Tag: Singapore

Thanks for joining us again, this time for a visit to Singapore’s Zoo a.k.a Mandai Wildlife Reserve. We had many adventures and took many photographs, enough to test the limits of this blog’s hosting. Let’s go!

Back in February Mrs Sachie and I had a long weekend down in Singapore. The flights were cheap and Sachie got a deal on a room at the JW. It wasn’t a bad trip but we were mostly looking forward to a day at the zoo.

Saturday was our only full day in town so we were up before dawn for a splendid feed at the hotel breakfast and then onto a series of trains and busses.

I came here on my first visit to Singapore, a visa run back in 2000. Back then it was this and the Night Safari but these days there’s also Bird Paradise, River Wonders and Rainforest Wild.

Here’s our route for the day. Turning up early was a good idea as the animals are a bit more lively. In the past I’d usually sleep in and arrive around noon but that’s when animals are having their siesta. Who knew?

Except the proboscis monkeys, they were hungover, like me. They probably partied at the Night Safari. I’ve always been keen on these Bornean creatures and once got in trouble at work for setting the proboscis monkey as my profile picture.

But it turns out that nobody likes having to look at a monkey with a cock for a nose when being messaged on Slack.

The otters are my favourite and I used to have one of them as my profile picture back when I was young and slender. Now I have a bear. These had some new pups to take care of so where not putting on much of a show.

Cute though.

And here’s the mighty tiger. They have two, a boy and a girl, but can’t show them together because they’ll eat each other, or something. This photo of the tiger lady was shot with my phone but I had my digital SLR along too. This was about the time I realised that it was set to +2 stops and all my shots were overexposed. In my defence, the screen is wrecked so it was hard to tell.

Every good zoo has a caiman or two.

But i think this one is a crocodile. I really should have taken notes.

Look out for that hippo, son. You know they kill more people than lions every year? Folks who escape may end up crippled.

You’ll notice that the glass is quite clean, at least compared to some zoos I have been to. There’s also plenty of fish swimming about. You would have seen them in the last video. They give a nice accent to the habitat, although in this case they appear to be functional too:

Next up, this orang-u-tan has lost his phone.

Their habitat is next to the main restaurant and is really something. These guys are on an island but there is a treeway that extends over the moat, so they can get out and about, kind of. It’s really cool. Of course they are being hectored.

By these little fuckers. Gibbons.

I have said before that I think orangutans and other great apes deserve to be treated as creatures with human rights but impaired cognition, much as the state would care for a mentally handicapped child, hopefully with kindness and welfare. They can’t readily communicate their decisions or wishes but they should get the same decency and respect that we would give to a human who is unable to do so.

They have some white rhinos, which are pretty ace.

Here’s one with a little bird on its rump.

Here is the African painted dog. This is very cool.

They have a whole pack of them in a big enclosure, but it’s sunny and they’re asleep, but the cunning keepers at the zoo have put a big window in their den.

They seem fairly pleased.

Next, our barcoded friends, the zebra.

That’s mum and dad, they have a foal.

He’s a cute little thing, if a little skinny and ungainly.

Err, well. Moving on, here’s Mrs Sachie’s favourite, the mercats.

They’re on the beat, looking out for trouble.

Simon gets watch duty for the rest of the day.

While Marcus stretches out for a nap. See all that white stuff? It’s cotton. It was all over and it had big black seeds in it. Raw cotton, the stuff that a million Africans were enslaved to pick in the US. This stuff seemed to be in abundance at Singapore zoo, where was it coming from? Was there a plantation of singing negros next door?

And that’s my first cotton tree. I have no idea of the species or what the fuck was going on but it was raining cotton balls. Anyhow, here’s another nice picture of the mercats.

Now who’s this ugly fucker?

Astonishingly, Singapore zoo has a naked mole-rat colony. I’ve only seen these things on David Attenborough docos. They are the oddest mammals of all, and I’m including the monotremes. They are blind, live underground, nude, I may mention, and have a queen that gives birth to all of them. Like ants

The unenlightened observer may assume that the above is a still from Naked Mole Rat Gang Bang VII, but it’s not. This is:

They can’t see, so spend their life bumping into things. A bit like I do.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t find these critters erotic at all, naked or no. Time to move on to…

The majestic, leonine, lion.

He’s putting on a show for us.

A big yawn, the lazy bugger. We were up before dawn!

OK, I guess that is pretty impressive. Big canines.

And that’s the exact same face I made a few minutes after waking up.

Anyhow, Mr Lion put on a pretty good show. I’ve been to loads of zoos and lions usually just lie around doing nothing. A bit like your housecat. I guess that’s OK, because if lions carried on like cats do on the internet we’d all be in trouble.

Now he’s doing yoga stretches.

Now it’s time to visit the baboons. I have no idea why they have these creatures in the zoo, they are a goddam menace in their home habitat.

But we were in luck, there was this little chap, or chick.

He’s a rambunctious little scamp. I decided he is male because it makes the writing easier.

Whoops, that pink ass marks out our little chap as a girl, I think. I’m just going to go ahead and assume he identifies as male.

The best thing about turning up early is that you get to see a lot of behaviour, rather than animal naps. You’ll see a bit of grooming above, which is practised by most primates, including Mrs Sachie.

The next attraction is the butterfly house. It’s alright, but isn’t anywhere near as good as the one in Melbourne Zoo. But that’s OK, because after the butterfly house there’s a big aviary that’s been, well, converted. After going through the gate we saw this colourful chap digging into a termite mound.

A bird. Completely normal in an aviary. The animals here are very tame, acclimated to humans, but the sign points out that they’ll bite you if you get a bit handy. We saw this thing:

Here’s a still of… whatever it is?

There’s a path that takes you on a loop around the enclosure and you have birds fly by your head and mouse-deer scurry around you feet. The main focus is this raised platform. They hang fruit off a wire here to attract the animals and, as I was a bit peckish, it attracted me too. It’s also the sun spot for this big iguana.

I don’t know how many times a day he gets stepped on but it is a good spot if you’re cold-blooded. I’ve shot a 360 video to give an idea of the place, so break out your VR kit or just put your phone in full-screen:

Anyhow, the fruit attracts the locals, right up against the handrail.

Yep, they had watermelon at the hotel’s breakfast buffet this morning and the people there were doing this kind of thing too.

Here’s another funny bird, it’s another 360 video:

However, it’s not just birds and reptiles hanging out, there are mammals too.

My favourite, the giant fruit-bat, or flying-foxes as we call them in Australia, are cute as hell.

To see one up close enough, about a foot away, is pretty amazing. I could reach out and give it a big hug if I wanted to and I did want to. They are very cool, very weird, animals.

Here’s a couple of birds just hanging out on the handrail. In another country, some dickhead would grab them or otherwise wreck things for the rest of us but, because they are so approachable, I think they disarm potential hoodlums. The shot below shows just how much their comfort zones overlap with ours.

You can’t see the iguana but I think the photographer is standing over it. Mrs Sachie stepped on it, but only once.

That’s another cool parrot. The birds fly right by your ear and land in front of you.

The pidgeon is nice but a bit ordinary.

Then we were treated to something astonishing.

That’s a two-toed sloth with child, making its way along the branch that holds the fruit.

I could have reached out to touch it, without even a stretch, but it was completely calm and completely amazing.

Mrs Sachie and are are unbelievably lucky. This really was a once-in-a-lifetime moment. I strongly suggest getting a ticket to Singapore and camping out on this platform to see this. To see these animals behind wire this close would be a privilege but to encounter them like this was, well, really the best ever.

I guess it helps that they are slow enough to get lots of video and images.

Not sure why they came though because they didn’t eat any fruit. Didn’t see them later either. Turn up early! Oh, who’s that?

Well paint me green and call me Charlie because it’s Mrs Sachie’s favourite, the lemur. Ring-tailed, in this case, and boisterous. Here he is showing off his nuts.

Much to the delight of the ladies.

These guys are show-stealers at Tokyo Zoo but this was even more amazing.

But they always look a bit nonplussed. This chap looks like he’s seen way, way too much of the world.

In fact, when Sachie politely asked him for a selfie, he just turned away and quietly wept.

I’m starting to guess why. Still, there’s a bunch of lemurs here and they’re very cool with people. Don’t try to pat one, though, they’ll take your hand off. I can respect this arrangement, that you’re allowed in with the animals, but they’re allowed to bite you if you step over the line. There are signs everywhere saying so and, being pragmatic Singapore, I guess if you showed your bloodied hand to a zookeeper, they’d ask you what you thought was going to happen it it if you got it too close?

All that said, they’re actually pretty cool with people. More like pets I guess.

Not sure about the chap above though. The squirrels are native, we get them in Bangkok and this one is an excellent specimen. Then again, there’s this guy below. Is he an exhibit or a visitor?

On the way out we saw, these fancy things.

Next stop was the reptile house, via the majestic moustache-monkey exhibit.

And a quick stop at Chimp Island.

Why do they stay on an island, behind electric fences?

Perhaps because of this guy. I don’t recall his name but he has a reputation.

Here he is throwing whatever was in his mouth earlier at us. Sharp retort or generous gift? We’ll never know as it landed in the water.

Celebratory somersault.

Here’s the patriarch of the clan. He’s older than me, and that’s really saying something these days.

At the reptile house, finally.

There’s this cute little guy, put on your audio when you watch the video below.

Poison dart frogs are deadly, the cute guy above has enough venom to take out an inner suburb. They are ferocious in combat but their innate vanity is their greatest weakness. Here’s one checking its stripes in the mirror.

The reptile house at a zoo often isn’t much good for photos because of the darkness. Then again, the subjects don’t move around much so you can do long exposures. Speaking of long…

This was pretty much the last stop but it was still early afternoon. What to do?

Yeah, we passed through the butterfly house again to see the lemurs.

And why not? They’re cute, tame and incredibly photogenic.

Also, they’d laid out fresh watermelon and I hadn’t had any lunch.

There was no sign of the sloth though and the lemurs were getting a bit boring.

“What about us Dan? Take a photo of us!” No thanks, sexy bird, it’s time for us to go back to the hotel and. Hang on, what’s that thing?

Yeah, that dude with the… face.

Oh yeah, I’ve seen those ducks and I guess the weird bird was the Chaco. Thanks. But what are you?

Still can’t work it out. Some sort of monkey?

And there’s another one. They look to be a male and a female. If only there was a way of telling which was which. The black one is pointing at something.

Ah ha! The black one is male, because he’s making a marriage proposal. At the zoo, very romantic.

I guess she’s not sure. She’s going to check him for nits first. Quite wise. Mrs Sachie did something similar when I popped the question.

But that’s it for the zoo. On the way out, Sachie took a breather on a tiger.

“That’s not a real tiger, Sachie. Try sitting on me and see what happens.” Mrs Sachie didn’t take this well.

Too bad, Mrs Tiger, you’re winter-wear now.

One of the highlights of my visit back in 2000 was seeing the polar bear, poor bugger was about as far away from home as could be at the equator. I got this cool shot on my brand-new Canon IXUS digital camera:

Well, looks like we came a little late to see Inuka.

And the zoo was the highlight of the trip, short as it was. We had to hurry back to the JW because they were about to start cocktail hour.

It’s not a bad lounge, if a bit modern (polished concrete floor instead of deep carpet) but the hooch is first class.

Next day we went for a walk and looked at expensive architecture.

And some old stuff. I used to stay in mosque street, back in the day, when I came to Singapore on visa runs.

Things have gotten a lot fancier and the place is a big tourist market now.

But it’s time to go to the airport. Changi is a great airport and is the only airport where a robot has poured me a glass of cognac.

Wonders are ceaseless.

The below offer may be enticing, but I don’t like cockburns. I find cockburns disagreeable.

And there’s the plane. It was a nice trip, see you next time.