Animal Planet

VERMONT, MELBOURNE, VICTORIA - 5th December 2009

My second day in Australia featured a trip to the famous Werribee Open Range Zoo, about half an hour west of central Melbourne. Zoos have really become a penchant of mine - since visiting London Zoo as a kid, I don't think I went to another one till the final afternoon of Pembroke College's infamous "WurstFest 2007" lads' trip to Berlin, when we went to see the world famous baby polar bear, Knut. Since then I've checked out all sorts - this trip alone has featured Bannergatta in Bangalore, the Monkeyland of Matheran, and most lately Underwater World in Singapore's Sentosa Island, the Singapore Night Safari, and Werribee here in Melbourne.

I'll start with the two from Singapore, as I patently forgot to give them anything more than a passing mention before departing Raffles' Island. Underwater Land is basically a giant aquarium on Sentosa Island, which is basically a giant theme park island with various pay-per-use attractions. The only other proper aquarium I've been to is that in London (and that was about 15 years ago), so I don't have much to compare it to, but as you'd expect from Singapore, it was really well done and featured all sorts of cool creatures, including the Japanese Spider Crab (see right) - a creature that (for reasons I now forget) reared its overgrown head in countless conversations on our India-Thailand travels last summer.

A cool feature is the underwater tunnel, which allows you to walk around completely submersed in water, and thus have fish of various levels of deadliness circling around you as you click photos. At certain times you really feel like you're just underwater with them - you'll be innocently standing there staring into the abyss when out of nowhere a swarm of fish bomb past you in an almighty rush to God know's where...

After checking a few more of Sentosa's sights (including an awesome downhill go-cart-come-toboggan track), we headed back to town with the plan of hitting the Night Safari.

The night zoo is located right in the middle of Singapore's city-state, which means that its as close to the middle of nowhere as is possible on an island that's only about 40km across. With word on the street saying that getting there by public transport would be something of a mission, Neha and I were lucky to get involved with an organised trip originating from her hostel - for S$40 we got minibus transfer from Little India to the zoo and back, entrance to the park (normally $25) and a safari bus ticket (normally $10). Great deal all round. You even get a cool "Animals of the Night" show thrown in for free, and get to see a bunch of cool creatures (wolves, sloths, racoons, pythons etc.) doing various tricks with their trainers.

In the grand scheme of things, it's basically the same as your average zoo - big area with various enclosures for various animals, with a train/tram/bus running along a set route through the various areas. However, the presence of darkness adds a quality to the experience that makes it unique beyond anything else I'd seen - with random rustling and growling among the overgrowth around you, every step you take is punctuated with sense of foreboding about what might be lurking around the corner, behind you, or indeed above you. Whereas, in a normal zoo, animals are essentially presented to the punters; the dark of the night, combined with walking trails that are flanked with vegetation of a density more akin to jungle than zoo, makes the Night Safari a whole different kettle of fish.

The highlight came somewhere in the depths of the jungle-zoo after we "hopped off" the safari bus to see some cats. Randomly walking up a side path, we found ourselves on a slightly raised platform overlooking a bit of a clearing. Just as we were wondering what we were looking at, leaves rustled and the silhouette of a huge mane danced over the rocky crest. Sure enough, out strutted the King of the Beasts, and before we could grab our cameras we unleashed the most deafening roar you'll ever hear in nature. You don't take photos, you don't take videos, you just stand in the stunned silence of admiration and, imagining being face-to-face with that sort of beastly fury, perhaps wet yourself a little.

But while Singapore Zoo had the novelty of the night, Werribee extracted novelty from the day. The Lonely Planet guide describes Australia as "the closest thing to an alien planet on Earth" - a reference to Australia's indigenous flora and fauna that have developed from its unique isolation from the rest of the global landmass. As recently as 15,000 years ago, creatures could freely walk across the entirety of what is now Eurasia, Africa and the Americas; it has been some 100 million years since you could walk to Australia.

It was natural, therefore, that we immediately gravitated to Werribee's Australian enclosure - a mass of native Australian wetland inhabited by natives of the island, from kangaroos to a multitude of emus to wombats and various birds. But this enclosure was unlike anything I've seen in any other zoo - the path through the enclosure had no fencing, no separation, no nothing. You were simply walking around in the midst of the animals. You can somewhat get an idea of the surreality of this setup in the first of the photos below - we were walking down the path and along marched a few emus merrily on their way. It's no nonsense zoology.

Seeing the kangaroos was damn exciting for me - the only shame was that they were rather lazy in the midday sun so just sat around under the trees. Nevertheless, we went from the Aussie enclosure onto Werribee's safari bus, which took us through American, Asian and the massive African enclosures, coming up close and personal with a whole host of beasts living it up in huge open grasslands. My personal favourite were the scimitar-horned oryx (see right), a type of antelope that is now extinct in the wild (due to being hunted for its horns). I don't really have a fancy reason for liking them - the rationale is pretty simple - they look damn cool.

But the real highlight came after close-ups with giraffes, rhinos, zebras and Harry the Hippo (and an army of excitable meercats running around like nutters). It came at 2.30pm, with the feeding of the lions. The setup at Werribee is awesome - there's a Land Rover Jeep parked on the edge of the lions' enclosure, with glass put up in line with its steering wheel (so that the bonnet is fully exposed to the lions). The lions' meat is plonked down on the bonnet of the vehicle, and the assembled spectators are treated to something that looks a little like this:

There are a couple of lions - brothers of the same litter (see below) - along with a lioness in the enclosure, and hot word is that the lionness is pregnant. If so, expect international headlines approximately next February...

Not finished yet!

CHANGI AIRPORT - TERMINAL 1, SINGAPORE - 2nd December 2009

It has transpired that Singapore's Changi Airport features dozens of free internet access computer terminals and, with an hour and a half to wait till QF10 begins boarding, who am I to say no to such generosity?

Sharp readers may have perceived a degree of rush in my blog from a couple of hours back. I was supposed to meet Billy - another Londoner from the Prince of Wales who's flying on a flight to Sydney 10 minutes before mine - at 4.30pm to head off, but what with all the excitement of writing about tasty food I ended up running a fashionable 15 minutes late, and probably failed to "fill in all the gaps" I wanted. Ironically, I now cannot remember what I wanted to write about then...

However, since then we took Singapore's excellent MRT subway system straight to Changi Airport and had the fun of immigration and security. I've had a fairly colourful history of banter with airport-officials in the past - it'll be a long time before I forget the last time I flew home from New York JFK. My 15-year-old self was taken to one side away from my parents to have my bags "chemically tested" (God knows...) and searched. On my way out from Heathrow, I'd picked up a book in duty free called "Why Do People Hate America", and it was sod's law that the first thing this angry-looking security official sees as he opens up my bag is a huge image of the Star Spangled Banner up in flames. I wouldn't have been wholly surprised if I'd been shipped off to Guantanemo...

Anyway, immigration here in Changi involved an interesting interrogation from the border control woman. "What's your name?", "Why are you going to Australia?", "When are you going back to London?" are all fairly run-of-the-mill questions, but it was when she asked "Have you started preparing for Christmas yet?" that I started wondering what was her game. Our little chit chat then shifted onto my passport photo - "Ooooh you were young in this photo! When was it taken? How old were you? How old are you now?". She might as well have asked for a date.

The PCs here run on a 15 minute timer so that people don't hog the machines, and I have 50 seconds left. So, and this time it's for real, that's it till Australia!

Filling in the gaps

LITTLE INDIA, SINGAPORE - 2nd December 2009

Having just undertaken an epic feat of packing, I am shortly departing for Changi Airport and onwards to Australia. Before leaving, however, I thought I'd write one last blog from Asia and fill in a few bits and pieces that didn't make it into my sleep-deprived entry from KL.

I'll start with my hostel. In classic backpackers' fashion, I decided on a place to stay by opening up Lonely Planet, looking at the first recommended place, and going there. The place is called the Prince of Wales, and is an Aussie-joint that features a pretty good bar downstairs (with your 10th beer on the house!), and a large dorm room that must sleep about 20 people upstairs. Being what it is, it is full of Europeans, mainly Brits, 95% of whom are en route to Australia. The setup is great - the atmosphere of the place means you invariably meet lots of great people who've usually had some pretty amazing experiences in their own travels. For example, I went wandering down to Chinatown with a couple of guys this morning, and one of them is a New Zealander who basically travels the world doing freelance photography. He's been to some 150 countries, and seriously knows his stuff - but had some great tales to tell.

Anyway, the big feature of Singapore yet to be mentioned, and what I am definitely going to miss the most when I leave, is the food. Going back to what I said in an earlier blog about Singapore combining everything, cuisine here caters to everyone. At one end, there's the expensive side. Last Thursday evening I met up with yet another fellow Pembrokian, William Abi-Habib, who's just moved out here with a new big-money job with a Korean construction firm. He's worked like a dog, but as Friday was a national holiday we were able to chill on Thursday night down at Boat Quay - a fashionable restaurant area on the Singapore River. Dinner included lobster, tiger prawns, seafood noodles and an excellent white wine - I have no idea what the cost was but I owe Habib a damn nice meal when he comes back to London!

At the other end of the scale though, I've been a regular customer at a plenty of the city's many Food Halls. They are a great invention - take the open seating plan of the Food Courts you see in British shopping centres, but fill the edges of the hall with a multitude of stall-like structures, each one selling a certain speciality at a bargain price. Different parts of town have different specialities it seems, but what I've sampled has ranged from seafood noodle soup to duck fried rice to mutton biriyani to mixed parathas with sambhar - all excellent, none more than about £1.50.

Then, there's the chilli crab - a local speciality that I sampled with Rui and Neha on Saturday night. Mangloreans would see the similarity with a classic crab curry - it's fully shelled crabs cooked in an incredible curry, and you're given an apron at the table and use your hands to break open the shells and get to the sumptuous crab meat. It's a mission, but a seriously rewarding one!

A final thing to mention before I go (I'm now late so better be quick) is Times Square Mall in Kuala Lumpur. People in London got excited about the size of Westfield when it opened, and indeed the size of Bluewater. You should come to KL and see this place. Take the physical area of Westfield, and make it 14 stories tall, all filled with shops, except one section that is filled with a massive indoor roller coaster. The place is mind-bogglingly vast - the economist in me was struggling to understand just how so many shops in one place is financially viable... but it is something that has to be seen to be believed... particularly when you're on the 14th floor looking down at row after row after row of escalators, intertwining down to the depths of the building where you see a floor... but that floor itself is 5 stories up. Crazy.

Now I'm seriously late, so this ends this. Next stop, the Land Down Under.

My new favourite city

LITTLE INDIA, SINGAPORE - 27th November 2009

A little over 15 months ago while we were touring around India, Simon, Jamie N and I were in the lake city of Udaipur in Rajasthan. While Jamie was doing what Jamie does best (the shut-eye Olympics), Simon and I were having another one of our high stakes discussions up on the hotel's rooftop terrace restaurant. On this occasion, the topic had been "What are your favourite 10 cities in the world?". Given that we'd both been to a lot of places the other hadn't, there were plenty of inevitable differences. However, what stood out for me was that Simon hadn't put London first.

There are lots of things I like about lots of cities - indeed many are perfect in their own little way - but at the end of the day, London is King. And more annoyingly for other people, it's one of those topics where I generally refuse to accept an alternative view - instead entering into a long and largely pointless debate until either the other party gets bored (the most regular outcome), or we're forced to "agree to disagree". But as far as I'm concerned (and various academic studies have agreed), London exists on a scale that makes it incomparable to any other city except New York - the sheer comprehensiveness of what is offered is almost unique. With this in mind, London always topped any and all other cities I've visited including, and with New York-resident Yankees Paddy and Lex agreeing with me, NYC.

Until now.

In less than 48 hours, Singapore has blown me away. My Dad came here on business a month ago and told me I was gonna love it, but I'm fairly sure that was largely based on how good the food was going to be (it's always good to know I've inherited Dad's sense of priorities!). However, the food is just the beginning. Singapore somehow manages to combine everything - old or new, western or eastern, cheap or expensive, historic or modern - be it in terms of cuisine, culture or architecture. The fact that its four national languages include Chinese and Tamil - purely because of the amount of Chinese and Tamilian immigrants - gives an idea of how open a country Singapore is, but it yet maintains a national identity around this openness. Little India, where I'm staying, is exactly what it says on the tin - the shops play Hindi music, you can buy paka South Indian curries at any time of night, and the street-side markets might as well be in Chennai. Strolling around early morning, I even found a place frying panpalehs (the same ones as previously mentioned) - in India you're hard pushed to find them anywhere outside Southern Karnataka, but here they were in Singapore, fresh as a springtime morning.

If you walk 10-15 minutes south, however, you head into the Civic Area - the historic part of town that houses the Government buildings and landmarks such as Raffles Hotel (which boasts a history to match any hotel in the world). Down here, you get a real appreciation for the depth of Singapore's history since Sir Stamford Raffles founded the city in 1819 - things have been beautifully preserved (perhaps thanks to extended British rule?) and complemented with modern projects to revitalise the area with leafy boulevards and pathways. I was lucky to have another fellow Pembroke E&Mist and Singapore resident Rui Min to give me a thorough guided tour that began around Chinatown (Little India, but Chinese - surprisingly enough), worked its way down to the ultra-modern waterside performance stage at the Esplanade, then zig-zagged north-west along the Formula 1 night-race circuit to check out the Civic Area in depth.

I will always remember turning right onto St. Andrew's Road opposite Singapore Cricket Club, looking back north-east to the background of skyscrapers in the (old) financial district, before heading down to Raffles' Landing Point on the Singapore River, flanked by century-old buildings that housed pretty much every historic moment in city-state's 200-year history. Down on the river, the Landing Point looks across at a scene that typifies Singapore - a row of old, classically eastern buildings lining the riverside area known as Boat Quay; behind them the towering glass structures of the Marina Bay "new" financial district . Old and new, east and west, historic and modern. All rolled into one bite size city-state. Great stuff.