Singapore (for like the millionth time!)

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Singapore. Ninth month, ninth country.

Malaysia didn't end great. When I woke up in the morning at the Hotel E.V. World the floor was flooded from the air-con (which I had been told didn't work, and it wasn't even turned on!). My bags and everything I had sitting on the floor were soaked. Luckily my laptop and camera were on a shelf.

The bus to Singapore was supposed to leave at 9.30am and take five hours. It left at 9.45 and took seven hours! There was one toilet stop after the first hour and that was it. No stops for food. There were some pretty disgruntled people on board I can tell you!

Once in Singapore I headed to the Cozy Corners Backpackers where I always stay. It is cheap (S$15 for a dorm bed) but as I wrote at the time of my last visit it hasn't changed one bit since I first starting sleeping there, from the old soccer flags on the walls to the broken tap. Now unfortunately it has reached that point of un-change where it has tipped over from basic budget accommodation to scummy dump, bed-bugs included. It will be my last time staying there. On my last day there the manager was in an argument with one of the guests because he was using his phone to use the WIFI in the breakfast area. Not unreasonably there is a rule not to use the breakfast area for using laptops during 7am and 11am – but this guy was using his phone, an object only the size of, well, a phone!

I had some plans for Singapore, mostly involving spending way too much money on zoo visits. Singapore is of course replete with zoological collections – the Singapore Zoo, Night Safari, Jurong Bird Park, Sentosa Aquarium, the Butterfly Park, the Live Turtle And Tortoise Museum, and the two newest ones, the River Safari and the SEA Aquarium. The latter two were the ones I wanted to see most, but I was planning on, at the least, also visiting the Night Safari for the first time and making another visit to Jurong. I have been to Singapore several times over the last eight years and have visited all the major animal collections (and some of the smaller ones). This trip I was trying to work out which ones I visited in which years and was rather shocked to find that I had last been to Jurong Bird Park in 2006! That would definitely have to be rectified! Having checked into Cozy Corners and sorted out some stuff on the internet I caught the MRT train and then a bus to the Night Safari. It opens at 7.30pm but I got there at 8.30pm. The WRS (Wildlife Reserves Singapore) operates the major zoos in Singapore and they offer a combined park pass. To save a bit on money I opted for just the three-park pass (Night Safari, River Safari and Jurong), leaving out the zoo. Later I remembered that I did want to visit the zoo after all because I hadn't seen the new wolverines. Another time though.

The Night Safari turned out to be a zoo which is half good and half terrible. The walking trails where the smaller species are displayed are mostly very good in terms of the size and quality of the enclosures. Highlights were the Malayan pangolin (at least I've seen a living one now!), tarsiers, cloud rats, hog badgers, and giant flying squirrels of two species. Lowlights were the awful small enclosures for large animals along the tram route in which rather obvious stereotyping was commonplace. While the tram was stopped at the sloth bears a wild colugo came zooming in out of the night and plastered itself onto a nearby tree-trunk, then clung there swivelling its head about. I don't think anyone else knew it was there. I stayed until 11pm and then caught a bus back to the nearest MRT station where I found the trains were stopping service in half an hour. I went as far as I could in the time and then luckily found another bus the rest of the way back to where my hostel was so I didn't need to pay for a taxi.

The next morning I visited the River Safari, the newest of Singapore's zoos. I had been looking forward to this a lot. The first half of the zoo was mostly brilliant and took me about two hours to get around, but the second half was a joke, mostly composed of an eight minute boat ride past tragically small enclosures, saved only by the amazing manatee aquarium at the end.

With two of the required zoos out of the way, the next day was a wild animal day. Destination: Pulau Ubin. This is a fairly-undeveloped island off the coast of Singapore which still contains a lot of wildlife. There are some people living there, but there's no city life, no traffic, no potable water. In fact it is so opposite of Singapore that sometimes animals swim across the strait from Malaysia for a holiday. There have been isolated records of tapir, elephant and even tiger on the island. Resident wildlife includes wild pigs, otters, pangolins, civets, red junglefowl and Oriental pied hornbills. To get to Pulau Ubin you first take a bus to Changi village. Changi is well-known to bird-watchers because there are established wild populations of two introduced parrots here, namely moustached parakeets (which I saw) and Goffin's cockatoos (which I did not see). I've seen them here before, but I wanted to add another tick on my year list. From Changi you take what are called bum-boats across to Pulau Ubin. This only costs $2.50 each way. Once on the island you can hire bicycles to get around. All the hire places have signs out front saying “from $2” but that's only the price of the tiniest childrens' bikes. Mostly you're paying $10-20. I had a fun time cycling round the various paved and unpaved roads, getting eaten by mosquitoes. I saw a straw-headed bulbul for the first time. They used to be a common bird but I keep reading how they are difficult to find now due to the cage-bird trade (they are one of the favoured “singing birds”). I guess it is true because I've never been able to find one before now! At the eastern end of the island is the Chek Jawa wetland area. There are a couple of boardwalks there, one through mangroves and one around the coastline. Out on the mudflats there were a number of whimbrels and grey herons. One of the grey herons was much larger and darker than the others and when I looked at it better it turned out to actually be a great-billed heron. I had, at one time, great-billed heron on my Singapore list based on a “wild” bird seen at Jurong Bird Park back in 2004 but eventually I discovered that wasn't a wild bird at all. I didn't see a real wild one until 2009 in Sabah and then also Komodo the same year. This current one returned the species to my Singapore list. Also scattered about on the mud-flats were several white egrets hunting in the shallows. At first I thought little egrets but through the binoculars they all obviously had bright yellow bills. Eventually, after much looking, one of them showed its feet which were also yellow. Chinese egret. Not sure about the others though – five Chinese egrets seems a bit far-fetched so I choose to assume the others were intermediate egrets.

The following day I had two activities in mind, firstly the wetland reserve of Sungei Buloh in the morning and secondly the new S.E.A. Aquarium in the afternoon. Sungei Buloh is easy to get to – really everywhere in Singapore is easy to get to! There's a bus which goes most of the way there, followed by a fifteen minute walk (except on Sundays and public holidays when it goes literally to the entrance). The bus had a warning sign inside saying “By Law: pay the correct fare; no smoking; no vandalism; no assault on the bus captain”. Sungei Buloh is a prime wader spot in Singapore but this is the end of the wader season, most of them having already departed back to Siberia and Alaska for breeding. There were some few small flocks still to be found – mostly common redshanks and whimbrels, with just a handful of common greenshanks and marsh sandpipers. No curlew sandpipers or plovers to be seen. I also saw what appeared to be a mixed group of milky and painted storks – both species breed at liberty at the zoo and apparently hybridise there, and birds are consequently seen all over the place. A large-tailed nightjar sitting on one of the tracks was nice, but it flew before I got any proper photos. I was particularly looking out for smooth-coated otters while at Sungei Buloh because they are regularly seen there, but there was a lot of construction work going on where they were renovating the visitor centre and one of the boardwalks. No otters seen.

After Sungei Buloh I caught the bus back to one of the MRT stations and took the train to Waterfront station, and from there walked across the boardwalk to Sentosa Island where the new S.E.A. Aquarium is located. This was brilliant, the best public aquarium I have ever been to. The monstrous Open Ocean tank, inhabited by manta rays and with the largest aquarium viewing window in the world, was fantastic.

On what became my last day in Singapore, a Saturday, I visited Jurong Bird Park in the company of another zoo nut of my acquaintance. In camera news, my little camera had given up the will to live in Kuala Lumpur (as most people and objects do in Kuala Lumpur I guess), so I can't use it anymore. I had filled the memory card on my big camera at the S.E.A. Aquarium the day before. I thought I had a spare memory card but it turned out I didn't, and in a grave oversight of management they don't sell memory cards at the Jurong gift shops! So I had exactly 31 photo spaces available for the whole of Jurong!! We had a splendid visit at Jurong nevertheless, by my estimation the best bird park in the world. Highlight were the Peruvian cocks-of-the-rock. Amazing birds. I saw four common iguanas roaming free while there. According to my colleague they result from escapes/releases from the now-defunct reptile park which used to be next door. One of the ones we saw was a bright green juvenile, maybe a year or two old, so they are obviously breeding in the wild now and I therefore am counting them on my wild animals lists.

With my wallet haemorrhaging money like it had been stabbed in the throat by the tooth-fairy, I caught a bus on Sunday morning back up into Malaysia. In four and a half days I spent 440 Singapore dollars, roughly S$100 per day (and the Singapore dollar is almost equal in value to the NZ dollar). Of course S$118 of that went on entry fees for zoos and aquariums, and another S$75 was accommodation and S$33 on buses and trains around the city. In an effort to save money I was eating a lot of burgers! There was a place called Mos Burger opposite the backpackers and they had (really good!) burgers for S1.80. Cheap fuel.

Anyway, my money is gone. The trip is officially super-duper cross-my-heart honestly over, with sugar sprinkles on top.

On a completely unrelated note: I am now in Melaka 😉

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