Failure to Decide: Singapore Zoo

Never have I felt it so difficult to decide which photos to share as I do in this one. Really, I've done a terrible job of narrowing the selection down to just a few of the best photos. What you're going to get here is more like my failed attempts at being a tough critic, because I like wildlife (or captivity if you count zoo animals that way) photography too much not to share. They say a photographer should only show his or her very best work. Unfortunately, I don't do a good job at that and here especially I'm probably going to share for more than I should.

This welcome area is supposed to be occupied by parrots...that is not a parrot. 

The good news is that means there's going to be lots to look at and as promised, a few videos too. My videography continues to be downright awful. I am literally including these extremely short video clips with no belief that they are any good, but rather with the hope that they help you share in the fun. Bentley does offer a filmmaking course or two, but I'm not sure it will really fit into my schedule.

The monkey scared off all the parrots!

You might now be wondering why they choose to have parrots and monkeys share the same exhibit. Well, they actually don't. In fact, neither animal has ANY exhibit. Both of the animals you see above and many more species ranging from monkeys to peacocks reside in the zoo with absolutely zero boundaries to speak of. You could (and will) encounter one of the above monkeys literally anywhere in the park. That said, the lions and other man-eating beasts are kept in enclosures. There's a fine line between kindness to animals and stupidity.

As I said, random encounters are bound to happen. This peacock was strolling along the path when we rounded the corner.

As fun as it would have been for more of the animal varieties to be roaming freely around the park, those behind fences and glass were still hugely enjoyable to watch. The first exhibit we checked out was the otters, and it happened to be during feeding time.

Eyeing the food carefully.

They waited patiently for the food to come...and then started yelling and jumping at it!

The next stop was at the White Tiger exhibit. This place is a bit infamous at the Singapore Zoo, as just a few years ago one of the zookeepers walked into the exhibit with a bucket over his head during open hours, only to be mauled by the tigers in front of quite a few zoo visitors. Nonetheless, the animal is incredible to watch and it's pretty upsetting to think that there are so few left in the wild.

The only non animal photo I'll be sharing from the trip helps to lighten the mood a little bit. Our arrival time was very close to the first asian elephant show of the day, so Melissa and I made sure to get there early for good seats. The show is very popular, and as you can by the look on this one's face, is a hit among the kids.

In the spirit with a giraffe shirt.

The show was great entertainment and showcased just how intelligent elephants really are. They're about as keen on learning tricks as dogs are, an impressive feat considering how much more coordination it must take for them to pull off their stunts. The healthy combination of laughter and information made for a great half hour or so, and there were a few great solid ops as well. I wasn't successful in capturing them all, but I at least did alright. I've also included a few very short videos for your enjoyment.

In the middle of her 180 degree turn on top of this log.

A true crowd pleaser.

I think she got a little upset in the video below... Planned or not, it was pretty funny to watch the elephant kick the trainer's hat into the water.

A bonafide hat thief.

Unfortunately, the show had to come to an end. After the performances officially ended, there was an opportunity to feed the elephants a basket of fruit for $5. Melissa and I decided against it, but stuck around to photograph the feeding. 

I'm not sure how happy the trainer looks, but the elephant looks to be enjoying herself.

Are you getting the idea yet? I'm two animals down, dozens more to go, and I've already written an entry the length of my last one. Thankfully, or at least for time's sake, not everything was so interesting and attractive to photograph. We moved on to an area of the park that's home to about a dozen or so species of monkey. While many of them were lounging near the back of their exhibits, a few were up and about. The orangutans and baboons are not located in this area but rather have much larger and more interesting exhibits.

Don't know the species unfortunately. The hand looks eerily similar to a human hand if you ask me.

Same story here. Don't know the species, but I'd have to say this monkey looks pretty old, right?

This little fellow was buried pretty far back under some trees and in dim lighting. I'm amazed at what the camera could do to keep the details.

Before stopping at the orangutans main exhibit (I say main because they actually are given the freedom to roam the treetops of a significant portion of the park. Ropes connect trees all throughout the center of the park and if you look up in this area, there's a decent chance you'll see an orange ape sitting or climbing somewhere), we headed for the reptile house and what was another amazing part of the zoo to me, the Fragile Forest. Cheesy name, perhaps, but an amazing place to be.

At the reptile house on the way to the Fragile Forest. Emerald Boa, I think.

Sticking with the theme of the Singapore Zoo, what makes the Fragile Forest so special is that there are absolutely no walls between you and the animals. The area is enclosed by a giant greenhouse-like net, and once you're in, you're part of the habitat. One of our first encounters was pretty funny - this little mousedeer somehow managed to trap himself between us and the group of people behind us, and he didn't know how to get away.

Eventually he gained the courage to run along the path to the other side as you can see above. The noise you're hearing definitely didn't come from him though. There were a whole bunch of brightly colored parrots around us too and they were very vocal. Unfortunately none of them spoke english like the pet ones usually do. The entertainment continued when we found ourselves surrounded on all sides by a pack of energetic lemurs.

Definitely looks like a cartoon character to me.

This is uncropped. I was using a zoom lens for this but still, they were extremely close.

The lemurs actually got so close that I had to change lenses to a wider one. It was awesome to be able to do this, as the lens I changed to is of higher quality and can give some really shallow depth of field. It's an ideal lens for portraits of people, but why not make some lemur portraits instead?

 

The lemurs were one of the highlights of the trip and were the center of everyone's attention inside the Forest. It's a good thing, then, that the Flying Foxes wanted nothing to do with us. These huge bats were mostly asleep, which I'm thankful for. When we went on the Singapore Zoo's Night Safari later in the trip, the same couldn't be said. I have a few pictures from that I'll share later, although taking photos of animals in the dead of night is not an easy task.

Pretty spooky stuff if you ask me.

Eventually we were scared off by the bats (really we just realized we'd spent a lot of time watching the lemurs and needed to get moving) and moved on the section of the zoo devoted to African animals. The highlight of this area was the giraffes, and specifically, the chance to feed the giraffes. Melissa has been slacking worse than I have on photo uploads so I can't share the ones she took of me feeding the giraffe, but I definitely got more intimate with the tallest animal in the world than I thought I ever would.

After I fed it I didn't want to be done with the giraffes though, so I stuck around to take some more photos of them and others feeding them. The pictures range from funny:

To sad:

The look in it's eyes is pretty upsetting. Hopefully it just is sad because it wants more fruit from people.

To downright adorable:

I pretty much laugh out loud every time I look at this. The giraffe has the world's longest tongue, in case you couldn't tell.

On the way out of the area I stopped by the rhinos and noticed one of them had a battle wound. I'm guessing this is the result of a headbutting match gone awry.

Okay. I've shared a LOT of photos and have just two more animal exhibits to go through. But again, my inability to pick only maybe the best one or two photos of  each animal means there are about 10 more photos to share. Starting with the orangutans, I explained already about their free range habitat but haven't yet touched upon just how awesome they are to watch. First of all, I clearly am the evolution of these brilliant redheaded apes. Second, they are exactly that, brilliant. I wish I had taken a video as I watched this orangutan grab some leaves to bring over to his friend to share for a snack. 

And then there were those in the treetops. The look on this one's face is absolutely priceless.

See those purple lines near the bottom of the photo. That's an unfortunate effect of shooting into really harsh light (see sky behind ape).
If I bought a lens that cost a few thousand dollars more, I could probably eliminate that...

And what could be better than orangutans in treetops? Baby orangutans climbing on ropes from tree to tree. I apologize for getting a little silly here but what can I say, I've found the ape version of my four year old self.

Finally, we concluded our day with a stop at the Hamadryas Baboon exhibit. Melissa wanted to show me this and I'm really glad we stuck around for the extra hour or so to wait for the feeding session. The keepers told us that there are more than 100 baboons in the exhibit, and I have to say, as intelligent as they are, they are some of the nastiest and without a doubt ugliest things I've ever seen. The rear ends on these things are so, so ugly. Lucky for you, I've been kind enough not to share much of this ugliness, and instead am focusing on the better looking pictures I got.

I really should've taken the time to bring out this one's eyes in Photoshop, but there are just too many other things to do under the Australian sun.

More portraiture - gradually moving up the evolutionary scale. I'll make it to humans eventually.

A cute kid. This one is young and hasn't yet caught a case of the uglies.

Some of the sprawling Hamadryas Baboon exhibit.

And in watching the video below you can get a real appreciation for how intelligent these creatures really are. This large male actually figured out a way to get more food from us. Why not spin in circles to draw attention to yourself? Surely that will get the attention of onlookers.

And finally this post has come to an end. I really hope you enjoyed it as it took a lot of effort to put this one together! I had an absolutely awesome time at the Singapore Zoo and would have no problem spending a few more days there, taking the extra time to get great photographs of some of the harder to shoot animals. I'll go as far as to say that I'm pretty proud of some of these pictures and will hold out hope that one day I'll have the chance to get photos like these in the wild (don't worry mom and dad, still starting with accounting).

There's STILL more to share from Singapore which isn't necessarily a bad thing as I'm been focusing on enjoying myself here in Australia and have limited photos to share so far. I promise that's soon to change though. More from Singapore again soon.

Last of Koh Samui: Anthong Marine Park

One final highlight from Koh Samui that I'd like to share was the day trip that the 5 of us (Melissa, her dad, Ann, Natalie, and I) took through the Anthong Marine Park. This "park" is essentially a protected series of 47 islands off the coast of Koh Samui. While many are nothing more than rocks protruding from the water, there are a few that are noteworthy for their shapes, and also a few that have beaches of their own and are therefore worth visiting.

This was a company organized and rather "touristy" trip on a speedboat which was less than ideal, but we all scrambled on to the boat early which allowed us to get the front seats and the best view. This came with some consequences, though, mainly the bumpiest ride and a non-stop face full of wind. The hour or so ride out to the islands was rather uneventful and I was happy to find that I wasn't getting seasick as I thought I might have (remembering a deep-sea fishing trip from way back when that didn't turn out so well).

Our first stop was for some snorkeling, but as we had been told prior to booking, the area we were snorkeling in really wasn't anything particularly special. That said, I did get to swim with some pretty big schools of fish and when the boat captain started tossing bread at me, I became surrounded on all sides by what felt like hundreds of hungry fish. Thankfully, nothing big enough to bother me. After about an hour in the water things got boring, and we all re-boarded to begin our tour of the islands. The first one of note is known as "Monkey Island" and can be seen below. If you look closely at the top part of the rock, there's a silhouette of an ape, I guess.

We did a bit more sightseeing of "islands" for a short while more, stopped on a remote island for a fantastic lunch in a fishing village, and then made our way to the first real highlight of the day. This was the first island with some real beach, and some extremely steep stairs had also been built into the side of the rocks to allow for climbing up to see great views of the Park.

From the beach, looking out at some of the Marine Park's islands.

Hopefully this picture conveys just how steep these stairs really were. Other than that, yes there are a ton of Band-Aids on
my feet. Flip-flops need to be broken in and so did my feet.

This is a 4 photo panorama. I recommend clicking it to go to the Flickr site, and then reclicking it to view it in full screen.

As promised, I continue to make this pose all over the place. Feels pretty silly when there's a ton of people around you.

Melissa and her dad, experts of Thailand.

The water you see was off limits for swimming. There were not only tons of huge fish visible from our vantage point, but also endless sea urchins lining the bottom and although
I didn't see any, poisonous sea snakes.

Heading back to our boat and treated to this view.

From this stop our boat departed for one last beach island. Along the way we passed the famous imitation island that looks quite similar to "James Bond Island" found in Phuket, Thailand. The Phuket island received its name after being featured in the James Bond movie, "The Man With the Golden Gun". A quick google search will confirm how similar these two islands look.

Imitation James Bond Island, on the open ocean.

The beach island was actually quite close to the Bond lookalike, and Melissa and I were given a kayak to use for an hour or so. We decided to go the extra mile and paddled out to do a circle around the island, pretty cool since the rock actually hangs over your head while you circle it.

Lastly, the highlight of the Marine Park trip was the time well spent lounging on the absolutely beautiful beach  . Initially it was a bit crowded with two boats worth of tourists lining the beach, but as time passed it emptied out and began to feel as though we were the only ones around. I lounged and enjoyed the view for quite some time, not looking forward to the boat captain's call that it was time to head back to the mainland.

Finally, after a long day of sightseeing and an amazing week of experiences in Koh Samui, it was time to say goodbye to the house and head back to Singapore. We made use of the time to grab a few more photos of the incredible view. 

This is another panorama, this time of Melissa's house. They are just putting the finishing touches on the construction now. As Koh Samui continues to
gain popularity as a tourist hotspot, this home will certainly serve as a good investment as property values increase. A full screen view is ideal for it.

One last chance to make this ridiculous pose in Koh Samui. Melissa's house can be seen in the bottom right part of the picture. The driveway is incredibly steep.

Looking back at the Koh Samui Airport. Not your typical airport design...

I'm still well behind on blog posts. The next time I post I'll cover our trip to the Singapore Zoo. I took far too many photos there as I'm an animal lover, so it's taking quite a while to go through them all. You can expect a few short videos in that post as well. I hope you enjoyed!

Ark Bar Koh Samui

I've finally settled in in Australia enough to take some more time to play catch up and share a bit more about Koh Samui. When not lounging around the house, there was much to do and see in the more lively area of Chaweng. This area is overflowing with backpackers and tourists from all over the world and as a result, is also packed with everything tourists love: clubs, bars, and definitely lots more illegal things that we were careful to avoid. One place in particular that I really loved was the Ark Bar, which is equally as much a hotel as it is a bar. It's low nightly cost makes it a hotspot for budget travelers and the bar aspect, tables lining the beach, is open to the public.

The next three photos were taken on the walk from our parking place to the Ark Bar.

Banana & Nutella Pancakes from these street vendors are so, so good.

These are actually taxi drivers. The yellow vests indicate that they're the drivers of these motorcycles.

As you can see, the area of Chaweng is quite lively. And this is 7 nights a week, too, since no one really has to worry
 about waking up for work tomorrow (except for the people who own these businesses).

We then arrived at the Ark Bar, which thankfully is a bit less chaotic than the streets are. The picture below brings back bittersweet feelings. These are two of the many local Thai women and men who walk the beach selling what is mostly useless toys and trinkets to tourists. It's sad because the level of competition is so incredibly high, and the demand for what they're selling is quite low. Then again, these people can live off of a few dollars per day, and there are definitely worse livings out there.

Also, this entry serves as my first attempt at something new: video sharing. Those of you with slow connections will probably not have much luck watching these, and more notably, the videos are completely amateur and actually quite terrible in terms of technicality, but I'm hoping they can aid in my attempts to share these experiences. Here's one that shows a bit of what Ark Bar is like on an average night. 

Another highlight of Ark Bar is the nightly fire show that locals put on. There are some incredibly talented people who put on these performances, and it's very entertaining to watch. I saw the show on two separate occasions and am happy to say that I didn't see any injuries, performer or spectator.

It became all the more important that these performers knew what they were doing when Melissa asked for a photo with one of them. We were both pretty shocked
when he brought the flame so close to the both of them, and it made for an unexpectedly cool photo.

And to finish this entry off, here's a photo of the DJ. Again, I really enjoyed taking these photos because it was night time. Most people see night as a time to put away the camera or use the flash all of the time, so it's nice to when I can do neither of those and still get some decent pictures. As the week progresses here and I find more free time, I'll be sharing pictures from my day trip to Anthong Marine Park off of the coast of Koh Samui, and will move forward from there. I hope you enjoyed and I will share again soon.

Edit: Here's a photo I stole from Melissa's camera of her, I, and a monkey. It cost a few bucks to have the guy take this picture, but it's pretty cool so that's alright. He needs to make a living too.