We had all gone to bed at 3am the night before so it was no surprise that we all slept through the alarm. By the time we were awake it was already nearly noon and we had missed breakfast. Today was our last day with Sarma so we had decided to do Singapore Zoo and Night Safari.
By the time we got organised it was a lot later and as we had wanted to get there much earlier so after a quick breakfast at Subway we caught our first Taxi in Singapore. The Taxi driver said were were very clever as we sent Steve up to ask and the taxi driver for a price. He didn’t realise there were more of us so he gave us a cheaper price it cost only $20 to make it out there. It took only 30 minutes then we were at the zoo.
From the word go I knew it would be a good zoo. At the entrance of the zoo is the first enclosure of monkeys and it is open and free for the monkeys to move around and out of the cage. The majority of the enclosures do not use glass or wire but are open allowing you to make the most out of being close to the animals. I was using my new zoom lens today and was thrilled with how close I could get to the animals.
We walked our way up seeing a variety of animals and made our way to the Elephants at work show. They show was packed and there was no sitting room. People in Singapore get to shows about an hour early to get good seats. We found a spot up the back and settled in for the show.
The show was excellent it started with one of the elephants walking along a log showing us her balancing. She walked along it and then completed a half turn on the log. Elephants are very agile for their size and are even able to tiptoe. Next the elephants demonstrated there closeness with their trainer and performed a comedy stint where the elephant took the trainers hat and mucked around with it before putting it back on his head. All the trainers command the elephants in a Sri Lanka language as there oldest elephant only speaks Sri Lankan.
The elephants then demonstrated how to move logs with just their feet or trunks. They are very strong and are able to push logs up hills and pull them out of water using their jaws. When they held the log in their mouths they reminded me of a big dog or Shep from George of the jungle. The show was really good and after the show you can pay $5 to feed the elephants, but as the crowd was huge we decided to give that a miss.
We were doing the other half of the zoo when we experienced out first monsoon down pouring. It bucketed down for about 20 minutes. We quickly took shelter in the snake house and waited it out. Luckily we had decided to give the 5o’clock show a miss due to the crowds otherwise we would have gotten soaked. We only had half an hour til closing and decided to take the boat along the wetland back to the front.
The boat took us around the zoo perimeter and showed us the nature in the wetlands. We finished up and I bought a raccoon toy from the gift shop. Anthony made a great discovery and bought a hat that actually fits his head.We then made our way over to the night safari.
We were shocked by the number of people at the Night Safari, we managed to find a table and ordered some overpriced Bongo Burgers.The line to get into the Night Safari was already huge and the gates hadn’t opened yet. As we finished dinner, the fire show started. Four men came onto the stage and performed tricks with fire. These included eating fire and fire breathing.
We lined up for nearly and hour to get into the park. I decided to try the show first and luckily we did. We got into the 8:30 show time and they shut the line behind us. People then started queuing behind us for the 9:30 show. We were lucky with timing. The show Animals of the Night was amazing. The two guides in charge of the show were full of energy. We got to see Wolves, a fishing cat jump 15 ft and some gorgeous otters recycle plastic. There were many night animals and even a huge python came out for a visit. It was one of the best shows I have seen in a while.
After the show we joined another queue for about an hour to go on the tram safari. The line was extremely long, hot and boring. They were lucky the safari was good. You hop into a three carriage open bus and in the pitch blackness drive through the Night Safari. They have special lights on the animals that don’t hurt there eyes. At times we got very close to the animals, in particular the many types of deer. It was a excellent ride.
We then left the zoo for the night, there were too many people and we were sick of spending our time waiting in queues.