Singapore Chronicles – The River Safari

One rainy day in Singapore we choose to visit the River Safari, deciding that we’d chance getting wet. We took public transport – a combination of trains and buses all the way there. The River Safari, Zoo and Night Safari all share a stop at the end of a bus route.

To our delight the River Safari was empty – it was a Monday afternoon and it was bucketing down rain, but it was worth getting wet to have a tourist attraction in Singapore all to ourselves.

The second delightful surprise – even though it was outside, the park had awnings over all of its walkways so we didn’t get rained on. It was lovely walking around taking (far too many) pictures of the fish in the aquariums, staying dry yet hearing the tinkling (and sometimes pounding) of the falling rain.

We saw amazing fish including the Tiger Fish, aka the piranhas of Africa.

Other fish in this tank bore teeth marks! No prizes for guessing who the culprit might be…

Some fish were curiosities.

Others, just plain funny looking!

Or dopey looking!

Then very randomly we came upon a panda enclosure. They obviously get a lot more people on other days.

The red panda was cute but kept his back to us.

It was Jia Jia who stole the show. We were the only ones in the enclosure with her and she was comfortable to romp about munching her bamboo shoots!

This aquarium had much more to offer than just fish, taking a broader angle on the role of rivers in ecological systems.

I’ve held an obsession with all things Amazon River for most of my life, so I particularly enjoyed this section – kicking of with a tunnel through the river so we could watch Giant Otters playing above us.

The electric eel looked guilty as charged!

The piranhas sparkled in the dappled light.

Even with a plate glass divider between us, there was something quite disconcerting about they way these guys look at out at you!

Manatees, reportedly mistaken by sailors to be mermaids (really?) seemed serene and wise as they eyed us back.

This male was quite enamored with this female. Some things are hard to hide when you’re a manatee! For his modesty, I won’t post those pictures (though his modesty didn’t stop me from taking the shots in the first place!)

There are two boat rides within the park that you must pay extra for (S$5 each). We didn’t bother with that since we were getting low on time and we figured there was no cover and we weren’t prepared to pay to get wet at this point.

The River Safari was very impressive and definitely worth doing on a rainy day in Singapore if you’ve had enough of walking around (beautiful but very expensive) shopping malls.

Byddi Lee