Trip to Chinese Garden

Skipped school to go on an afternoon outing with Slug to Chinese Garden, a pretty much remote Chinese-style park with tall pagodas, bamboo trees, and green lakes overpopulated with terrapins and other tortoises. It was a fine afternoon and the greenery was quite a pleasing sight.

Seventh-storey pagoda

Two great educators of all time, Confucius and ME!

Dirty green but lovely river

Wild tortoise resident sunbathing by the pond

Visited a bonsai garden where we were surrounded by (what else but) pots and pots of bonsai of all shapes and sizes and in various states of growth.

Entrance to the bonsai garden

Oriental-style house, entrance and pavillion

After exiting the bonsai garden, we strolled around in the rest of Chinese Garden leisurely, and suddenly we found ourselves at the turtle musuem. Been here once before, but still went in again to relive the fun of feeding those terrapins.

Turtle Musuem

Turtle-related memorabilia collected by the passionate owner

Then we just browsed through the many tanks of tortoises and turtles.

The Matamata, with its head shaped like a dead leaf

The snake-headed turtles

A smiling pig-nosed turtle

An evil-and-Gothic-looking turtle

Star tortoises

The Alligator Snapping Turtle (couldn't get to see the pink earthworm-like tongue this time)

Went on to the terrapin-infested pond and started feeding them the fish food pellets we bought at $1 per packet. On seeing us standing on the narrow wooden path that runs across the pond, they paddled over ferociously and surrounded us like zombies.

We felt that it did not make sense dropping the food pellets into the pond because the terrapins were so anxious looking at me and opening their mouths that they did not realise the pellets had landed and were floating around them. Besides, the pellets would have been driven further into the water by their strong paddling. What was worse, the giant catfish was STILL around and it sure provided some stiff competition because it went around sucking in those pellets like a vacuum cleaner. We then decided to throw the pellets on the wooden path, and some intelligent terrapins actually realised what we were doing and scrambled out of the pond and onto the path. Their reward - dry hard food pellets. The rest were still paddling in the water in oblivion.

Terrapins crowding around Slug

Waiting to be fed

The owner suddenly appeared and we requested to feed the Malaysian turtles, and he obliged, handing us some cucumbers. So we just lowered the cucumber into the turtle enclosure, and the turtles would scramble hurriedly over and climb on top on one another to get a bite. Competition was fierce there too. Every bite from the turtles seemed to release more and more of the sweet cucumber fragrance, and we were wondering since when did cucumbers smell so nice.

Malaysian turtles

Ccccccccccccrunch!

Relaxing on a garden swing

Some cute statues of happy baby monks

Started to drizzle and had to leave. The rain came down in full force and by the time we pelted to the nearest shelter at Chinese Garden MRT station, we were drenched.

January is a stupid rainy month.