My sister and me came up with a family tradition where any of our kids turn one we will bring the whole brood to Singapore Zoo. We did that once when my niece turned one in 2011 and now again when JJ just turned one in 2013.
Zoo tickets
The last time when we went to the zoo in 2011, they were still building the River Safari hence our main focus was activities in the Zoo then. But this time round, the River Safari has opened its doors and our main focus of this visit are the Pandas, where they are housed. As the name says it River Safari, meant that we are expected to see all kinds of different marine animals and to be exact, mainly FISHES. JJ had seen so much of them in the first half of the River Safari trail (and maybe I mentioned the word FISH like 300 times), such that when we came to a tank filled with small colourful fishes, JJ actually mimicked me and said the word FISH.
Long mouthed fish
Next up the pandas. Wonder why the pandas are placed in the River Safari, that is because they are closely associated with the Yangtze River. Basically, River Safari features all the different rivers in the world and showcased marine animals that resided in these rivers. We only managed to snap pictures of one of the pandas as the other one was a little camera shy.
A sleeping panda
Then we went to the giant aquarium for to view the marine animals being fed by the zoo keepers. By then JJ was already dead beat and was sleeping in the pram at 11 am which is not his usual nap time. Maybe all the fish viewing made him really tired. My niece was still pretty energetic and insisted on seeing the pandas again but we managed to cajole her that watching sea cows being fed was much better than looking at panda’s sleeping. Sea cows are actually mermaid-seal like looking marine animals and they are huge weighing at least 1.1 tons.
Sea cows
Well after spending about 2 hours in River Safari, we went to the Zoo for lunch at the Ah Meng Restaurant. By the time we were done with lunch, the sun was scorching hot so we decided to take the tram ride to look at the animals which was more comfortable than walking the Zoo with the kids. We only stopped at the kids play area for the carousel ride (which the kids loved it) and viewed the white tiger before heading home at 3pm.
Carousel ride
Yes it was a short visit for us at the Zoo compared to the previous time. This time we did not manage to watch any animal shows unlike the last time where we watched like 3 shows. Well, with a 3 year old toddler and a newly turned 1 year old screaming toddler in tow it is virtually impossible to sit down in peace to just watch the giraffes for just 2 minutes needless to say a 20 minutes animal show. Still it is a tradition we try to up keep and definitely we will be back in the future when the brood grows. Wish us luck on the next visit then.
Sis and the brood
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