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P A N D A S @ Z O O N E G A R A M A L A Y S I A February 2025

Wow, 2 days and 2 new panda locations for me! Now it’s time to share about the giant pandas living in Zoo Negara Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur! Alike in Singapore, the pandas here are living in a purpose-built home, they are always kept indoors and there is temperature control, so it’s lovely and cool for the visitors too. For me, this was by far the best bit of the zoo, and while it was sometimes busy, it never felt too full and I was always able to get a spot to see the pandas – what helped here was that buggies/prams/pushchairs were not allowed in the building, and needed to be left outside, so this ensured the walkways inside were clear and having experience the opposite at many panda locations, this made for a better visit. There was always a staff member at the entrance, reminding about the rules for visiting the pandas, including that food and drink could not be brought in and that visitors needed to remain quiet. Inside there was also always either a staff member or a zoo volunteer also ensuring that the rules were abided to and making sure visitors quietened down if they were too loud. For me, it worked really well and I had a great visiting experience here!

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Asia Diaries: February 2025 ~ 24 hours in KUALA LUMPUR for the first time + Zoo Negara Malaysia

After 2 days in Singapore, it was time to move on to my next destination, another first – Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia! After a busy panda-filled day at River Wonders, I took the bus+metro back to my hotel, collected my luggage and booked my Grab to the airport. It’s super speedy and I had plenty of time for my 9:20PM flight – being neighbours, it’s 1hr 10 minute flight from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, and I made sure to have time to quickly check out the cool airport that is Changi!

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Night Safari, Singapore 2025

The final park of my Singapore trip, something totally different, it’s Night Safari! I’m not sure if many, or if any, other locations have a park like this – the opening hours are 7:15PM until midnight and you can see nocturnal animals in their natural routine. I was surprised to hear that Night Safari has been open since 1994, I really thought it had only opened more recently than that and I think it certainly attracts visitors for being incredibly unique. I will preface this by saying that I’m not great at twilight or night-time photography, so I didn’t get a lot of photos (or actually see a lot of animals) but I still think it was worth experiencing! Night Safari is located right next to both Singapore Zoo and River Wonders, so you can easily walk between the sites – with the entrance area shops and restaurants opening at 5:30PM so an option is to finish up at one of these parks then stroll on over for dinner before the Night Safari.

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Bird Paradise, Singapore 2025

After leaving the Singapore Zoo, I headed for the shuttle bus to get to Wildlife WEST and visit the newest (when I visited) park in the Mandai Wildlife ReserveBird Paradise! Here you enter a beautiful entrance featuring a waterfall, head past some shops and restaurants and finally enter the park. And it certainly has a very new feel to it, it looks modern and sleek, I really like the design and layout of the park. Bird Paradise opened officially at the end of 2023, and took the collection from the Jurong Bird Park (in another part of Singapore) and expanded with huge walk-through aviaries and a large collection, featuring over 3000 individual animals over hundreds of species. Birds are not generally my thing, the fear of being pooped on or swooped at by a flying bird generally steers me away from walk-through exhibits, but I’d come all the way to Singapore and already had the 4-park ticket so decided to take a few hours to visit.

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