The Live Turtle & Tortoise Museum

So on 02 June 2014, which is also the Duanwu Festival (also commonly known as Dragon Boat Festival) for the Chinese, CT and I decided to drop by Chinese Garden for the day to check out the Live Turtle & Tortoise Museum. I realised a lot of people what the festival is all about so I am going to briefly explain how it came about.

Long long ago (don't know which era), there was a scholar named Qu Yuan. He was a minister as well, but was wrongly accused and banished. He was disappointed with the country so he committed suicide by drowning himself. Those who admired him quickly raced their boat out to rescue him (or to retrieve his body) but they could not find his body. They dropped sticky rice into the river so that the fishes would feed on them instead of Qu Yuan's body. This is how the dragon boat and dumpling was originated. This festival falls on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month.

Statue of Qu Yuan

The statue can be found in Chinese Garden together with other statues of other great heroes.

Anyway let's go back to the main topic. We arrived at Chinese Garden MRT and there is a pathway that lead straight to Chinese Garden. Along the way, there is a huge signboard about the museum.

Signboard for the museum

Here's the map for Chinese Garden just in case some of you don't know the place well. This map was taken at the entrance from the MRT station.

Map of Chinese Garden

We took a stroll and before we knew it, we were at the entrance of the museum already,

Entrance of the museum

The ticket for adult is SGD5.00 each.

Tickets for the museum

Just before we enter the museum, there is a koi pond just outside it. It was filled with kois.

Koi pond

Can you see that all the kois were swimming in circular motion? The scene was really nice. As I walked towards the pond, the kois swam in circles in front of me. Initially I thought the fishes were conditioned to do this when they though someone is coming to feed them, so I walked away and tried it one more time. They did swim towards me, but were not in circles anymore. I tried a few times, but it never happened again anymore. So I am really glad that I managed to capture the kois swimming in circles.

As we enter the entrance of the Turtle & Tortoise Museum, I was amazed by the numbers of turtles and tortoise I saw at a glance. No doubt this places is recognised by TripAdvisor.

Can you spot the letter from TripAdvisor?

To be honest, I wasn't a fan of turtles or tortoise. I just want to visit because I haven't been to this place before even though I go to Chinese Garden often. So I am going to just show a few pictures of the turtles and tortoise here. If you want to see more, you can check out the full album on my Facebook page.

Don't ask me for their names or breed, I don't know. I was just amazed by the number of turtles and tortoise this place has and how old they were. They really do have a very long life.

There is a deformed turtle because of it's previous owner keeping it in a small space so the shell is out of shape.

Deformed Turtle

This turtle is still surviving well and is getting better after moving to the museum. Well done guys at the museum. Cheers to all of you.

Anyway, there is a pond in the middle of the museum. It was filled with turtles. 

Lot's of turtles swimming towards food

We bought a packet of food at SGD1.00 to feed to turtles and they really do flock to us. According to the owner, there were at least 500-600 turtles in the pool! I find that number incredible in a small pool like that.

I asked the owner if they bite because I saw a lot of warning signs but the owner replied saying that they thought it was food. If they were full, they don't bite at all.

The area wasn't very big, but it took us about 2 hours in the museum.

As we leave the museum, we stopped by near the river to rest for awhile. I was talking to CT when I was interrupted by the noise behind me. I turned around and I saw a monitor lizard coming out of the water with a huge prawn in it's mouth! It was too close from my comfort distance with such creature, so I quickly take a picture of it and leave quickly.

Monitor lizard eating prawn

We left Chinese Garden and headed to town because I have some things to do there. Since we were at town, we decided to try to "forever long queue" fast food chain. That is the Jollibee.

CT queuing for food

We were there just before 1800hr and the queue was rather long. Although the queue was long, it moved rather quickly. It took us about 30 minutes before it was our turn. While queuing, we started asking others (mostly Pinoys) in the line about the food. They told us Jollibee originated from The Philippines, that is why there were so many Pinoys eating it. It is the household brand back in hometown. I was impressed by how Jollibee managed to attract so many fans. Even staff from KFC was in the queue.

KFC staff queuing in Jollibee!

 Anyway those in the queue recommended us to try the spaghetti and chicken, so we decided to go with the recommendation. On top of that, I ordered additional hotdog meal since I like hotdog.

Chicken Value Meal with mash potato side

The Chicken Value Meal cost SGD7.10. It was quite a standard price for the fried chicken, but personally I feel that the portion of the meal was rather small. I don't feel full after eating it. I would still recommend it because the taste was good and mash potato was delicious too.

Hotdog Value Meal with french fries side

 The Hotdog Value Meal cost SGD5.40 which I changed the drink to a large pinapple juice. The fries reminded me of the fries at Long John Silver. They taste similar. The hotdog was good but it is not something that I would crave for. Forget about changing the drink to pineapple juice, it was tasteless and it didn't taste good, so I recommend sticking to the usual soft drink is a safer choice.

Spaghetti Value Meal

The Spaghetti Value Meal was a choice. It only cost SGD4.00 and it was delicious. Other than the portion was small, the spaghetti was really good. It was sweet instead of the usual sour tomato taste. I was told that it is to cater for kids so that they will like it too. Not only the kids, I like it too. I will definitely come back for this.

It was definitely a nice day out. I want more days like this. =)

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