YowCH & Grace

We took a day off from work to bring the children to the newly-opened River Safari (next to the zoo). This is where the pandas are held and has animals that are river based. We arrived at the entrance at 9:15am and as expected, the place was rather empty.

We started the walk right after getting 2 maps from the gate-house.


This is the alligator snapping turtle (and it is sitting on a larger one):

A gar:

A giraffe catfish, a bichir and a paddle fish:

A giant puffer, and the tiger fish:





This is a crab-eating macaque:

We were at this Yangtze display before, it was previously connected from the zoo when the pandas first arrived.


Wow! There is NOBODY waiting to see the pandas!

Samuel sees the red panda.



We see the male-panda again, Kai Kai, and the first time for Samuel:

A life of luxury!

Jia Jia was hiding in her room.

After the pandas, we crossed the long bridge to the other side of the River Safari.



YowCH took care of Samuel while the rest went for the Amazon River Quest boat ride (minimum height 1.06m). There was also no queue.

We saw Brazilian tapirs, Caribbean flamingos and capybaras.

Joseph is now very good at reading maps, he can easily identify where we are and where to go next. It also helps that he has started reading.


Arowana:

Squirrel Monkey in a free-ranging enclosure:


Then we entered the Mississippi River display, very much like the SEA Aquarium.

We saw electric eel, black ghost knife-fish:

Piranhas:

Panaque (suckerfish):

Arapaima and catfish:

The highlight was the huge (more than 1 ton) manatees (aka sea-cows):



After the aquarium display, the trip ended at 12:15pm and we went to the River Safari Tea House for lunch. Reasonable tasty food at tourist prices.

After 1 hour of lunch, we shopped at the souvenir shop for a short time (got some luminous stickers) and left the River Safari at 1:45pm.

Thank God for a very good time of family bonding, no crowds at the safari, good weather and the opportunity to learn about the animals. However, the whole trip was rather costly given the small collection of animals (and that includes many fishes), and this tourist attraction will not be up on our list of ‘go again’ like the zoo.

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