We had a wonderful sleep last night - all of us were flat out for the night! Our alarm went off at 9am and we reluctantly got out of bed and down to breakfast. Shock, horror, this hotel doesn't do a buffet breakfast - there was a menu to choose from...
Tom had bacon, sausages, eggs and pototo, I had avocado on toast with feta cheese and poached egg and Matt went for the omelette. Hummm, mine was fine as was Tom's but Matt's arrived as a square block of jelly yellow bricks! It didn't look nice and apparently didn't taste nice! Oh dear. There were pastries and toast so he filled up on those but he was disappointed.
So we booked ourselves tickets for the night safari for tonight, so decided not to go too far today. I thought the boys would enjoy Little India - I remember going there last time. It wasn't too long after my actual trip to India and I found the place too sterile, but if you haven't been to India, it's the next best thing.
We arrived and immediately our senses were awakened - we could smell spice in the air. The area is 'old Singapore style' - old 2 level colonial style buildings and lots of shops - mainly selling gold jewellery but also sari shops, cafes, souvineer shops, mobile phone shops etc etc. Pretty much every face was Indian - most are Tamil speakers here. There were murals on walls all over the place. It was an interesting area to wander through.
We came across a great Hindu temple: The Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple, I had forgotten how colourful and covered in sculptures Hindu temples can be. The Buddhist temples in Thailand were ornate with gold and colour, but these are on another level. We had arrived at a busy time, there were people crowding everywhere inside, so we didn't stay too long - we weren't worshippers, just onlookers.
We carried on our walk through the area and ended up in a place called the Mustufa Centre - wowzers, it was a massive, massive place. In contrast to all the shopping centres we have been in, this place was one store, and it was packed, PACKED with stuff. It was 6 floors high: electronics and sports in B2, shoes and clothes in B1, perfume, toiletries, clothes in Level 1, Level 2 was food, 3 was homewares, 4 everything else. Normally I get excited in a big food hall, but the amount of stuff in it was so overwhelming that I gave up looking! I did look for chocolate moulds etc in the homewares section, but no joy there either. I did get myself a rolling pin though, Matt got some tiny screwdrivers, a padlock for his case and another holiday T-shirt, Tom got a new wallet for his phone. We could have bought so much more though!
Once we had finished there, we came out and looked for somewhere for a sit down and drink. We found a restaurant: Cafe Syed. They sold loads of juices - I went for sugar cane and lemon (they forgot the lemon - but to be honest we couldn't understand anything the guy said to us and obviously he didn't understand us either!), Tom stayed safe with a mango lassi and Matt had a Bandung Dinosaur (a pink milky concoction with chocolate powder on top?!)
then realised it was quite late - well after 1pm, so we ordered some snacks for lunch: Mutton Coin Parata and Cheese Boom Plaster. We weren't really sure what they were, but knew they were small from the prices.
So the coin paratas were thin Indian bread with sugar inside that were twisted and fried. They were served with a mutton curry to dip in. The curry was delicious, but sweet bread and curry together - a bit strange, but when in Little India do as little Indians do. The Cheese Boom Plaster (we ordered it for its name alone!) was more of the same sweet fried bread but with cheese in the middle. It was also served with a curry - a vegetable one this time. Again delicious and a perfect snack - very glad we went authentic and ordered stuff we didn't know.
After lunch we went to see another temple - we dipped into a 'regular' shopping centre for the air con. This was a great place if you are a kid. They had strung up netting across the open space in the middle of the shopping centre - up all the levels and turned it into a huge soft play area for for children - think they had about 4 levels of soft play netting to explore. What a great idea - shame Tom was too old for it.
We found the other temple, which was as ornate as the other one, but much quieter and then we got the MRT back to the hotel for an afternoon rest before the night safari.
We headed out of the hotel to a sushi go round for tea - Tom was very happy with that. We then got the MRT up north to Katib from where we got a shuttle bus to the night safari. It took a good hour to get there. We arrived to a huge queue, it moved quickly enough but it did feel like half of Singapore were at the zoo. I went back in 2000 when I last visited and remembered a tram ride and a little walk, but certainly didn't remember the crowds and queues. It has developed big time.
Think we had to queue at least half an hour for the tram ride - to be fair the queue was constantly moving, it was just very long. It was good and informative and all the animals were awake and doing stuff: lions, elephants, rhinos, hyenas, deer, babirusa, hippos etc. We then headed to the ice cream store to cool down, it might be night time but it was very hot and humid and we were very sticky! Next was an animal show where we saw a couple of eagles, turkey vulture, racoons, red river hogs, binturong (why have we never heard of binturongs before - they look like teddy bears!) a porcupine and owls.
Next we did a walking trail around the park and saw loads. All those animals which are normally fast asleep in zoos were up and busy. We saw: fishing cats (very cute), leopard cat, clouded leopard, rhinos, tiger, porcupines, otters, civets, bats (massive, massive wings), owls, binturongs, Tasmanian Devils (although they were fast asleep), rhinos, ibex. It was really well done, there was soft lighting all over - just enough so you could see where you were going, but not too much so your eyes could adjust well to the dark. There was lots of info on everything. But mainly it was very hot and our feet were beginning to ache.
We decided to call it a day (night) and headed home it was 11pm. We had been there since 7.15 so it was a long visit. Didn't get back to the hotel until after midnight. We went straight to bed. Tom was asleep in minutes, we were asleep not long after.
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