Singapore Bird Park

Jurong Bird Park is one place that I haven't been to for a long long time. I don't even remember how it was like when I went many many years back. So I decided to visit it again.

I actually went on the 14 February 2014 (Valentine's Day). Sorry for the late blog post because I have been busy for quite a while.

So on that morning, I went to Boon Lay Bus Interchange where bus 194 or 251 is. You could take either to the bird park.

Entrance to Jurong Bird Park

If you see this road (Bird Park Drive), it means you are at the right place. I got tickets for 2 because I went with CT of course. The tickets cost SGD25.00 each, but if you are visiting the park on your birthday, you get to enter for free (For Singaporean and PR only)! Also, if you are a Singaporean or PR, you get 15% off the tickets on any other day as well (I am not sure if this promotion is still available).

Before I begin blogging about my tour in the Bird Park, this is the link to the map of the park:
Jurong Bird Park Map

Right after the entrance

Right after we entered the entrance, we spotted the first attraction.

Penguin Coast

Yup, it's the Penguin Coast. So the first bird we see for the day was penguins. I was expecting to see some emperor penguins but sadly they only have king penguins.

King Penguins

Oh well, king penguins look similar to emperor penguin except for the size, so I wasn't that disappoint.

As we exit the Penguin Coast, it was the Macaw Island. There were displays of macaw for picture taking.

There is a shop nearby too.

Right next to it, there is a good spot for photo taking too.

As we followed down the path, it was the Flamingo Pool.

Flamingo Pool

The flamingo sure looks pretty. By the way, do you know why the flamingos are pink in colour? It's because of their diet!

Their diet contained a pigment called Carotenoids which was broken down in their body to give it's colour. If not, flamingos are white.

After watching the flamingos enjoying their food, we decided to take a break as well and eat our lunch too. We brought our own lunch!

Lunch "Box"

Because the usual lunch box is too mainstream, we used a box literally to put our food.

Menu for Lunch

Yup, so these were what we prepared for lunch. Everything was homemade by CT!

Playground at Birdz of Play

Birdz of Play is just located beside where we had our lunch so we actually went to have a look. It definitely looks fun for the kids but no, we did not play with it.

Next, it was the Wetlands.

Saddle-billed Stork

Grey Crowned Crane

What you can find here are the saddle-billed stork and grey crowned crane. The crane looked very hostile, it always seems to be waiting for a chance to attack me whenever I tried to take picture of it.

We headed to the Riverine next since the arrow pointed us to it.

There wasn't much to see there though. So I am going to skip this part.

The next section was the Southeast Asian Birds. Here are just pictures of a few of the birds inside

I don't know the name of most of them because they are free to roam inside the place, the information board about the bird wasn't near them. I do know that the peacock doesn't want us to see it's face. It fan it's tail when it see us approaching, and it keeps showing us the rear view. I know peacock fanning it's tail is part of the courtship ritual, but showing the butt... I am not too sure about that.

Exiting Southeast Asian Birds, we went passed the Flamingo Lake. Instead of the pink flamingos, the flamingos here were white in colour.

Pelican cove is just down the path.

Pelicans

The pelicans were so huge, they looked rather scary. I thought of getting closer to them for a better look at them, but I had second thought about it. I value my life!

Waterfall Aviary

I guess Waterfall Aviary is one of the highlights of Jurong Bird Park. The waterfall here is the world's tallest man-made waterfall, which is pretty cool! As we went along, there are bronze figurines along the sides, I couldn't help but to take a photo with it.

I'm going to skip the part inside the Waterfall Aviary because I don't have any decent picture to post. I took quite a lot of photos in the aviary but the settings on the camera went off without me noticing. All the pictures I took in there have very high noise. So I decided not to put any photos in there. There isn't much to see in there as well, except the scenic view of the waterfall. So you are not missing much.

When we were done at the aviary, it was almost 1500hr, so we decided to head over to the Pools Amphitheatre.

Pools Amphitheatre

Birds n Buddies is showing at that time. There is an earlier timing for the show at 1100hr as well.

I realised that the show didn't change much from my impression when I went in my younger days, so it was pretty nostalgic to watch it over again. At the same time, the elements of surprise wasn't there for me since I know what they are going to do next.

After the show, it seems like everyone had the same itinery. All of them, including us, went for World of Darkness. Okay, maybe it's because it was just located behind the spectator stand of the amphitheatre.

World of Darkness

I couldn't take any decent photo inside since it's so dark and flash shouldn't be used as well. Regardless, there were still people using flash.

Boobok Owl

Oh well, me being mischievous, I took a picture of this sign. It's suppose to be Boobook Owl.

As we exit the World of Darkness, it led us back to the Penguin Coast and I realised there is another part of Penguin Coast that we missed earlier.

We headed to Hawk Walk for the next show called Kings of the Skies.

Kings of the Skies

This show features the ferocious birds such as vultures, eagles and hawks. It's pretty awesome to see those birds in action, so if you are at the bird park, make sure you don't miss this show. Their show times are 1000hr and 1600hr.

Guess what happen after the show? It started raining, so we have to seek shelter at the Dino Dig.

Dino Dig

This place is just a small sheltered area and we knew that it would not protect us from the big rain coming our way, so we quickly look through the park map to see where we could go for better shelter

Lory Loft

We found Lory Loft. This place provided a decent shelter for from the rain and we haven't visit here yet, so it's like 2-in-1 for us.This place is pretty cool. It is an enclosed area filled with lories and the best way to attract them....

Lory Feeding for SGD3.00

is to feed the lories! This SGD3.00 was definitely well spent.

Feeding the lories

Look at the lories flying so near to us. They would just flock around you and it was a nice experience.

Fighting for food

Well of course, some lories would end up fighting for the only cup in my hands.That's common right?

We ended up spending quite a lot of time with the lories since it was raining outside as well. By the time the rain starts to get smaller, it was about 1730hr and the park close at 1800hr. We were left with 30 minutes to visit the remaining places.

So we rushed through the remaining places like Royal Ramble and Scarlet Ibis.

Royal Ramble

Scarlet Ibis

So nicely timed, we reached the exit at 1800hr sharp where the park keepers escorted us out and it started raining heavily again.

Exiting the park

Because it was raining so heavily again and it's still early for dinner (I made reservation for dinner at 1900hr), we chilled at the entrance of the park for awhile since we had walked the whole of the day.

The sky was nice to us though. It stopped raining about 1830hr so we took a stroll up the hill beside the bird park. The place we were going might be a known place to those around my age and older, but not to the younger generation. It was the Jurong Hill.It was really popular in the 1970's to 80's and it was evident from all the trees planted there. The Queen of England and Crown Prince of Norway during that era were some of them who planted trees in the garden. But now, it is definitely a quiet place now.

Anyway, the main point is we were there for the Hilltop Restaurant, which also has been there for many years.

Hilltop Restaurant

I only remembered their tepanyaki when I was much younger. They have western, Japanese and Indonesian cuisine which I got no recollection at all. It might have been an add on over the years or it was just me being ignorant. Regardless, because I only know they had tepanyaki, so I booked it.

This spiral building has been inside my mind all these years. It is like the icon of the place. I remembered it because it is the only place I have ever been that I have walk down a spiral slope to get to the place (there is another entrance though). Good way for me to remember the place.

Entrance to Hilltop Restaurant

This is the entrance that welcomed us when we reach the end of the spiral. We received a nice welcome from the staff and they led us to our seats.

Menu of the tepanyaki

Well, it was V-day anyway so we ordered quite a lot of food, but I am not going to go through all the food that we ate. The main highlight about the food I think would be...

Sake (Salmon) Sahimi

Chef cooking Hilltop N.Z. Special Steak

salmon sashimi and the N.Z. Special Steak. To be honest the rest of the food tasted rather salty for my taste bud, only these two tasted good. The salmon was fresh and each slice was cut with the right thickness to fit my mouth. The steak was decent as well. I ordered it to be medium rare by the way. I am not sure if the other steak would taste good or not, but since this one I ordered was decent, I reckon other steak should taste just as well. I will confirm my answer if I ever have a chance to eat there again then.

After the main meal, we were brought to the other side of the restaurant for dessert.

Complimentary Dessert

The desserts are complimentary so feel free to pick any (just one) from the selection. I didn't manage to get a nice picture of the dessert I ordered though. I ordered for Vanilla Ice Cream. Well, it was a complimentary dessert, so don't expect it to be a big portion or taste very good. It was decent for something free.

I definitely had a great day, hope my review gave you a good guide of the place. Feel free to contact me if you have any queries. Cheers.

Address:
Jurong Bird Park
2 Jurong Hill
Singapore 628925

Hilltop Restaurant
2 Jurong Hill
Jurong Bird Park
Singapore 628925

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