These are another couple of things that I didn’t do last year, despite hearing that they were excellent, Well, today I did them – or perhaps they did me, I am back at my hotel at 10:15 and am absolutely shattered.
I went to the zoo straight after breakfast. It’s somewhere in the middle-ish of Singapore Island, and is therefore some distance from the city (which is on the southern tip of the island). In fact it took just over an hour to get there – about 30 minutes on the metro followed by a bus ride of more than 30 minutes. The metro ride was to a place called ‘Ang Mo Kio’ which is a dormitory new town. In fact, it was one of the first new towns to be built after independence in the mid-60s. It was built during the 70s as a planned residential area, with the previous kampongs (traditional villages), agricultural land and swamps all replaced. It’s a place of tower blocks and grid-plan roads, and a new-build town centre which incorporates the bus station and (now) the metro station. Not unlike Telford town centre, in fact, and from about the same era as well. What’s interesting to see is that the place is in really good repair and the people look smart and purposeful; in classic Singapore fashion, everything works, nothing is broken, and there’s no graffiti. Perhaps not so much like Telford, then….. It has a population somewhere around 150,000, so it’s a significant sized town. And it’s just one of a dozen or more spread across the island and all built in the last 50 years.
But on to the zoo! I had heard about it when I was planning last year’s visit and had read about it. The comments ranged from “possibly the best zoo in the world!” to “but still just a zoo….”. So this time I had to go see for myself.
I think that both descriptions are true, or at least partly. It is a very good zoo, but it is also still just a zoo. It’s very well laid-out, with lots of information. They’ve got on top of the ecology/species preservation message. But they also include large animals such as elephants and some big cats in the zoo, and I don’t believe it’s at all possible to keep a big cat in captivity in a manner that’s not harmful in some way to it. On the other hand, there is the ‘species preservation’ argument, and that would very much apply to some of the animals they have, including the asian lion.
Anyway, I wandered round following several of the way marked trails – actually, roads – for just over three hours. Given that this was in temperature approaching 30 degrees, and probably exceeding it by the time I decided I’d had enough, I reckoned I’d given it a fair go. I was certainly very tired by the end of my visit at about 2 o’clock, and suddenly conscious of just how sweaty and uncomfortable I felt. While I was walking around I had been mainly thinking about the pictures I was taking and this helped me ignore my discomfort, but once I put the camera away it all came crashing down on me! So after a quick bite to eat I went back to the city to clean up before heading back to the zoo again. But first, some pictures.
This evening I went back for the Night Safari. This involved being conveyed around much the same areas looking at much the same animals, but at night when they are supposedly more active. More on this later when I’m more awake!
Continued: The Night Safari is available as an ‘add-on’ to the Zoo ticket for just a few extra dollars. It only runs at night (there’s a clue in the name – ‘Night Safari’). Entry is by reservation and by time slot – I had to specify both, and chose Thursday at 7:15. I think there are four time slots – 7:15, 8:15, 9:15 and 10:15. In fact that’s the start time for your slot; I arrived at just after 7:30 and there was no problem. (But I wonder what would happen if you arrived after the beginning of the next slot?) It all seemed rather disorganised – very un-Singapore, in fact. But eventually I worked out that I needed to queue for a tram, which was a motorised, articulated road train holding at least 100 people. There appeared to be 5 tram stops, and at first I wondered if there were multiple tram rides to take, but I think that the different tram stops were actually for the same tram ride but in different languages. The trams from tram stop 1 was in English. So I boarded, in the last row on the left-hand side, and once the tram started trundling forwards the commentary also started. After the introductions the commentary moved into a guide to what was visible on either side. It was “on the left you might see….. now on the right you might see….” and so on.
Note the “you might see…” statement in there – there’s no guarantee that you’ll actually see anything. Let me explain. The trams ride along the roadways, and on either side are clearings in which the animals reside. But the animals are active and mobile, and their terrains extend into areas that aren’t visible from the road, and that’s where the animals might be at the moment when you pass them. Some of the areas are restricted while a few are ‘open wandering’ areas, i.e. the animals could be out in the roadway alongside the trams (or not). And of course it’s dark (that ‘Night Safari’ thing again) so you can’t see much anyway, although there is some illumination of a lesser or greater degree, depending on the species of the animal.
In fact, I did see a number of animals. Lots of deer of various species; hyenas; wolves – they were beautiful; some (fairly somnolent) large primates; giraffes and zebras (probably the same ones that I saw at the zoo), a number of elephants, and best of all, a tiger. This animal was definitely inside a protected enclosure with a heavy-duty perspex frontage, but just as we were passing the tiger obligingly loped past the perspex, pausing briefly to look at us (and probably thinking “one day….”).
There was also a lion (an asian lion, I think). It was in another enclosure, with fencing alongside the road and a ground cover that included some elevated points. As we went past, the commentary urged us to look to the right where we might see the lion, and there it was – up on one of the high points, lying down but with head raised, looking exactly how the noble king of the beasts should look (just like the lions in Trafalgar Square). But as the tram exited that area I kept looking at it and I couldn’t help noticing that it never moved – no movement of its head, no yawning (lions are famous yawners, apparently they can sleep up to 20 hours a day), and no movement of its limbs. So I have to say that what with the lack of movement, and the comparatively poor security of the enclosure, I have my suspicions about that lion – it could be exactly like the ones in Trafalgar Square, i.e. lifeless!
I think the tram ride lasted about 45 minutes or so, which meant that by the time it finished I’d been there for about an hour. I could then have done one of the walking trails, but by that time I was very tired and still had a journey of at least an hour back to the hotel. So I didn’t bother doing anything else and instead headed out. I’m glad I did this visit, but for me the zoo was better. There were lots of family groups at the Night Safari, and it looked and sounded as if the kids were all having a great time, but given that everyone was on the same tram, it wasn’t a quiet restful experience. In contrast, a lot of the time when i was wandering around the zoo I was on my own, even though the actual area is quite small. So I would say the zoo is worth doing, and it doesn’t cost much extra to add the Night Safari onto the ticket, but the latter will most likely be hard work given that it’s in the evening, and and may not be as rewarding.
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