okay so I am seriously relaxed now and the days are merging into one big relaxed coffee shop/cafe experience. I am struggling to remember what I did on Monday and it is only Wednesday morning. This could in part be to do with the fact I visited the Night Safari last night with Nazir though. I have no real way of describing the experience but I’ll try.
First off my brother’s 10 minute walk to the MRT [tube] station was a bit off – more like 20 minutes. You can tell he drives everywhere. I was lucky in that Pasir Ris is at the end of the line so I could only go west so no chance of getting lost . Changed at City Hall onto the Line North and ended up at Ang Mo Kio. Now luckily while I was making these arrangements with Naz earlier he mentioned N9. So Singapore is great for another reason. Since the names may be difficult to get to grips with if you are a foreigner they also have letters and numbers to designate where they are so Pasir Ris where Alec and Linda live is E12 – the 12th station East of the city and Ang Mo Kio is the 9th station North of the city – come on London Underground sort it out for the lost tourists in London. I was amazed by how clean the MRT is – a bit like Washington DC’s Metro no food or drink is allowed so the trains are very clean. Also the MRT is part of the reason no chewing gum is allowed in Singapore. Anti-social elements were leaving gum deposits on the floor allegedly so hey let’s just ban it completely!
Okay so then I met up with Naz [after a quick call since I had no idea what he looked like and oh yeah suprise suprise I was late]. We hopped on a bus and chatted about his move to New York – lucky devil – I think he will really enjoy is as he seems to be trying to break out of Singapore. He has visited before so he knows what he is getting into. We arrived at the Night Safari and paid our dues to get in and then the adventure started. We initially took the bus tour all around and saw all the big animals and went through a bit of the rainforest there too. Anna our guide took it upon herself to mention that as this was night time the only animals in the Night Safari are nocturnal – like hello. Also if we were wondering why we hadn’t encountered any primates this was because they are diurnal. Okay so I hadn’t been wondering but now I know.
At the end we went on a few walks around the safari – and it is a big big place – it was hard to imagine all of that space inside the city. The zoo here has an open policy so the animals are not caged they use non intrusive barriers like moats and natural cliffs etc. The whole effect was fantastic and the company was great too. My favourite – well okay hard choice between the mouse deer – so cute and small, the sloe loris [I would have taken one home if I thought it would survive in Streatham] and the bats. We wandered through the mangrove bat enclosure. This was such an excellent experience. I have no idea what I expected but it was amazing. I can see where horror stories of bats come from as we watched a few hanging from the netting above and as they flapped their wings it could have been a scene out of vampire bats come to kill you [if a film of that name exists…] Naz pointed out a bat resting not more than 12 inches away from us – so close if we wanted too we could have touched it – probably not a good move though. Totally mind blowing.
Then we wandered over the bridge of suspense – okay wandered is a relative term as we actually loitered for a good half hour chatting filming etc. Smack bang in the middle of a rainforest with no other people around it was very very hard to remember you where not lost miles from anywhere but actually within the Night Safari. If I ever become a millionairre [any suggestions?] I would love to have a hut in the middle of that. Yeah I know it defeats the object but you know what I mean.

Before I go I have to mention the toilets too. Walk in the door and you are still in forest. Very well done the Night Safari Team and thanks to all the rangers who help make it happen. I can well see why Naz goes so frequently.
So tonight hopefully drinks on the [allegedly small] Singapore scene. So I’ll keep you posted. Oha and the whole HDB thing… Yeah I’ll mention that later I think this post is quite long enough already.