Park Hopping

I don’t like animals, perhaps because of I wasn’t being introduced closely to any animals since kid, so I don’t get used to them. I don’t like cats, I hate dogs, and once a monkey jumped into my lap. I rarely get in touch with any animals (except mosquitoes?). Maybe that’s why I rarely visit zoo anywhere (only once visited Taman Safari Bogor), never visited Ragunan when I lived in Jakarta, neither Kebun Binatang Bandung even though my campus was located right next to it. And finally in Singapore I have visited its 3 animal parks: Singapore Zoo – Night Safari – Jurong Bird Park, after living here for almost one and a half year. There is discount if we bought 3 tickets all-together, which we could use in 30 days. Since Singapore Zoo and Night Safari are just few meters away, I went there for one day, and Jurong Bird Park on the other day.

In my own opinion the Zoo is quite boring. I watched Elephant Asia show, but it’s not that good. I mean yes the elephants are amazing, two of them come from Indonesia, but the presenters are not funny, they should learn more how to joke and attract spectators. But Night Safari is awesome! I reached there before 7 PM, it’s not yet opened so we queued in front of the entrance while watching performance of Ulu-Ulu traditional dance/music.

Seven PM in Singapore is still bright, it’s not interesting to walk around before night comes, so we went directly to venue of the first show: Creatures of the Night Show at 7.30 PM. It’s truly recommended to get in front seats. The presenter is very attractive and so other supported acts. I don’t know how they can do it… a wolf suddenly sneaked out from the dark, walked into a fake mountain side, then howled. Precisely like the picture below (ok, minus the moon). I think everyone felt eerie at that time.

Because they are night animals, we’re not allowed to take pictures with flashlight, so my stupid cameras couldn’t capture anything. There were many other surprising animals coming from all over directions, even under our seats. Not mine, some people’s seats. If I were them, I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night. I think it was the best decision to see that show first before walking around the park. Most visitors took the tram to wander around, so the trails we went along were veeeery quiet and silence, I was afraid it’s not safe that some animals may come out from all over the way. But my companion was so excited 😐

After finished trekking all the trails (thanks God!), I went outside to see the other show they have which is Fire Show by Ulu-Ulu people. They said Ulu-Ulu is an ethnic group from Borneo, I was quite pissed off that it may come from Indonesia. But apparently it comes from Brunei Darussalam. The show is nice and I was standing in the first row, until I realized that I was wearing contacts, it’s not convenient to have fire around closely. In Jurong Bird Park I watched 2 interactive shows which are Fuji World of Hawks specially for hawk and owls, and then Birds and Buddies for general birds. Both are amazing 🙂