Pages from the ignored book: Merlion Memories : Visit to Singapore: Day 3

Day 3 : Botanical Gardens, Singapore Zoo and Night Safari

Woke up to rain pattering on the windows. After a heavy breakfast, we set off to Singapore Botanical Gardens. We decided to use the buses today. The bus stop names are posted at the bus stop,so you'll know where exactly to get off. We counted the number the stops to get off at the right one. But we seemed to have counted wrong and went two stops ahead, took the bus in the opposite direction and found our way to the gardens. It's a leisure garden which celebrated its 150 years recently. It's always calming to enter a park and to be surrounded by green. The park was alive more so because of the morning rains. There's a small swan lake which had a handsome sculpture of swans. This place felt really good and absolutely non-touristy. The orchids on display at the national Orchid garden were beautiful ! Very well documented,there were information boards about the orchids. It was pleasant weather thankfully,so we weren't too tired yet. The National Orchid Garden is definitely worth a visit. Thumbs up! We had a lunch picnic on one of the benches. The place was blissful in a way, lots of children playing,families on lunch picnics, dogs running about wagging their happy tails. Just a wonderful morning !
We took the MRT to Ang Mo Kio. At Ang Mo Kio , once again no problems finding the bus interchange to go to the Singapore Zoo. After a 15 minutes ,we got the bus no 138 to the zoo. It was a little after 2 pm when we got there. The park hopper pass got us right in,without having to wait. We waited a while for the tram. We made it a point not to get off on all the stops in the tram as getting a seat on the tram again is rather difficult. The animals were interesting ! The chimpanzees and orangutans were my favorite ! The polar bear was huge ! and so adorable and scary. We managed to catch the feeding show of the Polar bear. Among other lovely animals we saw the tiger, zebras, rhinos, giraffes, cheetah (wow!!). We watched the elephant show (a lot of people!) and the sea lion show. A part of me felt horrible to see these dangerous and beautiful animals domesticated and kept in a zoo,but from what we read, looks like they are more in danger in the wild. If there's one thing I learnt after the zoo visit,its about wildlife conservation. Lets please do our part to conserve the wildlife.
The Night safari opens at 7:30 pm. Completely underestimating the crowds , we lazily went there only at 7pm. The crowd was absolutely mad! The length of the queues there reminded me of temple visits in India ! The Sunday evening saw humongous crowds ! In the mad rush, we couldn't get in on time to watch the creatures of the dark show at 7:30pm (and the next was at 9:30pm). In utter confusion , we ended up waiting at the queue for the Japanese tram ,only to realize it after a while and had a hearty laugh. The waiting time was an hour. We saw the rhinos, deers, hyenas among many other animals. There were no dearth of the number of animals at the singapore zoo , but it didn't appeal to me much. Maybe I went in with a lot of expectation about a safari in the WILD or so. It felt very artificially placed there under a neon bulb. At the end of it, I definitely didn't think it was worth it. Although i did notice a lot of young children enjoyed it ! We retraced our way to Little India and out our tired feet to rest .

Review :
-- Botanical gardens is a MUST visit ! Go as early as possible .
-- Please avoid weekends for the zoo and safaris If unavoidable, please get in line 40 minutes before.
-- In two minds whether to suggest to skip the night safari. Kids would really enjoy it though.

At the National Orchid Garden,Singapore Botanical Garden :