Adventures with Libby - Night Safari

Night Safari is pretty much my favorite thing in Singapore. Guests, be warned: When you come visit, I will make you go. It's a zoo that opens only after dark, when the noctournal animals are most active. They feed them at that time, too, so the critters are usually doing something. The only bad part is that it's pretty much impossible to take pictures, because it's really dark and you're moving on the tram. But I tried.

They use mostly "natural" barriers, so you aren't staring at anything through a fence. Which is a bit disconcerting when you reach the lions, but they're far enough away to feel safe. Pretty much.

They also have a big cage of flying squirrels, where you can walk right in and watch them zoom around. They weren't doing much this time, they looked like they were busy eating, but last time one flew right at my head.

They do the same thing with the bats, you walk right in the cage with them. Yes, you can reach out and poke them if you wanted to, and no, I did not.

One of the glass cages had leopards, one of which cooperated by taking a snooze right in front of the window. We sat there for a good 20 minutes just watching him sleep. He was huge.

My only other remotely discernable picture was of one of the elephants:

Me and Miss "They Made Me Go But It Was Actually Pretty Cool" Libby:

Oh, and the toilets make roaring tiger sounds when you flush them. What more could you ask for?

Adventures with(out) Libby - Kuala Lampur

I had to dip out for a couple of days and fly up to Malaysia for a busines trip. After the flight, it's a 3 hour drive from KL to Ipoh, and along the way I get a phone call from Libby. She started to tell me a story about how she and David found a cat on the side of the road, and they didn't know what to do, it was breathing but not moving, and were on their way to take it to the SPCA, blah blah blah. I wasn't really paying attention, I was thinking about how impressed I was with the cell phone coverage in the middle of Malaysia, and wondering how much this call was costing me. "And then we got in a car accident." Wait, what? I didn't believe her at first, because my brain was on the cat story, but alas, it was true. "Are you okay?" "Yes, but the car isn't." Let me add a small detail: David had a brand new car. The lease was finally up on the Honda Odyssey, and we had a brand new Honda Stream, with just a couple hundred miles on it. David and Libby = Okay. Car = squished. A few days later, Libby was relating the story to her dad, and he responded, "Sacrifcing the car for a cat? Welcome to my world..."

Trying to put this event to the back of my mind because I was far away and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, I took my free hour in KL and headed straight for the Petronus Towers. They were so cool.

Inside was a big shopping center, but it was almost 10pm so everything was closed and I didn't get to buy anything. Probably a good thing, we have some car repairs to pay for...

Adventures with Libby - Sentosa

Today, Libby and I took a trip to Sentosa. It's a pretty fun place, sort of Disneyland meets the beach, but on a smaller scale. Libby is a bit of a tough sell, but I figured if I was going to find something she liked, it would be here.

We visited the Merlion:

Quote of the day from Libby: "What is that? It's like a mermaid and a lion or something. Oh wait, I get it... Mer-lion!"

Then Underwater World, which I loved, but I think I'm a little more of a sucker for aquariums than most people. On the way to Siloso Beach, we met up with a peacock.

After that was the Luge and Skyride, icecream, and Dolphim Lagoon. Pink dolphins, I didn't know there was such a thing!

But after all that great stuff, you know what Libby's favorite thing was? The Fish Spa. Where you stick your feet in a little pool and hundreds of fish come up and nibble away all the dead skin off your feet. There are two pools to choose from, we chose the ones with the "less aggressive" fish. Yes, it tickles.

It's also sort of... buzzy. Like when you stick your tongue on a battery? Not that I've done that, but it's the closest thing I can think of. The best part is the 20 minute foot massage you get after, where you also get to watch all the other people flip out when they stick their feet in. A great way to end another hot day.

Adventures with Libby - MacRitchie Nature Reserve

Continuing on our nature/monkey theme, Libby wanted to head over MacRitchie Nature Reserve, a huge park that's only about a 10 minute bus ride from our house. True to form, I had us get off on the wrong bus stop (again) and we had to walk the last few blocks to the park. So unfortunately we were hot and sweaty by the time we even got to the entrance of the park, but no worries, it's mostly in the shade, right? Sort of.

We hit our first monkey troop about 30 minute in to our walk.

There was some sort of famliy drama going on here. I tried to provide a running commentary, but I couldn't think of anything other than the little one getting in trouble for wandering too far from the troop and trying to beg dad to let him watch Animal Cops Houston later that night. Not that funny.

The reason Libby and I went to MacRitchie was to do a Treetop Walk they have there, which is a bridge that's really high off the ground in the canopy of the trees. Sounds great, right? Well, what we didn't know was that it's almost a two hour walk to get there. MacRitchie is that big. Wait, I've mentioned that it's always 90 degrees and humid, right? See that lake waaaaaayyy off in the distance? That's where we had to head back to.

The walk back was.... long. And along a golf course, which isn't exactly scenic, and didn't have a bit of shade. We entertained ourselves by playing "What if we saw a snake? What if we saw a tiger? What would Millie do if she saw a those monkeys?" This was the only wildlife we saw on the way back, but it was a good two feet long if you can't tell by the picture.

I drank all of the water in my huge Nalgene on our walk, and didn't pee until hours later. (TMI, sorry.) Libby survived on no water, I don't know how, I was mildly impressed how she can survive on Pepsi alone. Enough excecise for one day, anyway, tomorrow we nap and watch TV.

Adventures with Libby - Bukit Timah Nature Reserve

With Libby here visting, I quickly learned that age 16 for me was about... 20 years ago. Libby didn't really want to do the cultural stuff - "What, you don't want to visit the Philatelic museum? But they have all these really great stamps!" Libby wanted to see wildlife. And here in Singapore, that means monkeys.

We headed over to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Libby was very patient with me, even after I had us get off the bus too early and had to wait for the next one, and then failed to mention that once you get to the reserve, it's a 15 minute steep uphill climb before you get to anything interesting. Did I mention that it's always 90 degrees and humid? But we were rewarded almost immediately as a troop of monkeys moved acros the path.

First, the older wandered up to make sure we weren't a threat:

Then sat in the middle of the road to make sure all the others got across safely.

They weren't in too big of a hurry, we stood and watched them for a good half hour or so. They were even a little entertaining:

This is the best shot I could get of a mom with her baby, she was a little more shy than the rest.

They weren't too interested in us, as we were rule followers:

After they moved on, we continued our way to the summit. Here's what you're rewarded with when you get to the top. No view, just a bench and a big rock.

And a long walk back down. No monkey entertainment on the way back, but at least it was a much easier walk. And there is ice cream at the bottom.

Adventures with Libby

The day after we arrived back from Europe, our dear friend and neighbor from Minneapolis, Libby, came to stay with us for a few weeks. Friends and family take note. At age 16, she saved up and made her way across the ocean all by herself to come and see us. Ask Libby, we have plenty of room, and are fantastic hosts (if we don't say so ourselves), and there's tons to do here. So plan your visit now, before it's too late and we won't have this big beautiful house to share!!!!

Adventures with Chris and Libby to come...

Europe - Day 16 - Basel to Zurich to Amsterdam to Singapore

We're so glad to be going "home" to Singapore. It's been a long trip. We had a half a day still in Basel, and had a great breakfast of cheese, bread and eggs, and caught the special Van Gogh exhibit at the local museum. It's a small town, but it seemed that every single inhabitant was also at that exhibit, and you had to squeeze your way through from painting to painting. They had cool pink iPod's for the audio tour, though.

The trip back was tiring, but fairly uneventful. No trains were missed, we squeezed in under the luggage weight limit, and we both had aisle seats. "Breakfast" on the plane however, was noodles and fish. Back to Asia.

Europe - Day 15 - Basel, Switzerland

David just made a comment to me, something about, "It doesn't sound like we had any fun in Switzerland. You didn't make anything funny." I have two things to say about this: First, after 2 1/2 weeks of trains, planes, boats and automobiles, I am tired. I don't have the energy for lots of stories. Second, there are only so many times you can tell about the time you tried to find the hotel/train/museum and failed. Or paid $35 for a sandwich and $3 for a glass of wine, the complete opposite of how it is in Singapore. Or how many times someone's wife dragged someone's husband so far off the beaten path that someone didn't think they could hold it together long enough to make it back for fries and mayonnaise. It just happened too many times to be funny anymore.

But I digress. Today is our last full day in Swizerland, we were in our second German-speaking city and starting to get the hang of the language. Basel (in Switzerland) borders both France and Gernany on the Rhine River, so number one on the agenda was a boat tour.

The intersection of the three countries is not on land, it's in the middle of the Rhine River. You can still visit it though, there's a sort of concrete walkway with the actual spot marked like this:

Just to make sure they had the right spot, David had to double check Google maps on his phone:

Close enough. After docking, we barely had time to inhale some fries (with mayo, of course, this is Europe) before meeting up with our guide for the walking tour of Basel. The good part was that he spoke fantastic English, the bad part was there were 15 other people in the group who didn't. So we had to listen to everything twice, first in German, then in English. The English part of the talks always seemed a little shorter though, and I wondered what part of the information he thought we didn't need to know.

The first main stop was a church, which was under construction so there weren't many good pictures to be had.

Inside the church, there were a bunch of tombs, and we bickered back and forth about whether there were actually people in there:

The most famous was the tomb of Erasmus Von Rotterdam, who was a Christian philosopher back in the 14th century, around the same time as Luther. Our tour guide was a big fan:

Another main stop was the RatHaus, or town hall. Fully restored, it was pretty neat:

Along the way back to the starting point, we were treated to "the best view in Basel":

Which was fine, but in this same alleyway was a little nook with this, which I though was much more entertaining:

At the end, was a gallery with pictures of another of Basel's famous resident, Roger Federrer:

Tomorrow we have the morning in Basel before heading to the airport. I will have cheese and chocolate for breakfast.

Europe - Day 14 - Zurich to Basel

Before heading to Basel later today, we made time to take a quick bus tour of the city. It was pretty much the same as we saw yesterday, except that we didn't have to walk, and they had these great headphones that told you all about the buildings and such as you whizzed by.

One of the first stops was Lake Zurich again. You can tell how cold it was by how bundled up the people were after swimming:

You've seen these towers in the backgound before, but I think it's much more interesting with us and the fat guy in the foreground:

Heres our last glimpse of Zurich, gray, cold and rainy, but we'll still miss it.

Next stop is Basel, Switzerland, home of I'm-not-sure-what, but it was recommended on Frommer's, so I have high hopes.