Night Safari

There is one main tourist place in Singapore that most people have heard of --The Night Safari!  Thus we had to go see for ourselves if this one location was worth all the hype we had heard about it.

The premise is simple:  a zoo of mostly nocturnal animals with operating hours of 7pm (sunset) until midnight when these nocturnal animals are awake and active.

Execution: AWESOME!!! but note that we love zoo's to begin with much less one at night!

There is two ways to see the park: tram or by foot.  There are animals on the tram route that are not accessible by foot and vice versa. We opted for the cheaper route and went on foot.

You walk around these softly lit pathways in what feels like deep jungle only because the light doesn't go that far off the pathway.  See photo. Your eyes adjust quickly and your ear become even more sensitive to the noises because in that jungle that surrounds you there might be lions or tigers or bears....oh my. and so you jump at every little sound or wind through the leaves.  makes for quite a fun Zoo experience.

The downside is that flash photography is not allowed, so you don't mess up your night vision or the big eyed animals you are trying to photograph.  As I mentioned this is the time when they are most active and thus moving around so trying to take a photo of a moving animal in very low light basically doesn't work.  Please make note of the photos that did turn out all happen to be slow moving things like grazing rhinos and zebras and....the pathway!

Cool thing #1: because of the low light, you really cant see the edges of the animal enclosures.  this is nice because A) you feel like they really are roaming the jungle and you just happened to catch a glimpes of them and B) you dont actually see how tiny their enclosures are and thus you dont feel so bad for them.

Cool thing #2: those animals in normal zoos which are normally sleeping when you see them...you know the ones where you really want to make a noise in hopes they'd at least raise their head and look at you.  Usually these land, for me, in the cat family (lions, tigers, panthers, etc).  Well....they are all active and pacing and are simply marvolous creatures to watch. (but hard to take photos of ).  The Malaysian tiger was my favorite.

Cool thing #3: They have a bat enclosure....that you get to go inside.  Normally I'm not so keen on bats flying around, much less huge fruit bats with a 2' wing span, but this was REALLY cool to see them feeding and staking out territory and doing bat-like things like flying around. it was awesome.

Cool thing #4: They have a flying squirl enclosure which like the bat one, you get to walk around inside.  We somehow were really lucky and saw not one squirl fly (glide is more like it), but TWO! And what i didn't realize is those suckers are NOT small...they look like a normal grey squirl, but they are reddish orange and have a torso of about 1' long.  Amazing to see them with their huge 'wing' span eventhough it is simply extra skin of their arms and legs.

Cool think #5: somehow mosquitoes were not a problem.  I'm not sure if it was the time of year or if they spray for them or what, but I didn't get bitten once! (and that's sayin' sometin')

We made the mistake of going on a holiday weekend and thus the park was overly crowded, but we'd go back in an instant and can see why it is at the top of the short list of tourist things to do in Singapore.  This means when you come to visit, we'll take you there!