I am the first to admit that zoos are not up there on my list of favourite things to do, however, Singapore Zoo repeatedly came up as a ‘must do’ as part of my research. Although our time in the country was relatively short, we decided to go the whole package and book ‘breakfast with the orangutans’ to start the day off.

It was a plentiful, mostly Western style breakfast buffet, and the Orangutans were basically brought in and given their breakfast in their area at the front of the restaurant. It did make me laugh how one tripadvisor reviewer had to put a warning in their review after being disappointed that the animals don’t actually come and sit and eat at your table with you 😂

The Zoo is excellent however, and it’s ‘open concept’ does mean that that there are no cages, often just a waist height fence and some sort of body of water between you and the animals, which did make me a little nervous when facing a Komodo dragon and a white tiger!

I did read up on the zoo’s methods of enclosure, thinking that they may use high frequency sound as a method of containment, but found no evidence of this, alongside a generally high safety record. Feeding the giraffes and elephants was a highlight for the kids; getting so close to these amazing animals was indeed a privilege and there was so much to see and learn about: I can certainly see how it consistently earns recognition as one of the top zoos in the world.

We spent around six hours there altogether, although could have easily stayed longer had the splash park area been open and if we had watched all of the six or so shows (the rainforest animals show was excellent-everything is so slick in Singapore). However, whilst the park was almost empty in the morning, from noon it got an awful lot busier (and hotter), so we welcomed the air conditioned bus with open arms as we headed off to find a late lunch.