Bird Park - Zoo

Thursday was a holiday here. So I had the day off. I decided I would check out the Jurong Bird Park which was highly recommended by Jemy Kannan, one of my employees. So I hopped on the MRT to the end of the line and then jumped on a bus to the park. In all it took about 40 minutes from my hotel. I have become a minimalist, so I didn't bring the usual backpack filled with water, etc. I brought myself and a camera. It is now that I would love to get a pocket camera, but for now this camera will do.

The park is the world's largest bird park with thousands of species. It was very cool. My favorite parts were the lorry loft where you could feed the lorries and the world's tallest manmade waterfall. At the lorry loft I bought some nectar and waited patiently for some birds to come by and drink out of my hands. It took some patience, but eventually they came flocking. It was fun. The waterful was gorgeous and refreshing - hard to believe it was fake. It was over 100 feet tall. I also saw one of those cool birds of paradise that do the moonwalk (have you seen that Planet Earth episode?). There were also tons of beautiful flowers, which reminded me of Tevia. She would have loved it. I wished my family could have been with me.

Today, being the weekend, I decided to spend some time out at the pool in the morning. I don't have any suntan lotion (left it in PHX) but I figured I would just chill out there for an hour and not have to worry too much. Well, I was wrong. Tonight I am pretty red on my belly and chest. I should have realized since I am probably the whitest I have ever been since being in HK. Before I realized I had fried a little I had decided to go up to the zoo. So I headed out on the MTR again and grabbed a bus there. The weather was wonderful as it was a little cloudy and not too hot. We took the boys here when we were all in Singapore and I remembered enjoying it. But I had forgot how GREAT this zoo is. It seems every animal is awake and close. And it isn't because they have small enclosures. The reality is that most have huge areas to roam around in. But I was able to see most of the animals up close and active. These were my favorites:

Komodo Dragon: we saw these last time we were here, and me being a lizard fan I was excited. But they were just sitting at the back of their pen. This time a big one walked up to the front and planted itself just a few feet in front of me.

Jaguar: I arrived at their beautiful enclosure at feeding time. This meant they were up and anxious and the trainers were throwing pieces of meat all over the place. At one point the one jaguar leaped about 10 feet from the land into the pool to catch the meat. They then played in the water for 15 minutes or so looking for meat on the bottom. I have never really seen cats swim before (in person) and it was amazing to watch. They were so beautiful.

Mountain Lion: I have seen some mountain lions in zoos in the USA, but I've never seen them move. They were moving here. Jumping, running. Amazing.

Flying Fox: this was the coolest part of the day. Flying foxes (bats) are the world's largest bat with wingspans up to 6 feet. In the zoo's rainforest enclosure they had at least a dozen of them. And most of them were feeding on fruit just inches from me! I tried to take pix with my blackberry and will try to post later. I have never seen such cool animals so close. They would hang there upside down with their claws and once in a while they would just fly away and come back. It was so cool. Oddly enough, when one decided he had to take a leak (and yes, you could tell which were boys) he changed from hanging upside down and hung rightside up in order to pee. Very smart. I loved this part of the exhibit and was so distracted by the bats that the free roaming lemurs that you could basically pet (if like me) were a little boring.

I also got to see the cheetah up close and then saw him run away. My boys would have loved that. The white tigers also were swimming. It was a great day. The park is gorgeous and it made me want to move here. I could picture the Wall family at the zoo on the weekends easily.