The day started quite early in the morning. After flag raising, we all
gathered in LT2, lecture theatre 2 for a briefing and to watch a show on the
Changi Museum, particularly the Changi Murals.
The show gave us an introduction of the Changi Murals and much more
information about them.

      Following after that, we went to Changi Museum on a chartered bus and
it was quite long a journey. Hopefully for Eugene, we were not talking about
Maple Story, we were talking about school life and stuff instead... Finally,
after several failed attempts to sleep, I finally saw the Museum.

      As soon as I got down the bus, what caught my eye was the gates at the
front where everyone has to pass through in order to get in. It was just
like a prison cell's door and everything suited the atmosphere of the place.
We made our way into the museum and directly before ur lay the replica of
the chapel. From what I know from our guide, only the cross symbol was real,
other than that, everything was just fake. The chapel brought a hush over
us, especially when the guide was talking about the happenings in the
chapel.

      Next, we made our way into the air-conditioned part of the museum...
Refreshing! We gathered near the entrance and listened to our guide, telling
us about the fall of Singapore, the detailed happenings of some battle areas
in Singapore and how did Japan actually fought their way down to Malaya and
Singapore.

      As we went deeper into the museum, I got to saw the murals we had seen
on the show before my very eyes. However, the guide told us it was yet
another replica and the real ones are in block 151, or something like that.
The 4 and a half mural replicas looked just like the real thing, a
marvellous piece of masterpiece!

      Nearing the end of the tour, our guide told us one of the punishments
of te POWs which I believed was one of the most gruesome of all. A POW was
caught listening to radio, so the guard put two sharp things into his ear
and then just clasped them together, making the POW deaf forever, how truly
revolting...

    We got to watch a documentary on Mrs Elizabeth Choy, on how she suffered
during the Japanese Occupation and I remembered that she was electrocuted
and her husband had to see her suffering helplessly.

      After the tour in the museum, we all went to view the Monster Gun, a
huge gun(quite obvious) which was nicely crafted and put in place.

      Overall, this trip has been a memorable one and it was very beneficial
as I was able to learn more things that our textbooks did not cover, like
what Mr Ong said, "Textbooks are inadequate".

      Goh Shao Jie

_________________________________________________________________
Take a break! Find destinations on MSN Travel. http://www.msn.com.sg/travel/