More Animals

Location: Net Cafe, Little India, Singapore

Day 2: Singapore Zoo and Night Safari

Another very full day. Woke up early (8:30 is early for me!) and caught the shuttle bus to the world famous Singapore Zoo. Wow. I found this place amazing, but as we have already established, I like wildlife. The zoo had an amazing collection of animals from around the world, most of them in 'open' enclosures. This was excellent for taking good photos, and so once again I took a huge amount - over 400 or so. Unfortunately some of the more interesting animals (leopard, polar bear) were behind glass viewing areas, and so taking good photos was almost impossible. One of my favourite parts of the zoo was a large walk-in aviary that housed a number of Malaysian Flying Foxes (aka bats), Ring Tailed Lemurs, Lesser Mousedeers and a variety of very colourful butterflies. They were all so tame you could really get up close to them. I watched a male and female bat fight over a piece of fruit while hanging upside down. The female ended up biting the male on his exposed 'parts'. Although on second thought, maybe it was just a bit of bat foreplay...

While the animals in the zoo were great, the biggest annoyance was by far the terrible tourist map of the zoo. The map is one of those typical maps you get at any tourist place - a highly stylised colourful depiction of a mythical place that some deranged art student hallucinated into believing it was the zoo. It was terrible. I realise that most tourists are likely to be dumb Americans, but please, I can read a real map! Can you please give me a real map whose paths and roads actually match what is real! I spent a good half hour at the end of the day walking around in giant circles trying to get to the Wild Dog enclosure. Some paths shown on the map didn't exist, and other paths existed that weren't shown on the map! Each of the zoo staff I spoke to gave me a different answer as well. In the end I came to the conclusion that there was actually no way to get to the wild dog enclosure and so I looked over the top of the ostrich area to see them. They were sleeping under the shade of a tree, and all I could see were some ears sticking up.

I had bought a double ticket for the zoo and night safari, and so I had an hour and a half between the zoo closing and the opening of the night safari. Just as I walked out the zoo and sat down at a table, the heavens opened up and I experienced my first equatorial rain storm. The rain came thick and fast, with the odd bit of thunder and lightning in there as well. I sat at my table, regretting that I didn't bring my book to read, and so wiled away the time reading the Singapore visitor booklet and figuring out activities for the next day. While waiting I met an American guy and Aussie girl and chatted to them for a while. Then at about 7:30, as on cue for the when the night safari was due to open, the rain stopped. Perfect!

The night safari is a very interesting place. It has a number of walking trails and a large tram ride that go around it. Being cheap, I didn't buy a tram ticket and just stuck to the walking paths. This means I didn't get to see some of the larger animals, which were only viewable from the tram, but in my opinion, all the smaller animals are more interesting. I saw things like Fishing Cats, Hyenas (spotted and striped), Civets, Serval and two leopards sleeping right against the glass of their viewing area. Unlike the zoo, I didn't take any photos at all. After all, it was all dark (being a night safari and all), and flash photography was strictly not allowed. I caught a show as well, where they demonstrated a few different animals doing some tricks and talked a bit about them.

I have been to a few of these shows so far (one at the bird park, and one at the zoo). They are alright, but tend to be a bit silly and clearly aimed at the children in the crowd and easily impressed vacation tourists. Although the elephant show at the zoo was quite interesting as it showed how the elephants are used in the logging industry in Asia and India. It included some quite incredible things the elephants could do.

I caught the shuttle bus back to town, and it was about midnight by the time I got to the backpackers. Crashed into bed to try and recover my poor feet who had been walking for about 14 hours. The plan for tomorrow is to go an explore Singapore itself.