River Cruise and Night Safari

Today we spent quite a bit of time planning the day’s activities, especially the plan for the night safari. So many choices….we didn’t leave our room until about 1:30 pm. We went down to the MRT station hoping to buy a day pass only to find that they didn’t sell them at the station. We were told to go to the tourist info center instead, about a half a dozen blocks away. They didn’t have them either, but the very helpful agent said we didn’t need one – it would be more cost-effective to buy single tickets instead. She also fixed us up with a bus arrangement to the night safari and information on our taxi ride to the airport for our very early flight to Kathmandu on Thursday morning. Well worth the trip and time! After thanking her profusely, we hopped back on the MRT down to Clark Quay to catch a Singapore river and harbor cruise, where we saw wonderful views of colonial architecture contrasted with the modern buildings, the most impressive being the new Marina Bay Sands resort with the boat structure on top of the three towers. This is supposed to be one of the most expensive hotels in the world. We cheated a bit and grabbed some photos off the internet

to show the view from the swimming pool on top, 55 stories up. Once the cruise was over, we grabbed an early dinner since our bus to the night safari was scheduled to leave at 5:55 pm.

After much confusion, we finally found the bus pickup spot, in front of a private college that had vacated its building; no wonder we couldn’t find it. We reached the night safari at 7:00 pm and viewed a couple of the pre-tour shows, followed by a tram around the grounds. It was interesting seeing all kinds of wild animals in their habitats, though it was even more rewarding to hop off the tram and take the trails on foot instead. We particularly enjoyed the up-close views of fishing cats, otters, sloths, porcupines and leopards (called Bintang in Malay, the same name as the national beer in Indonesia!). We also saw flying foxes, raccoons, civet cats, rhinos, lions, tigers, storks, flamingos, hyenas, wolves, fish, barking deer (very tiny), elephants, snakes and crocodiles. No monkeys, since primates are not nocturnal! We left at 10:30 for the bus back to the city and another fabulous view of the Christmas lights on Orchard Road.