7 April 2011
The zoo is mostly, closed
Today I went to the Singapore zoo, this is quite a challenge, surprisingly.
There are probably better ways to get there such as taxi or hiring a car, but I decided to take the advice of the zoos website and take the train and then bus.
This involves changing trains twice, not a drama they come every couple of minutes.
The main bus to the zoo however, comes once every hour, and I had 30 minutes to wait.
Once you are on the bus, its a good 45 minute ride from the nearest train station, and the route stops in many places where no one gets on or off, until it gets to the zoo where everyone gets off.
I find this quite surprising, the zoo is rated as singapores second most visited attraction after the shopping. I would have expected special zoo trains or busses.
The entrance is quite impressive looking, it really is set in a rainforest, lots of water surrounding it and I saw wild monkeys on the roadside from the bus window.
The zoo cost about $15 Australian, which is pretty good, it is however, mostly closed.
There are no pandas, the rhinos exhibit is shut, whole new sections are listed as coming in 2012, they have 3 shows like seaworld, one of them wasnt running.
The grounds are very nice, but they do try and sell you lots of things like train rides, teddy bears, boat rides, and entry to the kids zoo is an additional fee.
Also, the night safari is infact another closed part of the zoo they only open at night, I think some of the exhibits are bordered by both. This also seems like a bit of a scam, as the night safari costs the same as the zoo again. I wont be going.
I have heard lots about how awesome the Singapore zoo is, but I could hardly see any animals for the forest, or because the things were closed or being built. The Taipei zoo was much much better. I am now all zoo'ed out.
In other news, I am incredibly tired, I think I have dengue fever or Japanese radioactive encephylitus, I have no symptoms other than tired so who knows!
I sat on this bus for a long time, and waited for it in both directions for a long time, so I took a photo.
Heres a couple of white tigers, they are a long way away and never moved. I couldnt even find the leopards, cheaters or regular tigers in their enclosures. Sorry!
Some sort of monkey with an ass problem.
This is one of the live shows, it was like the wiggles in that one of the elephants pretends to be asleep for the whole show whilst everyone tries to wake him up, including the other elephants.
In the end they spray water on him from their trunks and he wakes up.
Children were beyond excitement.
This is where the other show is staged, called the rainforest strikes back.
Now...this was super crappy. The premise is a land developer wants to cut down the forest and build a shopping mall. Various 'natives' of the forest (singaporeans dressed in tribal dress), are at first fooled by the developer, who offers them potato chips as an example of the good things the shopping centre will provide.
The developer at first struggles in the forest, by stepping in elephant crap of course. The show had been going 30 minutes and the only animal I saw was a snake around the narrators neck.
Most people in attendance, me included, were leaving by this point. It was also hot as hell under that sail, much hotter than outside in the sun.
This is my new favourite drink, I took this photo during the above show whilst I was waiting for something to happen.
The grounds are the best thing about the zoo, heres a shot of the lake and the forest.
Lions at full zoom.
A giraffe, just one. Taipei had like 15 of them running around.
And heres a photo of everything coming in 2012, including polar bears, pandas, white rhinos etc.