Bird Paradise and goodbye Singapore

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For our final full day in Singapore Aaron made us pancakes and let us sample the legendary Sparks maple syrup imported from New York City (New York City??!!)

Then it was off to Bird Paradise! 

After a very hot first tour we found the penguin exhibit!! 15 degrees felt positively (ant)arctic and the penguins were total dorks. The enclosure allowed us to see their goofy antics out of the water and to see them transform into sleek torpedos under the water.  We kept coming back to this exhibit, one for the fun penguins and two for the cool air.  I (Kylie) spent a lot of time laying on a cool (literally and figuratively) rock watching the penguins go by.

Mikaya is a peacock. 🦚 We saw lots of spectacularly colourful birds or paradise, as well as some gray parrots. Marc wanted to bring home an African gray parrot when we were in Uganda 20 years ago.  Thankfully I convinced him not to as we would be looking after it longer than our children. 😛 We also saw some birds in action (a type of weaver bird) constructing their nests.  They would fly around and grab a piece of grass and then expertly and quickly weave it into the other part of the nest.  So interesting to watch! 

I had been telling the kids that there was only one bird that I HATED and that was the maribu storks that we saw in Kenya and Uganda.  They always hung around garbage pits and were covered in open sores and would run at you when you walked by them.  This is me reacting when they brought one out for the predators show. 🤬🐤👎 You can see one on top of the rock in the background.

Even the bathrooms have a beautiful view. 

We were at the birds of paradise centre for Easter so there were a lot of decorations.  Mikaya really wanted this picture frame picture of all of us.  Apparently it was not taken properly so here is the original and then her zoomed in appropriate version. 

After the birds of paradise centre we left the kids at home to go to the hawker stands on their own for dinner and the adults went out to a fancy Malay and Chinese food fusion restaurant. Was so different from any food Marc and I had tried before and was absolutely delicious.  We all wore batik clothes provided by Aaron and Su. 

These little appetizer bites were delicious. A crispy cup that you filled with white fish, honey, chili sauce and cilantro.  So tasty! 

Off for one more juice and now off to Japan! Thank you so much to Aaron and Su and family for your wonderful hospitality. We all had such a good time! Everyone wants to come back soon!