Night Safari
We have been getting on well on our course this week, things have started to gather pace as people overcome their jetlag and settle in, getting to know one another.
Last night a group of us headed back to Singapore Zoo for the second half of the experience, the Night Safari! This is something that I think more zoos should do, but it wouldn’t work so well in Belfast I think (too cold!). The safari starts at 7pm, you go along and they have paths around the zoo dimly lit and some tours by tram around various areas. Going to the zoo at night time opens the opportunity to see animals that normally don’t show their face during daylight hours, but only become active, or visible, at night.
Obviously the night safari isn’t really conducive to photographs so much and so the three meagre offerings below:
 |
| Night Safari |
The real adventure, however, only began as we left the Zoo and began our journey home… Going to the zoo we had taken a “direct” bus promising a 30 minute journey straight to the gates of the zoo. After a lot of zig zagging, going in circles and taking out public railings, changing bus and catching a mini-van, the drivers finally got us to the zoo, only 45 minutes later than expected! Quite unusual for Singapore…
On the return journey we sought to avoid the inconvenience of the direct bus by taking the indirect public bus/MRT (mass rapid transit) route back to IHQ. The first bus worked well, but we arrived at the MRT station just after the last train had left and so we headed back to the bus stops to plan a route home, some of the elder folk and those laden with sleeping children took taxis back, but the rest of us were much more intrepid and sought to select a bus route to get us home. With some expert map reading and clever interpretation of timetables, we got on the wrong bus and headed off to somewhere else.
After we realised we were on the wrong bus we didn’t get off… Not us… We asked the driver how to get home and he (along with some laughing) kindly told us where we should get off and get another bus back towards the road we are staying on. We just made it and got that bus (now after midnight, the last bus on the route), and made it back to the vicinity of IHQ, with a shortish walk back home!
The night safari really was great though!
