We went to one of Singapore's zoos this week and it felt like a long time since we'd visited one. Turns out our last trip to a zoo was 10 months ago - December 2019.

Thankfully our zoo membership was extended from being closed due to COVID and the zoo experience is almost back to normal now. A few of the zoos' activities are still closed and crowds on a weekday, at least, are super low, but other than that it's felt relatively normal. There were still X's around to remind people to keep their distance, but there was no one policing them here.

I was able to get a same day reservation to visit. We wore our masks for the 4.5 hours we were out of the house without really noticing. We took them off to eat lunch at a table outside. We kept to our group of 5 as allowed. It was easy to keep our distance from other people, because other than at the pandas there was hardly anyone around.

We visited the River Safari. Right away I was reminded about how the zoos make me feel like I'm in Disney World. As soon as you pass the gate there's theme music in the background. It's a hot, humid, beautiful garden, but you're also walking in and out of nice cool air conditioning, because this zoo is based around huge fresh water aquariums, mostly indoors. There are also some land exhibits, both indoor and outdoor, highlighting the animals that live along the world's main rivers.

MsE liked matching up the animals to their names with the picture guides. MsC like reading about each river at the displays.

We liked comparing the fresh water animals that we are more used to seeing in salt water like large fish, turtles, and sting rays. We are more familiar with the SEA Aquarium that is mostly salt water aquariums. The girls were super excited to identify some of the fish in the tanks that are also in the little aquariums in our house.

As we're now studying India for History/Social Studies, we made a point of learning about the challenges the Ganges River is having. We learned that India even has a breeding program to reintroduce gharials, which are similar to alligators, back to the wild after their numbers have reduced due to pollution.

We took a ride down a river too. It was so quiet that no one was in line for the river ride and we walked right on. They were even only loading one family per boat, so us girls got to be as chatty as we wanted on our ride.

There were a few splashy parts, but our boat was so light that we only got a few sprinklings of water on us. MsE held her scavenger hunt page over her head the whole ride. She said wasn't sure if she was protecting her head from water or from monkeys.

She thought the little monkeys we passed on the ride were cute, but was still worried their might be large ones; there were not. We also saw other animals like anteaters, jaguars and flamingos from our boat.

I can't decide what was better, the China exhibit or the boat ride. In the China exhibit we got to see the Giant Pandas, and also the Red Panda, which is more like a raccoon. We have a book about these animals that Jonathan brought us home from his first trip to Singapore, so they are pretty special to us. We also learnt about what they eat and about baby Pandas, although there's no baby yet.

We saw Jai Jai, the female Panda, walking quickly about her enclosure, and Kai Kai, the male, sleeping in plain sight.