One of our favourite places in Singapore is their zoo. Located in the dense jungle surrounds of the Upper Seletar Reservoir, the animal enclosures don’t feel like enclosures and are often at the same level as the visitors will water moats replacing fences.
Unfortunately, the zoo does not have a MRT station.
After purchasing tickets online, getting away on time proves difficult. We walk further to Dhoby Ghaut MRT station, past the YMCA/Former headquarters of the Kempeitei secret police during the Japanese invasion in World War 2.
The North South Line delivers us to Khatib, from where we join the very long queue for the Mandai Shuttle (SG$2.50). A whole bunch of shuttle buses arrive regularly and the queue shortens until it is close to our turn, when there is a long pause.
Past Singaporean military bases with their “No photography” signs, we eventually reach the big underground bus station of the zoo.
We choose to eat first, buying roti prata, nasi kerabu and laksa from the Chomel Bistro. Big servings, a bit expensive, but actually really nice.
I’ve bought combination tickets for the zoo and River Wonders and we convince B to do that first.
As much as I love the zoo, I think I like River Wonders even more. There is something serenely relaxing in about beautiful aquarium displays, especially freshwater ones. River Wonders takes the visitor around some of the world’s major rivers and lakes, including the Nile, Mekong, Yangtze, Ganges, Amazon and Lake Tanganyika.
The displays are amazing, often featuring environments both above and below the water. Highlights include the air breathing bichir, the giant Mekong catfish and its dopey eyed cousins, the huge dead eyed, sharp toothed Goliath tigerfish, the pretty rainbow fish and the Australian lungfish. There are crazy scuttling horseshoe crabs and electric eels, the crocodile relative the Gharial, and manatees cruising around the massive Flooded Amazon tank.
In the middle of this are the giant pandas. The male is lying on his side, arm over his eyes, a flattened box with lunar new year decorations in front of him.
He looks wasted after a big Lunar New Year.
His female mate in another enclosure is lying on top of her shelter with more decorum by similarly over it all.
We don’t have time for the boat ride, so we go to the main Singapore Zoo. The tree level walk is a wonderful introduction, gibbons in the trees, while fish and a crocodilian cruise below.
The grotesque red bottoms of the female Hamadryas baboons is a sign of readiness to mate. Okay, whatever turns them on. Primates are displayed very well in the zoo, with none of the cages and glass that feature in other zoos.
There is no elephant show, other than a feeding, which is a good thing. While we wait, a native macaque steals a medicine bottle from a baby’s stroller, discarding it when they fail to open the child proof lock.
We’ve seen most of the zoo by closing time, joining the huge queue for buses back to Khatib. Once on the MRT we debate where to eat, with Lunar New Year shutting many outlets.
We try Newton Food Centre. Most stalls are closed other than the seafood touts, a Thai, an Indian, a dumpling place and satay. The satay owner warns of a 45 minute wait, so I don’t order any, but Alex’s dumplings take about that long anyway. B cancels her noodles and we return to the MRT.
Next stop Orchard and the Ion shopping centre, likely to be open for tourists like us.
It is, and the food is high quality, if expensive. We buy chicken rice and Hokkien noodles. Next to us is a Japanese family and Alex is surprised how much he understands, probably because they were talking to the young kids.
We return to the hotel utterly exhausted. It’s been a long day.
