The inhabitants of Singapore Zoo

Put briefly, Singapore Zoo is absolutely amazing. They have a huge range of animals that are fantastically well looked after - the majority of the large animals are kept in open enclosures with moats keeping them in rather than cages. Not only is this better for the animals, but it makes for a much better experience for visitors; you can get really close to the animals (sometimes it seems a little too close e.g. you could lean over and pet the rhinos if you were brave enough) and have an unrestricted view. We were really lucky with the weather, because it was pouring with rain all morning, which clearly put a lot of people off, but it then cleared up and turned into a really nice day, so the animals were all out soaking up the sun. You'll be pleased to read that I'm not going to go into details of every animal we saw, but instead I'm just posting a small selection of the huge number of photos from the day.

Some of the animals were literally lining up to be photographed:

Monique got the chance to feed some carrots to a giraffe.

One of the highlights was the free-range orangutans who are free to swing through the trees right over the paths. It appears that they could escape at will, but have chosen to stay in the zoo.

The big cats appeared much more content to sit out in full view than at any other zoo I've been to.

 

...and a photo-dump of some of our other favourite photos.

 

 

After the main zoo closed we also went on the Night Safari. This part of the zoo has three elements. First there is a tram that takes visitors around a completely separate part of the zoo that houses some larger nocturnal animals, and animals that are often more lively after dark (including more elephants, rhinos, lions, giraffes etc as well as bears, wolves, hyenas, deer etc). There are a number of walking trails which take you around open areas where we could see plenty of smaller nocturnal creatures (and hear plenty more), and some enclosures with other animals (including leopards, and other big cats and monkeys). Finally there is a show that lets you get really close to some semi-tame animals. It was really great – we got to see loads more animals than we would have seen if we had just gone during the day, and it was also nice to see the animals clearly being more comfortable than if they were encouraged to change their sleeping patterns so that visitors can see them awake during the day.

Singapore zoo is by far the best zoo I have ever been to. We were both a little skeptical at first, neither of us being huge fans of zoos, but it completely won us around within minutes of arrival. It is an expensive day out (especially on a traveller budget) but is worth every cent, and was a really memorable day.

Sumptuous Singapore

We had originally only included a one-night stopover in Singapore in our itinerary because there were no direct flights from Bali to Kuching in Borneo. However, when our flight was cancelled we reconsidered and decided to spend 3 nights there. It was a really good decision.

As far as first impressions go, it doesn't get much better than the deservedly award-winning Singapore airport. It's big, startlingly clean and extremely efficient. We passed through immigration without having to queue, took a complimentary sweet, threw the wrapper to the complimentary sweet in the conveniently placed bin, and drank from the conveniently placed water fountain (after spending months in places where only bottled water is drinkable this felt like a luxury). From the airport we took the spotless and efficient metro system into the city, and made our way to the hotel we had booked in advance.

Initial impressions of the neighbourhood were good – there were exciting looking food courts, and places where locals sat outside restaurants drinking beer and socialising – and we were pleasantly surprised by the standard of the hotel. Accommodation in Singapore is super expensive compared to everywhere else we had stayed, so we weren't expecting much from the reasonably priced hotel we had booked online. We felt like proper people for a change, rather than grubby travellers.

That bubble was burst the following evening when we came back to the hotel fairly late only to see a sign on the hotel's reception desk. Of course, this being Singapore, this was no half-arsed sign on a scrap of paper, but rather an official looking sign. The sign stated “Hourly rate $20 inclusive of tax”. Of course, we were staying in the middle of the red-light district where local men appeared to be meeting prostitutes at the restaurants at the end of the road and bringing them to our hotel for an hour at a time. We even passed by one happy customer in the hotel reception as he left the hotel with his “friend” with a huge grin on his face.

Our hotel wasn't completely without its standards however; despite prostitutes being allowed, certain fruits were strictly prohibited.

On our first full day we headed to downtown Singapore on the metro and explored the city on foot. It's a really interesting city with some great architecture.

The central area in amongst the shiny glass office blocks has a river running through it, with plenty of fancy looking bars and restaurants either side of the river and around covered squares. It actually has a very European feel to it – a lot like London if London was clean, spacious and had a tropical climate! We definitely didn't fit in wearing our traveller garb, as most people around that area are very well dressed business people who looked like they had important things to do. Singapore definitely has a high-class feel to it, although the downside is that it has more than a whiff of arrogance. That said, I think it would be a great place to work for a year or so (if you were paid enough to afford the expensive lifestyle).

Even more so than the other places we have visited on this trip, eating seems to be an extremely important pastime in Singapore. There appears to be a two-level hierarchy to eating establishments: either you eat at a restaurant where main courses cost about $15 upwards, or you eat at a food-court where you can eat your fill for about $5. As tempting as some of the restaurants looked, we opted for the latter as it turns out the food at the food-courts is great. So much so that whenever we were going somewhere it became necessary to factor in an extra 15 minutes for me to eat at the food-court we had to pass to get to our local metro station. You can either eat at stalls that specialise in one or two dishes (e.g. roast meats or dumpling soup), or go to a buffet-style stall where they dish out whatever you point at and then make up a price for it...or, as I opted for, both! The downside was that the food-courts weren't particularly veggie-friendly for Monique, and even I had to be careful what I pointed at as there were some pretty strange things in amongst the 'normal' meats.

On our second day in Singapore we headed to Santosa Island, an island resort that is home to various entertainments including Universal Studios. We didn't go to Universal Studios as we decided to save that until our last stop in L.A., but we did have an enjoyable time wandering around the island. It's a pretty bizarre place – the island is covered with all sorts of amusement rides and shows, as well as expensive hotels and golf-courses, but from the man-made beaches looking back towards the mainland the view is one of the Singapore oil industy, and the horizon is filled with chimneys belching out smoke. Quite surreal to see what looks like two different worlds next to one another. We had made the mistake of going to Sentosa Island in the evening, thinking that it would be lively until closing time, however it was actually pretty dead and lots of the attractions were closed. We did, however, see a pretty cool water-show (complete with awful overacting from the young cast) in which holograms were projected onto the mist created by water jets, and we walked to the very southernmost point of mainland Asia. We had a pretty good time, although it felt a bit like a ghost-town; if I was to go back I would definitely go during the day.

By far our best day in Singapore was our visit to Singapore Zoo. I'll save the details for a separate post because there are loads of photos, but it's safe to say that it's the best zoo I've ever been to.

Before leaving we just had enough time to visit the excellent Changi Museum. The museum is located in a former prison which housed prisoners of war during World War II. The reason we only just had time to visit is because we got off the bus a couple of stops early and initially attempted to visit the current prison instead! The museum was excellent – interesting and moving. Prior to visiting the museum neither of us were really aware of the important role of Singapore in WWII, so we were really glad that we managed to squeeze it in before heading to the airport to fly to Borneo.

Overall our brief stay in Singapore was really enjoyable, and I'm glad we had the opportunity to change our plans to allow ourselves more time there. That said, 3 days was probably sufficient as Singapore is definitely the most expensive place we had visited so far on our trip, and any longer in such a clean, efficient and opulent place would have made it difficult to return to our usual backpacker ways.

Ubud

On the way from Sanur to the ferry terminal we had passed through Ubud. It had looked like a nice artsy town full of art and crafts shops, so on our return to Bali we headed there for a few days.

We had been drawn to a lot of the Indonesian handicrafts we had seen during our visit – hand-carved wooden masks, animals made of tin, batik print materials etc – but our small backpacks limited us from carrying souvenirs with us, and we knew from past experience that sending a package home by air would be prohibitively expensive, and to send it by sea a package needed to weigh at least 3kg. Our options were therefore to buy no souvenirs in Ubud, or to go on a buying frenzy to fill a box and make the cost of shipping a package home justifiable. We chose the latter option, and spent much of our time in Ubud shopping for souvenirs. After months of seeing cool stuff but restraining ourselves from buying many souvenirs it was quite good fun to feel justified in buying the things we liked.

We did partake in a few of more cultural activities whilst in Ubud. The first was a Cultural Dance & Fire Trance. The performance, which took place in the open-air courtyard of a temple, was spectacular. We were initially dismayed to find out that the performance was part of the Ramayana – the same story that was depicted by the ballet near to Prambanan – however the two depictions were completely different. A hundred or so bare-chested men sat in concentric circles on the floor and proceeded to chant (sometimes in unison, sometimes in a ripple moving around the circle) as they swayed from side to side or front to back, raised and lowered their hands etc to reflect elements of the story. It had a truly hypnotic effect, especially as it was illuminated only by candle-light.

 

Above the chanting one performer would sing what we assume was part of the story, and at the same time actors in fantastic costumes entered the circle to dance and act out the story.

Without prior knowledge of the story we wouldn't have had any idea what was going on, but it really didn't matter as it was the music and spectacle created by the chanting men that was the undisputed star of the show. My description really doesn't do it justice, so check out the excellent video below which shows a similar performance (the dance starts at about 1min 50sec but its well worth watching the whole video as it is well made and includes some great footage of Borobudur and Bromo as well):

I had completely forgotten about the Fire Trance mentioned in the description of the show, so I was surprised when another performer entered at the end of the story. A large bonfire was lit in the centre of the courtyard, and metal barriers placed at the feet of the people in the front row of the audience. The performer appeared wearing only a loin-cloth and holding a wooden horse head, and proceeded to repeatedly kick the bonfire with his bare feet sending the coals crashing into (and over) the metal barriers, and a huge cloud of sparks and smoke flying into the air. The performer then walked and danced over the burning coals, crushing them underfoot. The coals were subsequently brushed back to the middle to enable him to repeat the feat over and over until the coals cooled. The performance, which was accompanied by more chanting, ended with the dancer collapsed panting, before coming out of his trance and displaying the charred soles of his feet. It was a truly remarkable sight.

Our second cultural show was no less bizarre, but definitely less enjoyable. Shadow puppetry is a popular form of entertainment in Indonesia, and having thoroughly enjoyed a shadow puppet show in Cambodia last time we travelled we were keen to see another. Once again we were dismayed to find out that we were to see yet another performance of part of the Ramayana. The show took place in a tiny shop and consisted of various puppets being flung around behind a white screen, illuminated from behind by a candle, while the puppeteers shouted in mental voices and musicians played deafeningly loud music. It was absolutely crazy and quite headache-inducing. As with the previous performance we had seen in Ubud it included an equally crazy English-language interlude where the characters talked gibberish. The only understandable part was a character offering “You want transport?...Taxi?” - mocking the plethora of taxi drivers offering the same. To be honest I was glad when it was over and we got to look behind the screen to see the 4 gentlemen responsible for the assault on our senses. One thing was certain – it was completely different to the other two performances of the Ramayana we had seen. 

 

We also had time to visit Monkey Forest – a small forest at the end of Monkey Road which (you've guessed it) is home to lots of monkeys. You'd have thought that we would be bored of monkeys after seeing them on a daily basis almost everywhere in India and Nepal, however it sounded like a nice break from shopping and the Ramayana, and there were also some temples in the forest. We had read that the monkeys weren't shy, but we were taken aback by quite how un-shy they were. Monique thought it would be a good idea to take some peanuts to feed the monkeys with, but before she could even get them out of her bag the monkeys rushed at us at the mere sound of the packet. It was clearly not a good idea, so the peanuts remained in Monique's bag. The monkeys, even the females with tiny babies, were scarily comfortable with being in close proximity to humans and seemed to find sport in chasing people and jumping on them. It made for a slightly nervous experience, but gave us a good opportunity to take some photos.

Whilst the temples in the forest were not particularly notable for their structure, they did have multiple statues in the unique Balinese style that is unlike anything we have seen elsewhere.

We were due to leave Indonesia by way of an early flight from Denpasar, and so had intended to take a bus to Denpasar to stay over the night before the flight. However, our plan changed when we discovered that the Post Office in Ubud wanted to charge us more than three times what we had previously paid to send a package to the US. Instead we headed back to Sanur by bus with our backpacks and large box of souvenirs; we knew where we would stay and eat, and that the staff at the Post Office there were extremely helpful. Fortunately the plan worked and we got our package sent without any difficulty (for a much lower price that justified the change in plan) and made the early trip to the airport in time to take our flight to Singapore.

Our stay in Indonesia had started badly and not been without its dramas, however we had seen some truly spectacular sights in the form of temples, volcanoes and marine life that we will never forget. Indonesia has a huge range of sights and experiences (even in the relatively small part of the country that we had seen), and I would highly recommend it to anyone as a holiday/travel destination.