Singapore Zoo & The Sad, Sad End

I won't lie I have been putting off writing this blog because well once it is done that is like it on the whole Singapore trip tale, and well I have also been extremely swamped with work, packing to move, job hunting, and trying to cram in as much "fun time" as I can with my co workers.

I am sad to be ending this tale but at least I get to end it with maybe one of my favorite places that we went to.  Two Sundays ago I was in heaven, I was a kid in a candy store, I was a girl on a shopping spree, I was in love and happy as could be! Where was I?  I was at the Singapore Zoo, and if you have never heard about it you need to go check out their website ( http://www.zoo.com.sg/ ) and read up on it because it is pretty amazing.

For starters you can eat breakfast with the animals!   Ryan and I had seen a special on the Travel Channel about the zoo and had been wanting to do this ever sense so when we found out that our boss need to English speaking teachers to go with her to Singapore we were extremely excited our chance had come so soon.  (Quick side face we are the only two English speaking teachers at our school.)  So we convinced our boss to take the 3 girls to the breakfast with us, sadly I think we were the only ones who had a really good time, everyone else looked hot, and well it turns out the kids don't like animals (I mean they were running away from pigeons and bugs).

The breakfast was amazing with food from all over the world and a really open air jungle feel. Here are some photos from breakfast:




They brought out Orangutans to eat breakfast with us,
 some bird feeders to draw out some cute little Golden Handed
monkeys (not sure if that is their real name)
 and lastly a snake, but I don't do snakes.

 


Dang it if they wouldn't smile for the camera!

 After breakfast we skipped off to explore the zoo.  It is one of my new favorite zoo's, I know it's not normal for people to have favorite zoo's but this one is quite amazing! 

For starters they have open air bathrooms.  Yes they still have bathrooms stalls and yes they have boys and girls but it was still a very interesting feeling to pee in an open bathroom. I wont lie I was a little worried that there would be a snake or something chilling in the stall the first time I went in. 

They also say that the animals don't have cages and well this is true there are not huge bars everywhere but the animals are all still kept in nice little habitats and away from the guest.  There were birds that wondered around free, and the orangutans could go from tree top to tree top in certain areas of the zoo, but they had it set up so that they could only get down from the trees in a closed in space.  It was a new feeling to have monkeys swinging high above your head. 

They had a cute little tram that would drive you around the park.  We rode it around the whole park to see how exactly how big it was and we were shocked to see how much was in the park, how much work went in to this park, all of the beautiful flowers and tropical plants.  They had many animal's and many shows that you could attend.  We only had a few hours so we didn't get to take in as much as we wanted to, like riding an elephant, feeding and petting a kangaroo, an sea lion show, a jungle show, a kids park, a boat ride, a tropical garden, and so much more.  We are both excited to get back and see all the things we missed. 

The girls went off on their own and ended up at the kids park they had no interest in any of the animals, and our boss just wondered around doing her own thing.  It was great to have some time alone, to think, to breath, and to just be! I mean after all it was kind of a vacation even if it was work related. 

As we made our way around the park I snapped a ton of photos and lucky some of them turned out well.

The elephant on the ground was getting cleaned.
 The other would toss the ball in the water and then fish it out.
They also had one that could paint! 



We had just missed the kangaroo feeding and petting, I was just a little bit sad.

 

He was exercising and she was vegging!

 

I don't know if you can tell but that monkey has a blue butt,

 and well they claim that only the boys have blue butts.  

 Also above we found Pumba at the zoo!  Poor guy looked like he had taken

 a few to many runs at the wall over the years.  

                                      We stopped by the garden to check out some of the flowers and the water.

                                                                                     Amazingly HUGE Lilly pads.




And at this point I got sick of photobucket so now all photos will just stand alone.



She was in a playful mood



Catching the food as they tossed it up to them

Moving on from the monkeys and at the same time wrapping up the zoo portion of this blog and moving on to the river boat ride portion.  

So as you can now guess we went on a river boat ride.  It was cute, it was fun, I snapped a few 100 photos but don't worry I will not share them all with you, instead I will try to pick a few to share with you.

Their parliament building.

Some of the city

Marina Bay Sands

Singapore Flyer

The Girls

Being the good teachers that we are we made sure the girls good the "money shot"

Sorry about the next two photos we really don't get any good bar food in Korea and well nachos and burgers (well good ones) are kind of hard to find.

Once done with lunch we made our way over to the Marina Bay Sands to do some window shopping in their amazing mall and try our luck at their casino. We later headed over to the Singapore Flyer, getting caught halfway over in a huge storm only to find out it was closed due to rain/storms.  Don't worry about our fun thought, it just meant we got to enjoy a few beers as we watched our last storms in Singapore before calling it a trip and heading to the airport.  I am sure there are some photos I forgot but don't worry I will add them in some other time but just in case let me do one more quick check and share with you some of the photos Ester took with her camera.  Just follow the link below to photobucket and enjoy! I always love to see what kids take photos of and how they see things.
http://s1210.photobucket.com/albums/cc420/bart-megan/Singapore%20April%202011/Singapore%20Through%20Esthers%20Eyes/

The river inside Marina Bay Sands

You think we would of seen the storm coming before we headed over there.

Ok yep I think I got everything in here now.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!  I hope to be updating some other blogs soon but hey I say that all the time and these days it almost never seems true!

Singapore- The Middle

Other wise known as Saturday

Saturday we met up in the lobby at 8:30 to start our day.  Well, wait Ryan, I an our boss met up in the lobby, 30 minutes or so later I gave up on my bosses theory that the girls would be along shortly and went up to get them.  They were chilling out eating chips, watching T.V. and claimed that they we were all still sleeping in our rooms because we didn't answer when they knocked. 

Ryan and I had really yet to hear about what the plains were for the day as we headed off on the bus to find China Town and some famous toast restaurant.  Once in China Town our boss sent the girls off (two 13 year old girls and one 15 year old girl) on their own to try to see if they could find the toast restaurant.   After lots of asking and being told we were in the wrong China Town, and random directions Ryan finally got us there. Some how the girls had found it 5 minutes or so before we had, my guess is that they went the way people told them too and well they didn't have our boss following along texting and asking everyone in her own broken English how to get there.  Once there Ryan and I were a little shocked. 

Now Korea really does not do a whole lot of breakfast food.  I mean all my kids eat eggs, rice, and kimchi for breakfast so Ryan and I were really looking forward to some breakfast.  Oddly it never crossed our minds that this famous toast restaurant was probably just that toast.  Ryan and I both just kind of looked at each other tyring to figure out what the big deal was as the food was brought out and it was just toast, eggs, and coffee.  Sure it was good I love eggs and they had good eggs, but I am still a little confused by all of this madness over it.



After breakfast we wondered around China town for a few hours.  Ryan and I wondered and picked up a few things here and there, he found some shirts he liked and I picked up some wine coozie.  We found a Hindu Temple and enjoyed looking around and taking photos (it was free to get in but 3$ for the camera, and well I can understand that).  We also found a Subway and got to enjoy a sandwich and fudge brownie, yummy before heading back to meet up with the group to head off towards Sentosa.

Here are some photos of China Town and the temple.



How they dry their clothes in Singapore.
 I would worry my underwear would always be on the ground.



Ok and enough temple pictures that look like a drunk monkey took. 

Singapore may be small but it had one amazingly clean,
huge (not as in big like Korea's but like the building is huge)
 effective subway system.
The reason there is a photo is because well,
 it was a touch screen and you touch where you want to go.

On to Sentosa, which they call "Asia's Favorite Playground". It is like an amusement park of sorts, check out the link here if you want to know more. I hope to get back one day and check out more of it, sadly you had to pay for everything so that more or less met that the girls didn't get to do much, making us feel like we shouldn't do anything because well we felt bad for the girls. Here are a few photos of the start of our Sentosa trip, sorry there are tons (so I don't know why I said a few) and I am not in the mood to fight with photobucket to make them in to cute little groups or whatever you call them.

The symbol of Singapore, Merlion. Half fish, half lion.

After doing tons of group photos (none of which I have, the boss has them and I am not too sure if I will ever get them) we moved on to head to the aquarium.  Ryan and I bought our tickets and then learned that our boss was just going to get the girl tickets and she was going to hang out on the beach. Ryan and I headed towards the aquarium and looked into the windows only to look at each other and say "You want to go to the beach?" and head back to return our tickets.  They were not to happy we wanted to return our tickets but well because they are mostly a tourist country wanted to make us happy and gave us our money back.  With 60 Singapore dollars now in hand we headed to the beach to find a beach bar, grabbed a bucket of beers, ordered a pizza, sat back and enjoyed the beach.  Our great time sadly lasted about an hour till all the sudden we heard "Megan Teacher! Megan Teacher! We looked all over for you! Why are you on the beach? Oh is that pizza?" from all of the girls and all at once.  Ryan and I both looked at our watches and told the girls that they still had an hour until we were supposed to meet up 6:45.  They got board with the aquarium and wanted to hang out with us....umm please no....go check out the beach. 

Here are some photos of the beach:

Ryan found a car game when we were in our bar.

Happy to be on the beach!

Bucket of Tiger

And then the storm rolled in and it was time to move on.

One last look at the view before trying to get the group to pack up and move on out.

Photo with  my two favorite girls. 

Happy with drinks!

 Back at the start of Sentosa.



We split from the girls and our boss at this point and made our way back to the hotel to grab some sleep before the early mornings Sunday.

Last few photos before I call it quits for this blog.

The oh so very nice of Singapore.  Unlike the buses here they stop at the stops and don't just slow down for you to jump on or off.

Just a little bit of Singapore Sky Line.

Look what we found!  Yep had to get them only because I cannot find them in Korea.  Don't worry I didn't eat them all that night I flew them home to Korea and enjoyed them here.



And that is that.  The last Singapore blog should be about the zoo, maybe my favorite place ever...well at least in Singapore!

Hope everyone is doing great!