Singapore Zoo and Night Safari

Singapore Zoo was the name of the day on Saturday and this I highly recommend if you ever visit Singapore. I'm not normally a fan of visiting zoo's when traveling. How different can they be from country to country? However I had heard the zoo in Singapore was one of the best in the world so I decided to check it out.

I'm glad I did. They had a brilliant array of animals on show from chimpanzees to lions to snakes and, one of my favourites, a cheetah. The design of the zoo is done in such a way that the animals are not necessarily caged in. Moats are built around some of the animals which stops them moving out of their holding. Obviously in the case of some rather high swinging (and dangerous) species, such as the baboons, they are kept behind glass walls. In the primate section, monkeys are completely free roaming so it was not rare to be able to get within touching distance of them. I caught one particular monkey scavenging through a litter bin. He seemed pretty happy with his old can of coffee that he found (photos below).

After a day of wondering around the zoo I decided to visit the Night Safari that was just next door. This opens as the sun sets and you are let loose on the nocturnal animals of the park. You can take a tram which gives a tour of the zoo and you can then do the walking trails which takes you to places that the tram can't reach (such as the bat enclosure - in which one flew, out of nowhere, from the dark, straight over my head, and scared the life out of me!) The animals are lit up by special lights that make the animals visible to the human eye but are not too bright to upset the animals natural nocturnal pattern.

A Day In Singapore

Melacca

Yesterday I left Kuala Lumpur and headed, by bus, down the west coast of Malaysia to the smaller city of Malacca. Today I left Malacca and headed, by bus, down the west coast of Malaysia to the larger city/country of Singapore.

But first, let's talk about yesterday.

The bus that I needed to catch to take me down to Malacca was to depart from a bus terminal just outside the city centre. I could tell it would be too far to walk to from my hostel so I flagged down a taxi a couple of hours before the bus was due to depart. As I jumped into the taxi the driver told me the journey would take around half an hour so I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk to a native of Kuala Lumpur.

Taxi drivers probably know their city better than anyone else and if a common language is spoken a lot can be learned from these manic road users. Early on I found out that this particular man used to work in the Central Market (a famous street market in KL) when he was a kid in the early 1960's. Great, I think. This man could have some interesting stories to tell. I soon also found out that working in a market equals very early hours (4am, he told me) but this is about as much as he told me. For the next 30 minutes he just kept talking about how his taxi was falling to pieces (really comforting to hear this as he is whizzing us through the city's streets) and the mechanics wouldn't help him out efficiently. The man spoke relatively good English but his accent was so strong. He also stuttered his sentences, seemingly missing out any words that are not nouns or verbs and randomly emphasising words at the end of the sentence as if he was blaming me for the taxi's issues. I was glad once we had reached the bus terminal and I had wished himself and his taxi good luck.

The bus journey itself was very uneventful and went by quickly. After a couple of hours we arrived in Malacca Sentral and from here I took another taxi to my hostel. A few rings on the door bell of the hostel, and no answer had me a little concerned. A good 5-10 minutes later after forceful banging on the door of the hostel, and with still no answer had me so concerned that I almost went to a different hostel a few doors down to see if they had a spare bed. Instead of doing this though (I had already paid for the first hostel) I reluctantly gave them a call and after explaining my situation on the phone some lady from down the street came to fetch me, took me around the corner to some random hotel, where I checked in and was given my keys, I was then ushered back to the original door and up to my room in the recetionist-less building. Weird, but at least I had my bed.

Malacca is a very nice city. Previously a Portuguese colony, the city still contains some old buildings and rubble built by the Europeans when they controlled the area from the 1600's. Malacca was a vital port for ships going through south Asia and as a result the city saw huge amounts of trade. The photos are below which I hope shows how quaint, cultural and historic the place is.

Last Day In KL