Suzi's Travels

Yesterday (Tuesday) I headed out on a one minute walk to the Singapore River where I paid $12.60 to go for a cruise up and down the river on a bumboat. These are the old boats that they used to bring cargo in on back in the day, but thanks to technology are no longer needed. Now they serve as tourist boats.

This is the Merlion, which it is hoped will become as iconic as the Sydney Opera House. No, seriously.

In the evening I headed out to the Night Safari which is attached to the zoo here on the island. It took a while to get there - I needed to take a ride on the MRT and then a 40 minute bus ride to get there. But I got lucky as when I came out of the MRT station there was a dude offering a free ride out to the Night Safari! So I hopped on and got there in 20 minutes instead!

There are three main things to do at the Night Safari: there are walking trails, a tram ride and a Creatures of the Night show. If anyone comes out this way, check out the website www.nightsafari.com.sg for their suggested itineraries, and follow them (in fact, check it out anyway, as flash photography was not allowed, and whilst I finally discovered that I had a night function on my camera, you have to hold it incredibly still for about 10 seconds to take a picture, so needless to say, I didn't get that may decent photos)! I got a bit confused and elected to go on one of the walking trails first so I could go to the show at 8pm, but when I got to the gate at 8pm, it was full, and their advice was to arrive half an hour early to get in.

The walking trail (the Fishing Cat trail) was really good. There were really cute little Mousedeer, which are tiny little deer, the adults were probably only about knee high, and they have these tiny pencil-thin legs that literally look like little sticks propping them up. Next were the fishing cats. These are very cute, and pet sized (can I have one???). Next up were the otters, and these guys are really playful. As soon as anyone comes along, they all congregate in front of you and start screaming at you. It's a pretty awful sound. You can just about see them in this photo (it's one of the ones that didn't come out blurred) but you might have to click on it and enlarge it to see properly.

After that there were some Barking Deer (who didn't bark), some Flying Foxes, and soem Indian Gharial (fish eating crocodiles).

After heading back to try to get to the show (denied) I went on a tram ride around the park. This was very informative, and the animals are very good as they are always within view so were always there for us to see (apart from the zebra). My favourite was probably the tiger, although after going on the tram ride, I missed the next show and went on a walk instead, and saw another tiger from behind a glass screen, and the dude was just pacing round in circles which I didn't like to see.

After that, I *finally* got into the show, and it was definitely worth it (although I thought I was gonna melt when we were queueing to get in - it was so humid there, not necessarily as hot as during the day time, but definitely sweltering). The hostess was dead funny, and the show was very interactive, but the animals definitely knew it was their last show of the night and were playing up a bit. The best was the cat which can jump up to 15 feet into the air to catch birds.

The show ended at 10.30 and although the place stays open until midnight, the dude who had given us the free ride out from the MRT station had offered to take us back to our hotels for $4, which although is more than the combined bus and MRT ride would cost, would certainly save time, and judging by the queues for the bus, stress too.

So I got back to the hostel at about 11.10pm, had a quick shower (finally got hot water!) and hit the sack.

As a final note, I just have to post this picture, as I didn't think anybody (especially Nat and Austen) would believe that I had a cat on me. Poor little Tempest does look ready to jump, but it was his idea to climb on me, not mine!