An Otter-ageous Christmas!

Hope all of you had a special Christmas! We had a fun, nontraditional day! We started fairly normal with breakfast and opening presents but then spent a majority of the day by the pool and ended up at the Night Safari. We had a great time and met some wonderful people. One family was from Mississippi who is now living on Sentosa (lucky people!) while he works on getting some oil rigs up and running. We had an intriguing conversation about Hurricane Katrina. They had been in the midst of it and remembered a group of people coming down from Denver who helped take down trees.

Additionally, we met a fantastic family from Kuwait on Holiday! We talked for at least 30 minutes waiting for the Night Safari Show to start and we were quite taken with the children – they were so engaging and loved telling us all of the tales of their adventures here and Phuket! We were lucky to exchange information! The daughter is doing a project about Chile (she’s going to an American School there). So, I offered that my brother, Mike, might be able to share photos, etc. The Mom is a columnist for a newspaper – it’s in Arabic but we hope a co-worker of Paul’s will be able to help us translate so that I can see what she writes! What a lovely family! More than the adventures, just meeting a variety of people has been such a blessing.

Well, you probably want to see some pictures of animals, but since it is a Night Safari and they don’t allow Flash Photography – well…I don’t have too much to show. I can give you some names and hopefully you’ll want to look them up! Here's a good picture of the Ankole Cattle:

We also saw the Greater Asian Rhino, a few varieties of Jackals, 2 Malayan Tigers, Elephants and some majestic (but lazy) Lions!
We bought a Park Hopper, so we can go to the Night Safari, Zoo and Jurong Bird Park as much as we want over the next month. So, next time we go to the Safari we’ll probably walk throughout and that will give us a chance to see the animals a little closer!

One of the best showings of the night was the fire eaters and luckily I got a great video of them! Quite reminiscent of a show at a Luau.

We did find TURKEY! Ulu Ulu Safari Restaurant had a set menu for Christmas and we enjoyed a Salmon/Red Pepper Mousse (or Paul enjoyed that…) for an appetizer, a wonderful cup of chicken broth and dumpling soup, for the main course -Turkey with almond mashed potatoes (shaped into a pear – quite cool!) and a strawberry cream-filled log cake for dessert. I will have to do another posting on the log cakes here; I don’t understand the fascination but they are EVERYWHERE!!! I’ll be happy if I don’t see another Log Cake in my life.

(View from our table at Ulu Ulu Safari Restaurant)

They did a little show during dinner, too; check this out!

Here’s a picture and video from the Night Safari Show – quite funny!