Saturday I went with a few others to Pulau Ubin, a very small island off the north east coast of Singapore. This island was fairly dirty and smelly but in a nice way; it gave me a pretty good idea of what a third-world country would be like. We rented bicycles for four dollars a piece and just rode around the island for a few hours. This is us jumping:
Sunday was New Year's Eve so we went to China town to get the full Chinese experience. There was a large quantity of people congregating there. There were plenty of balloons and fireworks, the latter being mostly obscured by the large building seen in this picture:
Monday was the Singapore Bird Park, which is a zoo for birds. As advertised there were nine thousand birds in the park. There were large cages for viewing, large enclosures for walking through, and bird shows for watching. We were in a large seemingly open yet actually enclosed space that housed thousands of tropical birds where they were handing out cups of sugar water to feed the birds:
People would hold out the cups and one or two parrot-looking birds would land on the edge and start drinking. These birds were very friendly and allowed you to get very close.
I did not have any sugar water because it cost three dollars but was so fortunate as to have just such a bird perch unprovoked on my shoulder. This was a fairly unique occurrence; many people were taking photographs of me and I felt very full of myself. A jealous Chinese man approached me from behind and attempted to relieve me of the bird via his cup of sugar water. However he was only successful in startling the bird which kicked the cup, emptying it all over my shoulder, and flew away.
Another slightly less exciting adventure took place at the "Birds of Prey" show. For part of the show a flock of a dozen or so Red Kites were released into the amphitheatre. Keepers would sling small scraps of meat into the air so the Kites would swoop down and catch them. I was chosen as a volunteer to "help" sling shot a piece of meat at the Kites, very exciting. As compensation for my hard labor I was given a postcard of the fabled and exotic "bald eagle." This was actually quite disappointing because previous participants had received Ben & Jerry's coupons.
Yesterday Sam and I went to the Singapore Art museum. It was relatively small and contained only modern art, some of which was very impressive. Photographs were not allowed in the galleries.
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