Too many pictures to post, so I’m splitting a day tour into two posts.
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My family and I went on a day tour to Desaru, Malaysia. The itinerary includes an Ostrich Farm, the Desaru Fruit Farm, firefly watching and two meals, lunch and dinner. We set off from Singapore via the 2nd Link to Malaysia. First things first – I am pertubed by the checkpoint on the Malaysian side of the Tuas 2nd Link – why is the building for immigration so #$#@%^$ small that we have to queue up OUTSIDE the door? It’s insanely stupid.
Anyway, we went to Pengarang for lunch. Pengarang is a small seaside town that is pretty near to Singapore, accessible by ferry from Changi, if I’m not wrong.
Small town Pengarang
Our restaurant
We had lunch at Restoran Sungai Emas. Apparently some travel show on Channel 8 filmed there once.
The lunch was passable, the seafood quite fresh and tasty, but I only found two of the dishes picture worthy:
Black Pepper Crab
Mini lobsters
The mini lobsters are quite tasty, not as chewy or briny as Maine lobsters, although I highly suspect the deep-frying altered the taste of the lobsters rendering it unrecognizable. Many Singaporeans like to take a bumboat to Pengarang for the seafood and cycling.
After lunch we went to the Ostrich Farm, which is a highlight for me and my niece.
Male Ostrich
The ostriches at the Ostrich Farm are from Africa. This above is a male ostrich characterized by the predominantly black plume and red beak, as though it has lipstick on. As with most animals on earth, the male species are flashy in order attract.
Ostrich skin
This is gross, but this is a female ostrich that is post-moulting. Birds shed all their feather and grow new ones periodically, and during that time they stop laying eggs as well. Did you know that the female ostrich lays an egg every other day or so? Like chickens, they are very easily farmed for eggs, as compared to wild small birds flighted birds.That aside, when I saw this ostrich, the first thing that came to my mind was “eww” and the second thing that followed was – “hmm, enlarged chicken skin. Will look good dyed and made into a handbag. And sold for 5 figures.” Oh well. Ignore me.
Flexi neck
The ostrich has a very flexible neck. It’s peeking upskirts from under the fence, but unfortunately none of the females wore skirts.
See what I see? Unfortunately I was too stuffed from lunch to go grab an ostrich burger. Such a pity. Besides, my mum thinks it’s mildly disturbing to hang a sign for burgers next to the chicks’ pen.
Young chicks
The farm have pens for young ostrich chicks at different stages of growth.
One of the owners/guide of the farm demonstrated standing on ostrich eggs. I didn’t try. It would have been embarassing if I broke it.
We paid for a small basket of dried corn kernels to feed the ostriches. I didn’t try, for I was busy taking pictures. The niece was supremely amused.
Ostrich Eye
After such close encounter with ostriches I can finally fully understand what scientists claim about the ostrich having a brain smaller than its eye. Come to think about it, that’s quite like many Singaporean girls who have crazy eye makeup and iris-enlarging contact lens. Brain smaller than madeup eyes. Anyway, while I was taking pictures of the ostriches, one of them decided to photobomb:
There’s this faint smirk on the photobomber that is just so adorable and funny.
We also saw a day-old ostrich hatchling:
Apart from ostriches there are other birds at the farm like chickens, Polish chickens (that are quite cute to be honest) and something called a cassowary. Before reaching home and Googling, I had no idea what that giant bird was. It looks like something out of the Jurrasic era, seriously. And it’s huge. And it was walking about. It could have been an illusion. Fortunately I caught it on photo:
Cassowary
With the protrusion on its head it really resembles some kind of dinosaur. The blue on its neck is very beautiful and its black feather looks very shiny in real life. In this picture it’s seated, drinking water. When it stood up it was quite statuesque. According to the Internet the cassowary is the 3rd largest flightless land bird after the ostrich and the emu. It is native to some parts of Australia and Papua New Guinea. (And there’s one in the Jurong Bird Park. I haven’t been there in years.)
We had an enjoyable time at the Ostrich Farm, even though the smell, coupled with the midday heat made me feel like a piece of ostrich dung myself, I still had fun.
Thus concludes part 1 of our day tour.
[...] Read Part 1 here. [...]