Part 5: Returning Home
From Lempur Village the drive back to Padang takes a full day, first going back through Sungai Penuh and then down the Tapan Road to take the coast road back to Padang. Lots of nice views both driving the length of the Tapan Road across the national park and then along the coast. I was in Padang for one night before heading to the airport the next morning. This was on the 16th of August which is the day before Indonesia’s national day, celebrating 80 years of Indonesian independence. There were lots of people on the streets parading with Indonesian flags and the white and red colours, plenty of groups from schools etc. I guess this was a rehearsal for the main day the next day? Luckily I had plenty of time to get to the airport. Previously there was only one international flight to Padang, an Air Asia route to KL, but at the start of 2025 Scoot Airlines started flights between Padang and Singapore which was my route back before flying back to the UK from Singapore. The airport is actually really rather pretty, with a roof in the traditional Minangkaban style and when viewed from the runway the backdrop of forested mountains is really beautiful. I’m not sure if there were more flights that day because of the start of the long weekend for independence day but there seemed to be a huge number of flights to Jakarta which made the check in and domestic area really busy but then there was hardly anyone in the international area.
The short flight to Singapore crosses Sumatra then Batam and into Changi over Malaysia. Instead of flying straight back to the UK that evening, I postponed my flight by 48 hours to give me two days in Singapore. To be honest the main reason for my visit is because I’ve really wanted to visit Bird Paradise for ages. I went to Jurong when I was last in Singapore in 2018 and Bird Paradise just seems like such a unique place. As everyone knows, accommodation in Singapore is ridiculously expensive but I’ve moved up in the world slightly since 2018 so instead of staying in a pod I splashed out to pay for a whole room for two nights. I’ve only moved up slightly though because this room still had no window and was rather deep inside a building away from any natural light but it’s not like I want to spend too long in a room anyway. Maybe next time I’m in Singapore I’ll be able to stretch to a window. That first evening I just did a brief bit of gift shopping, having not done much in the Sumatran rainforest, and looked around the gardens by the bay a bit in the dark.
The next day was my Bird Paradise day and it really is a fantastic place to visit. I’m not going to do a full review of Bird Paradise, there are already quite a few on the forum. It’s really difficult to compare to Jurong, a very different place and it’s a shame both couldn’t exist. The experience of going around Bird Paradise as a visitor really is unique and very special, such huge free-flight aviaries mean you can almost forget you’re in a zoo and it’s more like birding but in an area full of feeders and really enriched in birds to a very high density. A couple of the big walkthrough aviaries feel a bit lacking, the Papuan and Australian aviaries feel a bit like they’re inferior copies of Lory Loft and Penguin Cove is massively underwhelming but I though Heart of Africa, Wings of Asia, and Crimson Wetlands (South American wetlands) are extremely impressive exhibits and beat anything similar I’ve ever seen. Songs of the Forest (SE Asia) and Amazonian Jewels are wonderful to spend time in too and anywhere else would be the crown jewel of the bird collection. I do wonder, however, whether the desire to have such big and impressive multi-species aviaries has required sacrifices (although there is a section with a few individual aviaries, mostly for hornbills it seemed, along with the Philippine Eagle). From the perspective of a visiting zoo nerd, it’s obviously difficult to track down a few individuals of a particular target species in a vast aviary. But surely it must make certain husbandry and management practices more difficult as well, creating work for the aviculturalists and compromises to the conditions of some species must be needed to have a single aviary with so many. I really enjoyed Bird Paradise though, you know you’re enjoying a zoo day when you completely forget to eat lunch. The gift shop also sells these really cool building block sets, like fake lego, called ‘Jekca’ (you can buy them online) and you can buy model sets for Raggiana birds of paradise, Philippine eagles, and plenty of other niche and oddly specific things.
At the end of the day I had a couple of hours left so I decided to visit the other new Mandai park since I was last in Singapore: Rainforest Wild Asia. I was joined by
@amur leopard for this visit who’s been working in Singapore temporarily and provided great company. We got great views of the doucs and mouse deers and it’s an interesting sort of place which I was glad to have a brief look around. I see what they’re going for with a sort of wild rainforest experience and I don’t hate the concept in theory. In practice I think they’ve sacrificed exhibit quality in too many areas and in certain cases like the rock climbing around the ‘karsts’ the weird extra activities detract from what they’re trying to do.
I had one more day in Singapore because my flight wasn’t until late in the evening (actually just past midnight so technically the next morning). I spent a big chunk of the day from morning to mid-afternoon in the botanic gardens which has a fantastic plant collection that I enjoyed looking around very much. No otters though which I would have liked to see. Later in the afternoon I headed up to the Lower Pierce Reservoir to the area recommended by
@amur leopard as the best possible site for banded langurs. Apparently they’re seen in that specific area in the late afternoons/evenings on about a third to a fifth of visits. I didn’t have any luck unfortunately, just lots of macaques that were very distracting, but I did get a wonderful up close view of a colugo and a striking reddish individual at that. As the sun was setting I got my stuff from the accommodation, had dinner, and went to the airport. Luckily for the person sitting next to me on the flight back to the UK (after a day sweating in Singapore) there are showers at Changi airport.
So that brings this trip, and thread, to an end. It was my first time visiting Indonesia and I definitely want to go back before too long. Slightly depressingly my thought continues with going back to Indonesia to see the endemic wildlife before it’s all gone, in cages or converted to palm oil. It’s a wonderful country that still has lots of amazing wildlife and I’m very tentatively thinking about a trip that includes some combination of North Sulawesi, Halmahera, and West Papua in 2027…
'Red morph' colugo in Singapore
