It’s my first time visiting the giant pandas in Singapore! Giant pandas arrived in Singapore from the CCRCGP Ya’an Bifengxia Base on the 6th of September 2012, and honestly I had no idea how long ago it was, that’s over 12 years they’ve been living in Singapore (I really had it in my head that it was more recent). They stay in the River Wonders park of the Mandai Wildlife Reserves area in a specialised climate-controlled home, the Pavilion Capital Giant Panda Forest. The River Wonders park (formerly River Safari) gradually opened across 2012-2014 (it looks like there were different phases, with the pandas being opening stars!), so it’s a pretty new zoological park in general – more on that in an upcoming post with what else you can see at River Wonders!

So finally in February 2025 I’ve made it to visit these pandas, my first pandas of this trip and of 2025 and the first pandas I’ve seen in almost 9 months, that’s the longest I’ve ever gone without seeing a panda (well, since before there were pandas living at Edinburgh Zoo)! I had such a great day visiting the pandas here, was a great viewing experience and environment for pandas, and I would highly recommend it if you’re ever in Singapore, or a nearby country. And had such a lovely experience meeting some of the Singaporean panda fans – I then went on to meet one of their friends when I was in Dujiangyan, and met one of them again in the Chengdu Panda Base, who it turned out had seen me and Jeroen (from Giant Panda Global) at the Dujiangyan Base last year when we were mobbed by school kids, what a small world!