Singapore

Singapore’s Live Turtle Museum

By Joe Berk

I’ve always held a fascination for turtles and tortoises. It started when I was a kid growing up in New Jersey. We lived in a rural part of the Garden State, and although you might be surprised to read it, a good variety of turtles and tortoises lived in the lakes, streams, and wooded areas around our home. Box turtles, wood turtles, spotted turtles, painted turtles, snapping turtles, alligator snappers, and more. As a kid, I caught a few of these, kept them as pets for a while, and then released them. Mom planted a strawberry patch in the field behind our house, and it was a safe bet that you could usually find a box turtle or two sampling the goods. It was a cool place to grow up.

On a recent trip to Singapore, Sue and I were casting about for something to do one weekend. We’ve been to Singapore several times, we’ve seen most of the sights, and we wanted to see something new. A quick Google search pointed us to Singapore’s Live Turtle Museum. It’s on the other side of the island from where we usually stay (the hoity-toity Orchard Road area). We hopped into a cab in front of our hotel and the cab driver gave us an odd look when we told him our destination.

The cabbie told us we might have some difficulty getting back “from the other side” but I thought I knew better. Singapore is not that big, I reasoned. Boy, was I ever wrong.

The ride to the Turtle Museum was about 45 minutes, and the second half of that was fairly desolate. Northern Singapore looks completely different from the Singapore I knew, which is a locale of wide boulevards, fancy cars (think Ferraris, Rolls Royces, and Bentleys), fancy hotels, and high-end shops. In fact, it seems about every other store on Orchard Road is a Rolex or Breitling authorized dealer. Not so on the other side. It’s jungles and grassy plains. And one Turtle Museum.

Once we entered the Turtle Museum, one of the first things we noticed is that you can buy lettuce to feed to the tortoises. Tortoises love lettuce. Feed one a little lettuce and you have a friend for life.

Sue bought some lettuce, fed it to a tortoise, and it was her new best buddy.

The Turtle Museum had many different species of tortoises and turtles. I’ll caption the photos with the various species.

These are African spurred tortoises, also known as Sulcata tortoises. The can get as big as 100 pounds. They dig burrows down as deep as 20 feet to escape the heat in Africa.

These are red-footed tortoises from South America. They are found from Panama to Argentina. They will grow as large as 14 inches and they live about 50 years.

Here’s an Indian Star tortoise. They can be found in the grasslands and forests of India and Sri Lanka.

This is an Indian Spotted Pond turtle. They are an endangered species.

This is an albino Pig-Nose turtle, also known as a Fly River turtle.

A closer view of the Pig Nose turtle. You can see how it gets its name. This species is found in northern Australia, southern New Guinea, and West Papua. It is a unique freshwater turtle; it’s the only species with flipper-like feet (similar to sea turtles).

Here’s a strange one: The Mata Mata turtle. It takes the word “camouflage” to a new level.

Another view of the Mata Mata turtle. It’s native to South American streams, stagnant pools, marshes, and swamps in the Amazon River basin.

This is a Snake Necked turtle, a species found in Australia and southern New Guinea. They use their long necks to snap up prey.

So there you have it: The Turtle Museum in Singapore. I enjoyed it right up to the time we left. Because the Museum is in such a remote location, there were no cabs waiting outside when we were ready to return to our Orchard Street hotel. Neither Sue nor I could get a signal on our cell phones, and there was no wireless coverage, either, so that ruled out calling a cab. To compound the problem, Singapore doesn’t have Uber of Lyft. We went back to Museum’s office area; fortunately, the office had Internet access and they secured a taxi for us. We had to wait a while for our ride, but that was okay. We had a good time. It was something different, and we saw a part of Singapore we had not seen before.

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I like Singapore and I fly there a couple of times a year on business. I know, I’m supposed to be retired, but I’m finding I’m not very good at it. And I don’t need much of an excuse to fly to Singapore. The flight is a bruiser (it’s 16 1/2 hours from LAX to Singapore on a nonstop, and it usually goes over 24 hours if you can’t get a nonstop), but I don’t mind doing it. Singapore is worth the trek. I say I go there on business, but my visits are more like vacations than work. I like the place.

Orchard Road: Singapore’s Rodeo Drive

Orchard Road is Singapore’s upscale shopping area, and the architecture, the night scenes, and feel of the place is amazing. These are scenes from a walk along Orchard Road with an 8mm fisheye lens on my Nikon. It had just rained the evening I took these, and it made for dramatic photography.

You see two kinds of buildings in this area, and I captured both in the photos above. Old Singapore consists primarily of shop houses…two-story structures where folks have a business on the first floor and live on the second floor. And there are the modern skyscrapers. The mix of both makes for interesting scenes.

See those trees along the sidewalks? They’re quiet during the day, but at night, the zillions of birds roosting in those trees are deafening. You literally have to shout to carry on a conversation because the birds drown everything out. It gets interesting when there’s a thunderstorm (very common in this part of the world). When the skies thunder, the birds all fall silent for a second. Then, after a brief pause, they start chirping again. It’s all very cool.

Little India in Singapore

On another visit, I poked around Singapore’s Little India section. There are four major ethnic groups in Singapore, and folks from India comprise one of them.

Singapore Industries

Singapore has a rich maritime heritage (the four major industries in Singapore are shipping, oil refining, finance, and tourism). The shipping industry came about as a result of Singapore’s central location between India and China (the Chinese are another major ethnic group here). There are all kinds of interesting things to see in Singapore, and it’s a walker’s paradise if you like to explore on foot.

You can see all kinds of things in Singapore you won’t see anywhere else in the world. Check this out:

The structure you see above is a shopping, apartment, office, and entertainment complex comprised of three huge buildings capped by a roof styled like a ship (complete with gardens and a swimming pool). The buildings are supposed to be waves, with the ship riding along top. I’ve never seen anything like this. You might have seen it on television when President Trump was in Singapore meeting with the North Korean guy. But that’s Singapore. It has a lot of things you won’t see anywhere else.

Singapore Museums

To me, all of Singapore is a museum with architecture, dining, street sculpture, automobiles, and more that makes getting out and walking around a hell of an experience. There are many museums, including one focused on Singapore’s World War II history I found particularly interesting. Here are a few photos I grabbed in it.

Exploring Singapore on a Motorcycle?

Nope, I haven’t done that (not yet, anyway). But I’m tempted to spend an extra day or two over there on the next trip and see if I can find somebody to rent me a motorcycle. I’ve seen RX3s in Singapore. That would be fun, and I think the RX3 would be a perfect bike to poke around on in this tropical urban paradise. The entire country is only about 24 miles long, and most (maybe all) of it is city. It seems to be very safe, too, so I don’t think I could find myself in any dangerous areas. The only problem is they drive on the wrong side of the road over there, and that would take some getting used to.

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Singapore!

Exotic, beautiful, sultry, rich, 17 hours away via nonstop air, a shopper’s paradise, foodie heaven, and an unending stream of photo ops: Singapore is all this and more. I love this place. I’ve been here six or seven times, and I’ll keep coming back. I’ll let the photos do most of the talking this time. I shoot better than I write!

A typical scene along the river. All the brightly-colored buildings on the left are restaurants.

Tunnels along the river walk take you beneath streets. Artwork covers the tunnel walls on both sides.

There’s a small noodle shop just outside our hotel. This bowl of wonton soup is about a buck. It’s

An artist painting one of Singapore’s classic bridges along the river walk.

Amazing architecture along the bay. These three buildings include shopping, a hotel, a casino, and more. The upper deck is styled like a ship; the concept is that the buildings are the waves. All of this is built on reclaimed land. Singapore is a small nation; when they need more land, they create it in the ocean!

At a seafood restaurant along the riverwalk.

Lobsters along the riverwalk. I’m going to add this to the collection of ExNotes blog banner photos.

That’s one way to get old bikes off the road, I guess.

And there you have it. Fun times. Another secret mission in the bag.

Singapore and more!

Inside the Nethercutt, as explained in Motorcycle Classics magazine.

Wow, it sure has been a whirlwind five days. Hop on a airplane, fly to Singapore (20+ hours to get there), two days of business, and fly back (another 20+ hours of travel). Getting through LAX Customs late last night was terrible (tons of people and massive midnight confusion…not a good combo, I think). Okay, enough bitching. On the plus side, life is good. ExhaustNotes.us readership continues to climb, Motorcycle Classics published my article on the Nethercutt (complete with a link to ExhaustNotes), Motorcycle.com gave us a link to Joe Gresh’s Zed’s Not Dead Z1 resurrection story, and I’m back here in Sweet Home California.

Zed’s Not Dead, even though she’s suffering from advanced atherosclerosis.

So, Singapore….they didn’t call that movie Crazy Rich Asians for nothing. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m going to. People always ask what Singapore is like. Well, it’s like Rodeo Drive without the poor people, I guess. Orchard Road is nonstop high end shopping and every other store sells Rolexes, Omegas, Breitlings, and Patek Phillippes. I’m a watch guy, but Casio and Seiko are more my speed. But I like to look.

Diving into Singapore, a tiny but incredibly wealthy country. Shipping, finance, oil refining, and tourism are its four major industries.

Along Orchard Road…embassies, art, and shopping.

1 in every 34 Singaporeans is a millionaire, they say. I believe it.

I like visiting Singapore, but I like visiting Tinfiny more. It’s more my speed. There are no Z1 Kawasaki motorcycles being resurrected in Singapore.

Hey, if you haven’t already done so, please add your name to the email notification widget on the right side of this page. We’ve got good stuff coming up, including our plans for the December Baja run, more on the Z1 resurrection, the continuing 150cc Cabo scooter story, and more gun features. You won’t want to miss any of it!