12 March - Jurong Bird Park

After feeling very unwell all night, and nothing staying down, I wasn't holding out much hope for a quick recovery.  Astrid had again woken up at 4ish and not wanted to go back to sleep and once she finally did, Soren had his turn.  I eventually got him back to sleep and dozed until Astrid declared it to be 'very definitely now morning' at 7.15am. Perfectly acceptable if we hadn't been up half the night with them both.

I decided to try breakfast and see how we went. Astrid was obviously feeling better. After barely eating for a few days she ate a croissant, a muffin, a piece of toast and 2 huge bowls of peaches for breaky. She would have had more if we had of let her.  Soren scored a piece of dry toast since he keeps trying to steal all our food anyway.......  Breakfast seemed to agree with me so we decided to give the bird park a go.

We had visited the Jurong bird park on our honeymoon trip, 8 years ago, and enjoyed it.  We were keen to go back with the kids in tow. It is on the West side of Singapore and a bit of a hike to get there. Last time we bused and trained and we were located closer to that side than we were this time.  It appeared it was going to take an hour and 45 mins to get there on public transport (each way), and since it was hot and I still wasn't feeling that well, and there were two small kids involved, we decided to cheat and take a taxi.

It was seemingly taking an eternity to get ready that morning and we didn't get out of the hotel until after 10am. Soren had fallen asleep in the ergo before we even got out of the hotel lobby and slept the entire 30 minute taxi ride. Astrid chatted the whole time.

It was our first daylight adventure away from our hotel area and it was amazing to see how much had changed in the last 8 years. There were even more ridiculously tall buildings, with new ones going up everywhere and the city are seemed to have some new attractions that weren't there on our last visit. Astrid loved going past the shipping ports and seeing the hundreds (thousands!) of containers and cranes.

We eventually arrived at the bird park and headed in and checked out the flamingoes and penguins. The penguins were not there on our last visit and the exhibit is quite good. Astrid adores penguins so was chuffed to see some. It was also the coolest place to hang out on such a hot day.

We happened to be right near the ampitheatre when the daily show was on. We saw this last visit, and it's actually quite good and not cheesy like many of them are.  Soren had finally woken up so I sat up the back to feed him, which turned out to be good as the bird handlers were walking around with the birds up there waiting for them to take off for their tricks and you got a good close look.  Astrid and Anto were sitting further down and got to see more of the antics up close.  The birds were generally not behaving today, a visiting monkey had them spooked and jet fighters were flying overhead so more than one bird misbehaved. A large blue macaw went missing at the start of the show and there were several instances of birds flying all over the place. It was rather entertaining, but probably not in the way they imagined.


Astrid enjoyed the show (along with most of the other kids) and we decided it was time for a cool drink while I finished feeding Soren.  Astrid oh-so-politey requested an icecream and conned a chocolate one out of her father, with promises not to puke it up this time like she did on Saturday. She certainly seemed to enjoy her icecream.

We went for a wander around the park. There were plenty of birds to see and  flamingoes, lorikeets (enormous) pigeons, mccaws and birds of prey were just a few that we saw.


It was getting mighty hot and Soren was well past being in the ergo and he refused to sleep in the cooler stroller so in the end we had to call it a day and I carried him around for the last little bit as he slept on my shoulder.  Astrid was also looking hot and while we could have filled in another few hours there, the air-conditioning of the hotel was beckoning.  It was now almost 2pm and Astrid was just hot not keen on lunch so we grabbed a cab and headed back to the hotel.  Both kids managed to nap on the taxi ride back and we were very glad to be back to the air con.

After some snacks in our hotel room and a feed for Soren it was another afternoon by the pool. We took Soren in this time and he had a ball. Astrid again had a wonderful time with her bucket, but I didn't take the camera so didn't manage to get any pics. I think there will be more afternoon swims to come since it's too hot to do much else and the pool is a nice place to retreat, even if you do have loud noises of nearby building construction to contend with!

Post-swim we headed across the road to another food centre, we had spied the previous day on our beach excursion. It had appeared to have several vegetarian options and seafood.... Something for everyone! I had a vegetairan dahl set, for the princely sum of $4 (about 3 AUD) and it was enough food for 6 people. Anto lashed out and had a crispy fried squid salad, which came with fresh pineapple and mayonaise. Astrid was a fan........ She helped Anto demolish it, but she was not allowed any of his large Tiger beer.    Astrid has been wanting to take photos too, and is not doing too bad of a job with our point and shoot camera (we won't let her near the DSLR yet). She took this photo of her dad's dinner:


We got quite a lot of attention at dinner, yet again, between the cute baby in his pouch and Astrid shovelling in food, it is quite the sight. We don't often see many tourists in the food centres, they seem to stick to restaurants but we enjoy the cheap food.  They are also open pretty much all day, so it's no issue going down for dinner at 5pm with the kids.

Post-dinner we wandered back via a couple of bakeries and picked up some cake for after the kiddies were in bed. We ended up with a chocolate ganache cake. It was pretty decent, but not quite Paris standard :)
Back to the hotel for some relaxing, photo-taking by Astrid and kiddy bed-time!