emoji and it would appear on the screen. I tweeted a cat emoji and waited around, but it didn't appear and so we left. Sadly, we didn't walk away fast enough because we could hear people yelling at the mailbox.

Headed back to the carnival to take pictures and tried to win a soft toy! But it was simply not my lucky day. In the day, we had already tried the ring toss and the throwing of hoops. At night, we tried the lottery, thinking that we would at least win something. Needless to say, the game was rigged! My boyfriend finally managed to knock down a clown and we won a small and ugly mushroom.

After that, we tried darts but failed to get anything. (My dart was only a few centimetres away from the target, I swear) The last thing we tried was to use a fishing pole to pick up a shopping bag. For some reason, I thought that the pink bags were rare so I decided to hook one up. The staff member fished out the toy and, lo and behold, the soft toy I received was a hideous yellow monster. Just moments earlier, I had seen people winning cute soft toys such as mini unicorns. It was just my luck to have chosen a bag with a ridiculously atrocious-looking one. The soft toy was just a yellow fluffy ball that had long limps attached to it and a red tongue sticking out of its mouth. No offence to monsters, but only Mike Wazowski from Monster Inc can pull off this look.

I do not know what factories in China think they are producing, but if I was a kid and I had received this toy, I might just cry. Who's the genius who thought that making an ugly yellow monster was a good idea? How can it possibly sell? Are they doing this on purpose so that companies that buy in bulk would receive a balance of ugly and pretty toys? Why are such things being manufactured in the first place? So, like a typical Singaporean, I complained about the ugly monster in the car as my boyfriend drove us home. I made the stupid soft toy eat its stupid big feet because it had such a stupidly big mouth.

When I arrived home, my cat greeted me at the door but she also rejected the silly soft toys. Shadow reluctantly played with one of the soft toys (the mushroom, of course), as if she was just entertaining me for the sake of it, then jumped on top of the ironing board and glanced out of the window. I thought she didn't have very good taste in soft toys, since her favourite one is an ugly rat that was on sale at a warehouse, but she has standards of her own I guess.