Singapore Day 5: Juroung Bird Park and Durian fruit

Today we went to the bird park. While feeling kind of proud of ourselves for not doing a tour (meaning we had to take the subway all the way to the western area of Singapore, and then a bus, which saved us about $20.00 each) we’re now totally exhausted! Russell wants me to mention that in this part of Singapore no one spoke English anymore, luckily people were around to translate. The Singapore people are very friendly and helpful like that. However, Russell ordered a juice today and receive an ice cream sundae instead, complete with whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles, fresh fruit and mango ice cream. So there was a little bit lost in translation.


The bird park wasn’t my favorite part of the trip. I found it a bit sad to see all these nice birds in tiny cages, and a lot of them (ostrich included) were missing huge patches of feathers, due to picking them out from boredom I assume. Also they had an arctic owl area where the owls were in a concrete cages painted white to resemble snow, really sad I thought. (Especially when compared to the Night Safari where there were no cages. Both attractions have animals taken out of their natural environments but I felt the Night Safari made a bit more an effort to take care of its animals.)


However, there were interesting parts too.



I liked feeding the lorekeets, there were so many of them! Inside the lorekeet section there was a little Australian info area including outback “dunny” replica. Due to all the plants and waterfall (extra humidity!!) this was the hottest day so far, really like being in a rain forest.

The Rhea birds and I made a little connection, I think they thought I was there to feed them.




Also there was a real live Bald Eagle here. I took the opportunity to instruct the europeans and Australians around that this is what a real national bird looks like. Very regal and beautiful. Ok I didn’t tell them, only Russell. But I did admit if we had Emu’s in America they might be on our emblem too because they are just so weird looking....



Durian



After the bird park we came back into the city for more... Asian food! We finally tried the infamous durian fruit. They had little cute pancakes made fresh with durian filling for $1.50 so we figured, why not? Well, it was An Experience. I thought that it tasted at first like really strong garlic, and then kind of like how baby poop smells, and then finally a bit of a Warhead candy kind of flavor. Russell thought it tasted like “spring onion and just... horrible.” The aftertaste is much worse than the actual flavor. I’m not convinced it’s actually a fruit. Definitely worth a try, but we didn’t manage to finish the pancake.



Tomorrow is our last full day here, not sure what we'll get up to yet.