Achievements, Pets & Celestial Aristocracy

In this one, among other things: an excursion to the zoo, during which we found new appreciation for our sons; a trip to the beach, during which we learned about the fierceness of the sun; and a Super Blue Blood Moon. And random pictures. 

After enjoying the Singaporean flora, we thought we should give the fauna equal attention. To that end, we went to the zoo. We were terribly smart about it, too. You see, luxurious as our residence is, it comes with complimentary mobile phones. And part of the appeal of those phones (apart from the fact that they are, you know, free mobile phones) is that they offer some rebates and savings on tourist attractions. Like the zoo. It’s cheaper and you don’t even have to print out anything. Just show ’em your phone and stroll in. (I’m sure not printing out three pages of paper totally makes up for the gazillion tons of CO2 we pumped into the atmosphere getting here, and consequentially also justifies my disapproving of the excessive use of plastic in these parts of the world. Such a green person I am.)

We walked up to the entrance and past a REALLY long line of people. Smirking. Walked straight to the gate and were told that we had to get into that REALLY long line of people and convert our mobile phone vouchers into proper paper tickets at one of the two designated ticket conversion counters. Let me make a mild understatement and describe our mood as less than thrilled at that turn of events.

So we stood in the queue, while to our left all the people who hadn’t been smart enough to buy tickets in advance zipped past us and hurried to one of the 130 open ticket counters (AT LEAST 130! If not 700!); and to our far left, people who could read signs went online and bought their tickets from the zoo website, saved 5% more than we had and were actually able to skip the queue altogether. We really thought about buying a second set of tickets. That’s how happy we were. We persevered, though, and finally got in after the better part of an hour. (Children appreciation bullet point #1: both boys were a bit bored but made no fuzz whatsoever.)

If you ever intend to visit the zoo in Singapore – please be smarter than we were! Here’s the website you want to visit.

The park itself is nice. Most of the pens are expansive. Monkeys are allowed to roam more or less freely. You’ll see and hear them in the treetops all the time. And for large parts of it, the barriers between you and the animals are so cleverly hidden, you can almost forget they are there. We watched two shows (one with a seal, one with monkeys, snakes and birds). We ate good food at more reasonable prices than we’d expected. We got many free refills for our water bottles. We environmentally awesome people (right?) made fun of vending machines for reusable water bottles (the sign on the thing? “Avoid unnecessary plastic pollution – buy a reusable bottle!” – The bottles? Wrapped in plastic bags.) We walked around in the tropical heat for almost six hours before Albert got a nose bleed and didn’t want to go on. (Children appreciation bullet point #2: SIX hours!) By then, Kaspar was bored of sitting in the carrier all day, so we made a switch. I’m sure you came here for snapshots of animals in a zoo, so please. Have some. (I’ll just put the highlights up and add the rest as a gallery at the bottom of the post. In case that, inexplicably, you’re more interested in us than in random animals.)

Last weekend, we went to Sentosa to enjoy some tropical beaches and let the boys build sand castles. For reasons unknown, they love sand at the playground, but they hate it if there’s a sea nearby. So there wasn’t much playing in or near the water. That might have been for the better, though, because the sun around here is rather fierce. I left the shadows of the palm trees for all of 10 minutes to swim a few meters, and by the time I came back I had a veritable sunburn. The beach we stayed at was crowded by Singaporean standards, which means there were other people, and we could see them. At some time in the afternoon we were even forced to move our stuff NEAR someone, in order to stay in the shade. So crowded! On the way home, we spent 10 quality minutes unlocking the “Visited the southernmost point of continental Asia” achievement, watched a couple of overachievers climb overhanging trees to get to even more southernmost points, took the obligatory selfie, ate some delicious grilled food, and called it a day.

One night after work, we visited Haw Par Villa, a park with hundreds of sculptures depicting Chinese myth and folklore tales. It was commissioned by the inventors of Tiger Balm, and I think one of them actually lived there. It’s free to visit, and worth every penny. 🙂 Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have paid money to see it, but if you’re in Singapore, have an hour to spare and don’t know what to do with your time, go take a look. It’s a bit bizarre and a bit eccentric, but there are certainly interesting tales and stories hidden in there.

We also had the elusive pleasure of seeing a Super Blue Blood Moon. Which, I found out on the interwebs, means that it’s at its closest distance to Earth (supermoon), the second full moon in one calendar month (blue moon) and total lunar eclipse (blood moon). Totally rare, this (although mostly for the visually insignificant blue part). Only happens every hundred-odd years. You probably knew all that. Anyway, I went up to the roof and tried my best to balance my camera on legs, chairs, tables, bags, shoes and glasses in order to take pictures, because I didn’t bring the tripod. I’m sure I looked more interesting taking the shots than what the photos turned out to be, but anyway…

It’s raining less and less. Work is still relaxed. We’ve settled in. The boys are happy (until they’re not. Kids, right?). And we’ve made it through our first month here already. Which means we should probably start planning our trips to Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Bali, Vietnam and Australia real soon. So much to do! Here’s a few more random pictures.

Right. Below are some more animal pics, because I took them, so why not post them. The next blog will have live fish in shopping malls, gardens on rooftops, afternoons at the pool and more. 🙂 So long!