July 20, 2025: Singapore (Author: J)
When we last left off, we had finished a wonderful dinner at the top of Marina Bay Sands and settled in for a good night’s sleep at the Pan Pacific. The following day, a Sunday, was our last in Singapore. Our plan was to visit River Wonders and the Night Safari at Mandai Wildlife Reserve. The Mandai property currently has 5 wildlife parks. On our last trip to Singapore, we spent the better part of a day enjoying the Singapore Zoo. On this trip, our priority was the Night Safari. We decided to pair it with River Wonders because we had been told that combining those two parks would make for a long, but manageable day.
Following advice to avoid overextending ourselves before our zoo visit, we stayed close to the Pan Pacific in the morning. We slept late and then started our day with breakfast in Suntec City. Now that we understood the layout of the upper-level pedestrian bridges connecting the Pan Pacific to other buildings, getting to Suntec City was a snap. In just a few minutes, we were strolling past Don Don Donki, singing their theme song. Everybody: “Don Don Don… Donki!” So catchy! And so embarrassing to your tween-son when you sing it in a mall!
Suntec City has plenty of dining options, which made it hard to choose. We ended up eating at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. This was a nostalgia pick for me. I treated myself to a vanilla latte from Coffee Bean every Friday when I lived in Los Angeles, but there aren’t any Coffee Beans in the Northeast US where we now live. The Coffee Bean in Singapore had a vanilla latte that tasted exactly like I remembered, but the food menu was quite different from LA. D ordered a hot breakfast of pancakes, while P and I kept things economical with muffins. My beloved cheese Danish was not a menu option.
After breakfast, we went to the Premiere Football store so that P could purchase a local jersey. Most of the available football jerseys were for Thai teams, but the helpful staff found a single Tampines Rovers jersey in P’s size. He is therefore prepared to root for Tampines for as long as the jersey fits – so, perhaps as long as eight or nine months.
We spent the rest of the morning relaxing and reading in our room. Around 1 pm, we headed back to the mall for a late lunch. There are a number of vegetarian food stall options in the malls near the Pan Pacific. We wound up at E. Veg. By this point, we had come to the realization that our eyes were bigger than our stomachs, so we shared two dishes between us. I ordered vegetarian duck rice, and D picked a combo meal that came with noodles and some sort of mock chicken dish. The staff made sure to clarify that everything was vegetarian — so that we weren’t disappointed by the lack of meat, I presume.
The duck rice was wild. I have never eaten real duck, so I can’t comment on whether the flavor was right. But the “duck” had “skin” that was really reminiscent of the texture of poultry skin. D and I were in awe. P has never eaten meat, so he didn’t get the fuss. (He did like the food, though). Overall, we were happy with our meal. It was inexpensive, satisfying, and felt somewhat healthy. The vibe in the mall, which was filled with locals enjoying lunch with families, was also nice.
After lunch, we topped off our sunscreen and bug spray and called a Grab to take us to River Wonders. The drive to Mandai took about 30 minutes, time that passed quickly as we enjoyed the views from our windows and admired our Grab driver’s extensive collection of dashboard décor.
From the passenger pick up area at Mandai East (which houses the Night Safari, River Wonders, and Singapore Zoo), it is a short walk to the River Wonders entrance. Because the Night Safari has timed entrance, I had prebooked our combo tickets to ensure that we had the earliest entry time: 7:15 pm. It took just a minute to scan the tickets on our phones and pass through the turnstiles into the park.
River Wonders is dedicated to the animals that live in and near the world’s great rivers. The habitats are organized river-by-river and looped together with a walking trail. We took the loop in a counterclockwise direction because it was the quickest route to the Amazon. P’s attention span seems to be decreasing as he gets older. He hurried us past the manatees and giant otters in the Flooded Forest so that he could reach the monkeys in the Amazonia Encounters exhibit. Amazonia Encounters is a walk-through habitat exhibit similar to our favorite exhibit in the Singapore Zoo: The Fragile Forest. Once you enter the biodome, there are no walls separating you from the wildlife. This provided a nice opportunity for P to enjoy the squirrel and saki monkeys, as well as some of our favorite South American rodents, the agouti and capybara.
After Amazonia Encounters, we queued up for Amazon River Quest, a log flume type ride through the habitats of some of the South American wildlife. This ride requires a separate ticket, which I had pre-purchased. You can also buy tickets from machines near the ride entrance (which had their own queue that we were able to bypass). I had mixed feelings about this ride. The boat itself was fun, but the habitats along the riverbanks seemed a bit small for some of the animals. Consistent with my view of the entire park, I felt that this attraction came up a bit short when compared to the Singapore Zoo.
By this time, we were feeling hot and cranky, so we headed to the Panda Forest. This forest is home to both giant and red pandas. But the star attraction for us was that it is well air-conditioned to simulate the pandas’ mountainous home. We watched the pandas for quite a while so that we could enjoy the air conditioning. Then, we popped into Mama Panda Kitchen for more A/C and a snack. I could not resist the panda shaped bao filled with chocolate custard, and P supplemented the bao with an ice cream float.
After our rest break, we backtracked to the Flooded Forest to look at the exhibits that P had been too impatient to look at before his monkey fix. I was glad we did so because the giant otters, which had been napping during our first visit, were now swimming about. We were able to walk through the tunnel in their tank with the otters swimming past us – exactly the iconic view we had hoped for when we visited the park.
Finally, we completed the loop, taking in the animals of the Mekong, Congo, and Nile Rivers. We were finished with the park by about 5:15. I would say that if you are planning to visit River Wonders and the Night Safari together, entering River Wonders around 3 is about right if you are not going to see the Once Upon a River show. If you are going to see the show (which requires reserving a free ticket online), then you will need more time.
The Night Safari does not open until 7:15, but the Ulu Ulu Safari Restaurant next to the Night Safari opens at 5:30. We joined a long queue for the restaurant, which moved quickly once the gates opened. Note that we needed to show our Night Safari tickets to enter the restaurant area.
Ulu Ulu is set up like an outdoor hawker market with stalls selling different types of food. After milling around a bit to see what our meal choices were, we decided to share the huge Vegetarian Makhanwala Banana Leaf Rice meal. We each picked out of own drinks from the drink stall.
I was initially disappointed that Ulu Ulu was outdoors (and therefore not air conditioned). That changed with the appearance of a troop of wild macaques. They lined up along the rooftops overlooking the dining area, and it soon became apparent that they were planning to stage a raid. One of the restaurant staff was deployed to fend off this attack. Armed with his monkey-poking stick, he kept a close eye on the animals in front of him. Unfortunately, although the staffer proved adept at poking the monkeys in front of him, he was less skilled at anticipating the movements of the troop. This provided an opening for several monkeys to sneak behind him, hop down, and grab food from a patron’s plate. We decided that the safest course of action was to finish our meal and dispose of our rubbish before we became the monkeys’ next target.
While we were watching the monkey show — coconuts and beers in hand — a line was beginning to form for the safari tram ride. We decided we were happier in our seats than standing in line, so we kept our table until the park gates opened. By this point, there was quite a long queue for the tram ride. I had read that the line gets shorter as the night wears on, so we started our visit with the walking trails in the park.
As one of the few nocturnal zoos in the world, the Night Safari has lots of animals you won’t find in other zoos from pangolins to palm civets. The highlight for us, as anticipated, was the Tasmanian Devil enclosure. They were a chatty bunch, and Looney Toons definitely gets the sound effects right.
It takes a bit of patience to find the animals in their habitats, so we explored at a slow pace. As we walked, the sun set and it became progressively darker. Even though the paths are lit well enough to avoid injuries and I knew in my logical brain that we were perfectly safe, my lizard brain couldn’t help feeling a bit of fear as we saw a pack of hyenas looming above us in the dark.
By the time we finished the walking paths, the line for the tram was – indeed – much shorter than it had been. So, our plan worked just as intended. However, P was feeling quite run down, so we honored his request to skip the tram. Instead, we headed back to the passenger pick up area and called a Grab back to our hotel. (There were also plenty of waiting taxis, but they were charging double the going fare on Grab).
Overall, the River Wonders/Night Safari combo was a bit too ambitious for us given that we hadn’t quite recovered from jet lag. Without the extra zap of energy that P got from the wild monkey troop’s visit to Ulu Ulu, I’m not sure he would have been up for the Night Safari at all. If you are planning to combine the Night Safari with another park, my recommendation is to schedule the zoos later in your trip so that jet lag is less of a factor. And I definitely don’t recommend combining Night Safari with any of the larger parks in Mandai.
Up next in the trip report, we’re headed to Sydney on Singapore Airlines’ budget arm: Scoot.
Travel Monkeys 