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Published: March 14th 2007
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Aristi
Next to me on the other PC... Grinning like a cheshire cat... We are actually running two blogs, so as we speak Aristi is penning a more refined (obviously) and critically a less hair-raising blog for people that will worry - Namely, our families (e.g. minus hair raising stories of wild tiger attacks or, god forbid, even of running out of toiletries). I write this, because she just stole my title. You can check her version of her Blog, including her stolen title, here:
http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Taylor--s/
After waking up around 10.30am (we are still adjusting with the jet lag) we decided to make our way to the Jurong Bird Park. Not before washing and breakfast ofcourse...
The whole issue of having Jetlag (or at least its impact on your morningful wakefulness) is rather mitigated by a morning shower in the hostel.
This is largely because there isn't any hot water. Its don't half wake you up in the morning.... unless ofcourse you only wash one half of your body.
On the way to the bird park we saw a couple of interesting things. The first appeared to be a Singaporean Soap Opera in mid-scene... didn't look like a student film with the vast amount of equipment and people about supporting
Soap Opera
Was this a Singaporean Soap Opera in the making? it (plus their age).
Secondly we experienced the awesome power of a Singaporean Torrential Downpour, causing almost certain wetness for all whom tempted its wrath. Or walked out from other cover. Either of those things really. I picked the second and got soaked.
I've popped a video on Youtube from us sat in a Bus station at Boon Lay (at the West side of the island) waiting for a bus to the Jurong Bird Park, partly because I'm a sad man, partly because we were waiting about with nothing to do. Find the pesky blighter here:
It wet The Bird Park is one of 'the' attractions on the island. It's billed as the 'largest in South East Asia' so its sounds really impressive, only when you get there and you realise that its essentially competing with other birdparks in Thailand, Malaysia or Cambodia does it register that lowering expectations is a sensible idea. Our initial impressions were that it was slightly pants, however, by the end of the day we pretty much decided it was well worth it...
We got a combined ticket with the Zoo and Night Safari for around S$44 which works out at around
Penguins
They're small, they're black and they starred opposite Michelle Pffiffffffer in a passable Batman film. 14 quid for a couple of days (and an evenings) entertainment. The main draw are the two enclosures. One is a sort of rainforest type enclosure which includes the worlds largest man made waterfall - which is actually rather cool - at around 30m high. The birds in there though (at least at the time we went) were pretty good at hiding.
The other draw was the massive parrot enclosure which looks vaguely like the walkway structure from the film (or even more so the N64 game) 'Goldeneye' with a large net thrown over the top. Parrots abound, flying, chattering and performing head level flyby's within a foot about every half a minute.
I've bunged some more of this on Youtube too.
Bird Park 1 Bird Park 2 Other than that and a lot of wandering about, we went two a couple of shows which can largely be summed up as 'bird catches meat in mid air' and 'bird catches nut in mid air' with the exception of the (obscure) appearance of a magician in one of the shows... He truely was by far the worst magician I have ever experienced, but he was so bad both Aristi and I
Hawks
Catching dead meat. Cool. agree he looped round the bad-good scale and was actually entertaining. His act centred around (soley) pulling umbrella's from under his large cape (!) always following a large period of seconds starting at the audience whilst pretty clearly removing another umbrella from behind his back under the cape, and 'magically' changing the colour of his face mask. Or pulling a new one down with string for the cynics out there. He was truely crap. What made him so entertaining was the fact he did a vast amount of wide open hand gesturing much like David Copperfield does after - say - making the Statue of Liberty disappear. Unfortunately for him, there aren't any large statues in Jurong Bird Park, and certainly non with coloured masks or coverable with small umbrella's. Bless him.
Finally, there was the Chingay Parade. This was pretty much predictable but fun. Plenty of people dressed up in odd ways, dancing. We've been pretty lucky in (by fluke) arriving in Singapore over Chinese New Year, since its meant there is a lot more to do.
Chingay Parade Anyways... its now half 1 here... going to bed might be an idea...
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