The Singapore Night Safari - More artificial than Disney World?

Hi, everyone!

It's been a while since my last post, but nothing all that exciting has been happening here in Singapore - although more soup dumplings, a 3-day Startup Weekend for our SUTD entrepreneurship program, and international celebrations of the 4th of July are great, they just don't merit extensive commentary.  Last night, however, we went on one of the best-known attractions in Singapore - the Singapore Night Safari!

So we didn't really know what to expect upon arrival, but it turns out that the Singapore Night Safari is very similar to the Animal Kingdom at Disney World, but even more perfectly manicured and regulated.  Upon arrival, we bought our tickets and attended an "Animals of the Night" show, where EXTREMELY well-trained nocturnal animals wandered about doing tricks for the crowd.  Perhaps the most remarkable were a set of three Asian otters, who had been trained to separate a pile of recycling (aluminum, paper cups, and plastic bottles) and put each type of rubbish into the corresponding bin, all three of which were on stage.  The amount of time and money put into training these animals must have been ridiculous, and the result was definitely impressive.

During the second part of the evening, we took the night safari tram around an open-enclosure park, which they've designed so that it seems like the animals are RIGHT next to the vehicle, although the perspective is such that they're actually separated by a good 15 or 20 feet.  We drove through enclosures for giraffes, elephants, bears, hyenas, tigers, and a bunch more animals, and most of them were actually pretty active and fun to look at.  The elephants, in particular, seemed to be having lots of fun eating and wandering about - so much so that I could have SWORN that they couldn't be real.

The coolest part of the tram ride was a stop that we made about halfway through, when we were allowed to get off the tram and walk around to a few different enclosures.  We got to see all different types of animals fairly close up, including porcupines, owls, a slow loris, Asian otters (which smell very bad and make very annoying noises), clouded leopards, and giraffes.  We also got to go into a fruit bat enclosure, which had dozens of bats flying around our heads and hanging out munching on fruit (reminded of the stress of the Monkey Forest in Bali I actually didn't enjoy this all that much, but it was cool to be about 8 inches away from a giant bat).  Some of them were absolutely enormous - one hanging from the ceiling spread its wings and had a tip-to-tip wingspan of at least 3.5 feet!

It's funny, but I feel like the Night Safari, in all its designed glory, is a good example of how Singapore is trying to develop today - this island is incredibly small (only 274 square miles) and has no natural resources (even a lot of its water is imported from Malaysia), but through pure force has managed to design and engineer itself to be an interesting and exciting place.  In Singapore, they build water reservoirs, create new land (rumor has it that about 30% of Singapore is reclaimed), build infinity pools on the tops of buildings, and create a real-life Pandora - why shouldn't there be a manufactured safari here as well?

So that was the gist of our Night Safari experience, and today is another exciting day - we're going to dim sum at the famous Raffles Hotel, then checking out the newly opened Gardens by the Bay (the Pandora mentioned above), before getting fish pedicures!  I'll hopefully get a chance to throw together a quick summary before the weekend, but if not, they'll be an update next week on our trip to Bangkok with Lexi Zimmerman!  Stay tuned...