Underwater World & Bay Hotel Staycation

We're back from our staycation at Bay Hotel! Saturday morning started with a trip to Underwater World Sentosa. We arrived just when they open, so the crowd wasn't that bad yet. P didn't seem to know what to make of the swimming creatures. She was brought around with a dazed look, not an ounce of excitement at all. At 11am, we went for the Dolphins and Sea Lion show, and that's when P started to warm up a bit, clapping and dancing to the music. After the show, we headed to the tunnel and made 4 rounds to look at the fishes. At the last round, P conked out. We had planned lunch at Vivocity, but with a sleeping baby and starving hubby, we had lunch at a restaurant next to the Underwater World gift shop instead.

Waiting for the Dolphin and Sea Lion show to start

Show ended

Family pic!

Found a great place to take photos - behind Carpark of Underwater World

We finished lunch and realised we are still early for the hotel check in, so we headed to Vivocity to see if we can do some Christmas shopping for our family. P was super hyper at Vivo, totally out of control. She insisted on going to the water play area despite our distractions. Brought her to ELC hoping to distract her with toys, but she stood at their back door (facing the water play area) and stared longingly at the kids there. Luckily, 2pm soon came and we hurried out of Vivo.

Our car turned into the carpark entrance of Bay Hotel and we were greeted with cones and a sign that said "do not park, only for in house guests". Not knowing what to do, we just entered the car park and it was the smallest hotel car park I've ever seen. We didn't expect to see any slots, but there was one. The car coming in behind us got stuck at the gantry coz there wasn't any more parking. Hubby wasn't pleased, and said that's the last time he's coming here.

Hotel lobby is at the 3rd floor, and check in didn't take long. We were given a room on the second floor facing the main road. The room was very small, and walking space for only 1 person at a time. There was no way to accommodate any baby cot. Thus, this room is good for couples and not so suitable for families. The rain pretty much thwarted our swimming plans for the day. By the time the rain stopped, P was in deep nap, all the way till 6plus in the evening.

Complimentary minibar

We took a 3 min walk to reach Vivocity for dinner. Settled on Botejyu and they only had outdoor seating due to the crowd. It turned out to be a good choice because there's plenty for P to see - the view of Sentosa island across the 'sea', boats sailing on the 'sea' and a train ride that takes children for $6 per ride. P had some of my Ajisen seafood ramen and rice from hubby's seafood combo. After dinner, we decided to grant P's wish to play at the waterplay area. She splatter through the puddles and did a lot of hit-and-run-back-to-papa with the jets of water.

We cleaned her up and made our way to Cold Storage to get some snacks. That's when P discovered teddy bears on sale. She loves to cuddle soft toys. I looked away for a moment and found her sprawled on the floor with teddy below her, having a cuddle of her life. This brought some laughter to a family standing near us. And yes, it took me so long to convince her to give up those teddy bears.

The next morning, we awoke to the sight of Standard Chartered Marathon runners outside our window.

Rise and shine with heavily tousled hair.

Bay Hotel serves an international spread for breakfast, but I find that they only did well on the local dishes. I really enjoyed their fried bee hoon and nasi lemak, and even had second helpings. Hubby didn't like their pastries, kinda hard and had a rubbery texture. P had some congee with scrambled eggs, and she really loves the watermelon and papaya that hubby brought back from the buffet spread.

We managed to do a morning swim at their pool on the 6th floor. There wasn't any children's pool, just a 1.2m pool. Water was cold and P didn't like it. She preferred to stay at the edge of the pool and watch the water enter the 'drain'. She also refused to stay in her float, so we stayed at the edge with her most of the time. About 20 min later, a family with 3 kids joined us at the pool and we finally managed to convince P to go into her float. She just sat in her float and watch the children play. They had balls and some water toys with them, and they did plenty of jumps into the pool, which excited P.

P conked out after her bath, and we started to pack up to leave. Bay Hotel has a strange lift system. There are 2 lifts, but only 1 leads to the basement carpark. You need to tap your room keycard in the lift to access certain floors. With P asleep, hubby decided to make 1 trip to the car to load up some of our stuff first, but he found that he has forgotten the car key. And with the room keycard in our room, he wasn't able to get back to our level (no card to tap in the lift). I had to leave P in the room and go rescue him. He then had to send me back to the room before going to his car. P has started to stir, but I risked another trip to rescue him after he was done with the loading. We got back to our room and to our dismay, the keycard wouldn't open the room door!! We panicked and I send hubby to the reception to look for help. While standing at the door, all I could think off was P waking up to see no one and start to cry, and I even imagine her falling off the bed (which was quite high from the ground). The wait felt like 50 minutes. Hubby came back with another keycard and we found P still blissfully asleep. We roused her and got ourselves out of there before another unfortunate incident.

That sums up our staycation at Bay Hotel. And no, we won't be going back again.