Hawker Center and Zoo

Well yesterday was a big day since we had to make up for lost time. We started by making our way to the Chinatown Hawker center in order to try the first food stall ever given a Michelin star. The place is called Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice & Noodle (kind of a mouthful). In addition to the food stall they've also recently opened their own restaurant not far from the original. We were intending to go to the original food stall for lunch, but we walked right past the restaurant and noticed there was hardly any line at all so we decided to try it there.

We waited for only a couple of minutes before we were able to place our order and then a couple of more minutes to get our food. It was really good! I had the chicken and noodles and Matt had the chicken and rice. I didn't really like that my chicken had a bunch of bones in it; it seems they just chop it up bones and all. But Matt was nice enough to share some of his with me. The sauce had great flavor and it mixed really well with the noodles. They also had some peppers that you could add which added a great flavor as well. Also, we paid less than $6 for our Michelin restaurant experience! Overall, success!

We still wanted to see the original food stall though and also check out the Hawker center since we'd never been to one. We wandered around the different food stalls and looked at the menus. It looked like some great food for cheap prices so we hope to go back to one for another meal. I found some fresh sugar cane juice for only $1 for a glass so I tried some of that- it was really yummy as well. We eventually found the original food stall and saw the huge line snaking around the place, so we were glad that we had eaten at the restaurant.

Look at the line!

Then we made our way to the Singapore Zoo. The Singapore Zoo is well-known for displaying the animals in natural, "open" exhibits with hidden barriers, moats, and glass. We decided to just get the ParkHopper Plus pass so that we'd be able to go to all of the parks: the zoo, the river safari, and the night safari. It also gets us into the Jurong BirdPark but we haven't made it there yet. 

The zoo was pretty cool and I did like how there weren't really any cages. We saw a whole bunch of cool things: monkeys with huge noses, a wolverine, rhinestone, zebras, orangutans, turtles, Komodo dragons, and other things I can't remember the names of. We also got to see wallabies and kangaroos (lol). We also saw African wild dogs, which was really funny since we didn't know that much about them before but just the previous day we watched several segments on National Geographic about them. And we're going to the one place in the world in two weeks where we're likely to see them- Botswana! There was one huge enclosure where you could enter into and all of the animals were roaming "free". We saw weird looking birds, toucans, parrots, mouse deer, bats, huge lizards, a sloth from a distance, and several ring-tailed lemurs. Here are some random pictures:

The monkeys with the huge noses:

The African wild dogs!

Then we moved on to the River Safari which I was less impressed with. First it high lighted some of the major rivers in the world and what kind of creatures live in them- the Mississippi River was one of them. We got to see some cool fish and we also got to see pandas which was the coolest part, although I don't understand why the pandas are in the river safari section and not the normal zoo. We did the River Boat cruise, which really wasn't worth the wait, especially if you'd already been to the zoo. We sat for awhile and caught one of the last boats, but it just took us by a couple of the major zoo exhibits (elephant, zebra, giraffe) which we'd already seen. Plus we were at such a distance you could hardly see them anyway. So I wouldn't recommend that one. But apparently there was another boat cruise, the Amazon River Adventure, that we probably should've prioritized. But we didn't realize there were two until it was too late and they had already closed. So maybe that one was better. 

Then we grabbed a quick dinner before we could enter the Night Safari- our time slot was 7:15. The time-slot really just means that's when you can enter. Once you're in you can stay as long as you like. The Night Safari was pretty cool and unique, since I've never been able to be in a zoo at night but that is when a lot of animals are more active. We rode the 45 min tram at first but we had to wait 30 min for that. The tram ride was pretty cool and took you by most of the major exhibits. Then there are also 4 different walking paths that you can do, so we did a couple of those. We started with the "fishing cat" trail, which features cats that fish. Go figure. Then we did the other big cat trail which I can't remember the name of. We also caught the 9pm Asian lion feeding, which wasn't really that impressive. The zookeepers just through a couple of pieces of meat up to the cats. It lasted about 5 minutes. We skipped the wallaby trail since we've seen lots of those recently, and we also skipped the African trail since we'll be there in a week ourselves. 

It was hard to get good pictures since it was, well, dark.

Here's the "fishing cat":

The lions at feeding time:

Anyway, all in all it was cool. If I were to do it over again I would probably just go to the zoo and the night safari and skip the river safari. But we still need to visit the Jurong BirdPark before I can really say for sure that the ParkHopper pass wasn't worth it. 

It was a really big day and we didn't get home until 11pm, so that's the reason for the late post!