29th March - sailing photo - Jurong Bird Park - Tanglin Club re-visited (Singapore)

Saturday 29^th March

First a photo, sent by Chantal and Fredy (SV Micromegas.)

Where are we??  Not sure...maybe Pangkor, Malaysia?

Pete recovered remarkably quickly from his nasty drippy cold.  Maybe it was the miraculous drugs – my foraging trip to the huge Mustafa shopping mall down the road yielded one small packet of cold & flu tablets which have worked a treat.  They did not have any strong painkillers…I was very sad about this; I could have bought some in Malaysia but for some reason I only bought a very small strip.  And I NEED them – the mattress in our hotel is…well it is clean and neat but…it is not far off being as hard as a plank and I am having lots of trouble sleeping.

WHINGE!!

So look at these glorious orchids – much nicer than having to read about my boring BORING sleepless nights…

Or how about these lovely bikes, all parked under a railway station?  People here mainly have cars.  Nice shiny new cars.  Not so shiny in Little India, but in the Orchard Road area they are Maseratis, Rolls Royces, fancyschmancy this and that.

Yesterday we ventured forth on another adventure…more living creatures… So far in Singapore we have seen sea creatures in the Sentosa aquarium, many MANY animals in the zoo, and today it was – BIRDS!!  (There is a bit of a theme here…no sure if Pete would be QUITE as keen to do all of this on his very own…)

We got on the train at the Little India station at 9am.  As we waited, Pete commented on how small the queue was, waiting.  I commented on how very whiter-than-white the models are, in the glamorous posters lining the walls.

The shops are full of whitening creams...

He got talking to a new friend also waiting for the train, who said, Yes the queue isn’t very big here but…wait till you try to get on the train!!

Everybody plugged in!!

We got to the Jurong Bird Park just before 11.  Just in time for the SHOW!!!

So much thick black hair

The show was very slick, and very shouty…

The birds flew around, did tricks, sang songs – the audience loved it!

And then it was time to wander around, with the odd moment on the slow-moving tram.  (Some of us were very t-i-r-e-d and needed an elderly moment not walking in the humid hot air… We went around 1½ times…) 

So many beautiful birds…

Pink flamingoes

Misty (SV Tamoure, Scotland,) had told me about the birds of paradise… they have a very good display, and they have a very successful breeding program at Jurong.  But…we could hardly see the 12-wired B of P… He was sitting nicely in a tree but…the wire mesh was so thick he was all but indistinguishable…

Misty, so sorry, I could only get a photo of the info, not of the actual birdy!

The park has also has a splendid collection of heliconias.

small one

and

big one

Pete made friends with an Australian cockatoo:

And we had a dear little bird come up to our feet near the waterfall. 

(The biggest waterfall in the world in an aviary! - made by humans -  Maybe 60 metres!)

No idea what he was!  But...how cute??

The flamingoes were glorious:

But my very favourite bird of all was this one.

A rare, endangered Shoebill, from Africa.  No not the cheeky white one, the big, quiet, restful grey one, behind.

Look again, in  close-up!!

When we got back to town, we had o go back to the Tanglin Cliub.  One of us (ahem…) had left a whole drawerful of clothes there, including bathers, sarong, Cameron Highlands warmer gear.  Pete was kind about this, but a bit, shall we say, critical.  But when we got there, Nantha brought out a big plastic bag which included…another drawerful of MEN’S clothing… underwear, socks, shorts, bathers…

So I was not the only forgetful one…

There we were, back in LUXURY, with our bathers…so, YES, we went for a swim!