This is part of the 'Sidetrip' series, covering Kecil's most recent visit to meet up her Eyangs and Tante. You can scroll to the bottom of the post for complete lists of the series.
On the second day, since we have already crossed 'snow' from our list, we went on to the next listed item: the Zoo.
This Mama realises that yes, Kecil has been to many zoos/safaris (see
here,
here and
here) so far, but I guess it's just fun to bring the kiddo to see the animals. It's a totally different feeling to be up close with the real animal rather than watching them on TV or read about them from a picture book.
Singapore Zoo, although located in the city state of Singapore, is definitely not a zoo within an urban setting. It's located quite far from 'civilisation'. We had to take a special bus to go there. The trip took a while, but it was definitely worth the lush greeneries that greeted us at our destination.
One would expect real animals in the zoo, but even before we pass the entrance gate, a few 'fake animals' already greeted us, like the pictures of Panda (the zoo had real life panda on display when we were there!), the giant pink snake (decoration for the upcoming Chinese New Year), and of course, the giraffes!
Fear not, however, for the real animals did wait for us right after the gate, such as these cute otters:
But before we move deeper into the park, we decided that we needed some 'help'. You might notice our bags in the first picture. We were a wee bit over-prepared for a simple jaunt at the zoo, no?
Indeed. That was because we were planning to continue on to Johor Bahru straight from the zoo. Hence the over night bags. There were lockers available near the entrance, which we gladly used for our bags. The lockers came in different sizes and the price was quite reasonable. It's good that we come early, however, since there weren't so many of them available.
I so need to have these at home. Isn't the giraffe pattern adorable?
More on facilities, even after depositing the bigger bags in the lockers, we were still carrying some bulky stuff. So... more help was needed, in the form of ...... cute, Eyang-operated, yellow scooter:
Oh yeah. With its handy basket, the scooter was certainly useful to lug our stuff around. Kecil was certainly not averse to having her bag carried by someone else. You can see her pink bag in the basket there. Of course, the bonus point with the scooter was also that Eyang did not need to walk too far.
Note: these scooters must have been marketed quite well, for we saw a lot of people zipping around in them, not only those who cannot walk too far, but also parent-with-kid pairs, even young people who definitely look fit enough to walk around!
Kecil even tried riding with Eyang on the scooter:
As for Kecil... well.. this Mama had tried her best to ensure comfortable shoes etc for Kecil. She did not take up the offer the first time round, but after lunch (and upon seeing other kids being trolleyed around within the park), she asked for her own 'transport':
Hahah! Her very own American style red rubber wagon! The seats are foldable, so you can use the wagon for all kind of combination of things: two small kids, 1 kid alone or one kid and some stuff, or you could even fold both seats and use the wagon purely for lugging your bags (we actually did that during the short intervals when Kecil was walking around!). There are even perfectly sized indentations on the side which can serve as drink holders. This Mama loved the wagon. Me thinks it's absolutely brilliant!
Anyway, thus reasonably equipped, we moved on to see the animals.
First item in Mama's agenda: Kangoroo feeding!
Hahah! Ok, this Mama has to confess. Although it was dressed up as 'for Kecil', actually the feeding was very much for Mama as well. Cos I ain't ever seen these critters before, ever!
And they were really cute, fluffy... and hungry. You can read more on Mama's kangaroo encounter
here.
Moving on, we saw quite a few animals (duh!):
Kecil enjoyed her ride on the wagon:
We got 'a bit' lost at some point:
Kecil tried on some 'props' on Eyang's prompting:
She rode a horse (again!):
(Oh, she loved the horse. It was white, you see. What's with little girls and white horses anyway?)
She fed some rabbits french beans:
Why, she even fed the elephants!
Well, it was a great, fun, albeit somewhat tiring, day. It rained a little bit in the late afternoon. Good thing we were prepared with our umbrellas. At the same time, since it was just after the elephant's show, we were able to just sit out the rain (which, thankfully, did not last for ages!)
We decided that it was enough time spent at the zoo, and so we continued on to the next stop of our trip, which we'll cover on our next post. See you then!
