Singapore, Day 2
Another busy day! We had the most amazing breakfast here at home—tons of tropical fruit that neither Dave or I had ever eaten before, including Dragonfruit/rambutans, mangosteen, and longan, and then roti canai, which is a type of thin pancake served with different curries (fish and mutton today) or dal. Next Dave and I decided a workout would be a good idea, so we took ourselves down to the yard and attempted a crossfit workout. It was about twenty times harder than usual, between the heat, the humidity, and the jetlag. Once Dave and I had showered we all headed off to the Singapore Art Musuem to see some art. Unfortunately, we have no photos from there as we were not allowed to take pictures.
After the musuem, Dave and I set off on our own for more food—this time Chinese dumplings and roasted duck with noodles—and then walked around a bit and checked out downtown. We got on the subway, which was amazing! It was very clean, quiet, and fast, it wasn’t bumpy, or crowded, and we didn’t wait at all. The New York City MTA should be ashamed to call itself a subway in comparison. We took the subway home, where we all met up for a trip to the zoo.
The Singapore Zoo is really interesting—there are no cages, except for the snakes! For the most part, the animals are only separated by motes and barely visible fences. On the one hand, this is pretty cool when you’re looking at a nice cute tapir, or a giraffe, or a turtle. When it’s a polar bear, and there’s a very prominent sign with an emergency phone number and a ladder…it’s a little scary. We also stopped in at an observation port, where a lioness was definitely thinking about eating us as we looked at her through some glass. Very chilling. It’s amazing how some instinct deep in my brain was screaming at me to get away! We actually found the big cats section a little sad—they looked like they really wanted to get out and have more space. The rest of the zoo was really neat, though, and I finally saw a Komodo Dragon, which I was obsessed with when I was a kid. We also saw orang-utans, lots of turtles, snakes, giraffes, otters, white tigers, and many other animals.
After that, on the zoo facility itself, we all had dinner at a big food center. Dave and I had laksa, a seafood soup, and grilled skate (fish). During dinner we watched a really neat performance of dance and fireeating—Dave took a video which we’ll post later, and I took some photos.
Mark and Swee Leen and the kids headed home, and Dave and I got on a tram for a Night Safari. The tram takes you through specially lighted areas at night so you can see animals in their night habitats. We saw various deer, hyena, anteaters, giraffes, tigers, lions, elephants, tapirs, capybaras, and several other animals. It was a pretty neat experience. We finished off the night with a trip to the Doctor Fish—tiny fish that eat the dead skin off your feet and basically exfoliate them. It sounded neat but it was totally weird and ticklish and I decided I was not so into it! The fish really liked my feet, though. Dave and I were exhausted by then, so we hopped in a cab and came home.
My photos from yesterday and today are up on Flickr! It’s just a big picture dump, so nothing is labeled or even really filtered—feel free to poke around but expect some duds and duplicates in there.
