Saturday, April 19, 2008

Night Safari

Took the family to Night Safari for the first time yesterday night. These days my parents stay with me. They came along for a view. Never knew that it is so popular touristy spot. The place was crawling with people.

I have to tell ya, this Family card of the Zoo, its amazing, so thoughtfully it allows for the family plus the grandparents all included. Though the tram ride is not covered, I would have loved to get that also as part of the deal. But anyway, I had three free tickets from the promotion that Samsung ran for their LCD. Used them.

The Singapore zoo and its experience is really awesome, but can at times give you a dent in the pocket. And when you have a growing kid who loves Animal Planet or Discovery, you have to dent your pocket a number of times in a year. Use the family card if you want, I liked it. Give me an opportunity to visit Zoo once a quarter to break even.

Visit the night safari website before going coz you would necessarily want to chalk out the time of various shows. We reached the safari gates at about 7:20 pm time enough to get ourselves seated at the entrance to the Safari tram lines to watch the first show of the night. The cultural performance of Bornean Tribals was loved by my kid. He was looking at the fire eaters with agape. I thought the music and hoola could have been a bit more rhythmic and the chanting could have been a little more realistic. But anyhow worth it if you are there for the first time. Here is a picture I took of the fellows.

The trip through the jungle was awesome to say the least. Moderate night temperatures – no rains (luckily): we saw plenty of animals. My camera did not function in the low light, coz the trams were moving and if I had to click, I was not supposed to move. So do not have any pictures to share from that experience. The trip takes 45 minutes. If you have a handycam, it may work coz the light system and illumination may just be enough for you to take pictures of moving creatures by the night.

Reached the end of the trip just in time for the 8:30 pm Creatures of the Night Show. The most awesome display of nature friendly folks. Oh the game keepers are so good. And the show they put up is something worth all the money you spend at the Safari. Very entertaining. Actually Mom was commenting how good the guys are that the show they put up with those smiling faces and cheer in their voices for show after show without failing to entertain the crowd. That is an achievement worth any fine movie performance. And the entertainment with the owls, pythons, the mountain cats, the raccoons, et al. Amazing. Entertaining. Must do if in Singapore.

We finished off the evening with dinner at the Ulu Ulu restaurant. Had the Indian food. Wont say I had a great experience. Would recommend to those who are extremely home sick for Indian food. Ordered one veg and two non veg combos. The chicken was good, but the biriyani rice was tad dry and not too "biryani" ish as claimed to be. Did not get to taste the cocktails or mocktails but that I will leave for another time.

Returned home to a night of thrilling encounters with creatures of the night.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In the whole safari apart from the glitzy shows I really like one concept which makes it really different!!! Te concept of adoption. Each animal is adopted by some influential family. Although it may be a way of show-off for them, but it helps the zoo people to maintain the enclosures. Imagine, wild life so clean...at least i have never seen such a clean animal habitat.