Where the Wilds Things Are

(Posted by Alby)
On our second day, we got up early and headed out to the Jurong Bird Park. It's a big tourist attraction out here, so my fears of aggressive and screaming parakeets everywhere quickly left me. Luckily it was nothing like that, AND we didn't get pooped on. Sharon and I love penguins, and there was a whole feeding session where I used up an entire camera battery. Sharon wanted to take a penguin home but I told her it was illegal and that Risa would walk like one soon.

There was also this big show of the day where these goofy looking birds were shaking their hips to "I Like to Move It, Move It..." and "Whoomp! There it is". They were trying to get the crowd excited, but it made us laugh instead. After seeing a huge waterfall and few more flamingos, toucans, pelicans, ostrichs, we were "birded out" and headed for...yet another noodle meal. After some more shopping downtown we headed to one of the more renowned high-end restaurants called "Chatterbox". They make this Singaporean special Hainanese Chicken and rice that is AMAZING! (If you're into the Chinese white chicken and green onion ordeal.) It was one of those meals where you almost want to cry--it's THAT good! Rice cooked in fresh chicken stock, YUM!!!

Singapore is also known for this Night Safari--like Jurassic Park, but in the dark, no animal cages, and on a trackless tram (so the tram can speed away if a lion comes
running)!!! J/K. So the animals are scattered throughout the park, with dim lights shining on them. Otherwise you are in the dark, on a tram, and not allowed to shine a flashlight or anything! I don't know how they do it, but the only thing separating us from the animals was a rather LOW wall of bushes, and occasionally a very small river. But we were able to see elephants, giraffes, jackals, hyenas, hippos, rhinos, zebras, lions, cheetahs...and eventually the imprints of Sharon's nails on my arm. Too bad it was too dark for any of the pics to turn out. The next morning we checked out the Raffles hotel, a REALLY fancy colonial style hotel named after Singapore's founder, Sir Stamford Raffles.

Then back to Bangkok! (Thank you Mrs. King of Thailand for being born Sunday so that we would have the Monday off for Mother's Day).