The Bub in the Belly: Butterfly Park & Insect Kingdom

After our lazy lunch on Saturday at Quayside Isle, Sentosa, we trooped over to Imbiah lookout to visit the Butterfly Park & Insect Kingdom.

Let me backtrack a bit. Ryan had been rather disruptive during violin class that morning. The day before, we told him that we were meeting up with friends on Saturday. He got really excited and kept talking about it. In the morning, when he realised that he was going to violin class and not to see his friends straightaway, he was quite miffed. That set the tone for his class. Normally we never tell him about meeting up with his friends until we are on the way to the meetup. We made an exception this time because it had been quite some time since he last saw these friends and he had been missing them. As luck would have it, our friends cancelled, so we were left with a four year-old in Diva mode. He kept saying he wanted to go to a specific playground with his friends, but we couldn't figure out which playground he was referring to and we didn't have the heart to tell him that the outing with his friends was cancelled. So we tried to make it up to him by making the most out of our Saturday.

So, after the art exhibition (see yesterday's post) and after lunch, it was off to see the butterflies! Admission cost $16 per adult. It was supposed to be $10 for Ryan but the lady at the counter took a look at him and said, "This one no need to pay." Hee hee! Thanks, aunty!

Check out the worried expression on my face as Ryan holds out his hand to show me the butterfly that is perched on it! Trying to smile but I was so worried that he would accidentally crush it!

You may remember this post (which was exactly a year ago!), when we visited a butterfly farm in Sembawang. Comparing the two - there are many many many more butterflies at the farm but the ones in the Butterfly Park in Sentosa are larger and tamer. Look - the keeper picked three of these up effortlessly and, as you can see from the photos above, Ryan had a go at handling a butterfly too!

There was a menagerie of animals, probably to make up for the lack of butterflies, haha. Parrots were the main draw. This blue one can say a few words!

Then, there was this cool dude, just lounging about.

Some of these giant old fellas were quite friendly.

Some scorpions too, I think. But no photos of those. I don't suppose they could be considered as friendly.

The park is tiny, but the landscaping made it seem bigger. There were lots of winding paths, which Ryan enjoyed. He felt like he was in a jungle!

After that, we went inside the Insect Kingdom. I didn't bother snapping photos in there because it's not easy to spot most of the bugs and beetles amongst the greenery, so all the photos would have looked like photos of plants. Anyway, apart from live bugs and beetles and scorpions and spiders and other insects, there were lots and lots of preserved beetles and butterflies - some were huge and most were very beautiful. Towards the end, there were some rooms with lots of information about different species and geographical densities - all of which was wasted on us. We only hung about for the aircon, you know.

Souvenir photo. I don't really know what to say about this, except that it is the first souvenir photo we've taken which has all four of us looking at the camera, so we HAD to buy it. Yet, somehow I don't think it's going to take pride of place on our shelf.

There was a brief stop at the souvenir shop where Ryan zoomed in on - yes, you guessed it - some alphabet-related thing. Honestly, it was the ONLY alphabet-related thing in the entire shop and it was in a remote corner and yet he spotted it within a minute of walking in. It was as if it was calling his name. It was a set of wall decals, with the 26 letters of the alphabet. After carrying it around for a day, he has now put each letter up on the door of the wardrobe in his playroom.

Anyway, after a nice cool drink, we headed back to the car. The littles fell asleep when the car got going on the expressway. We had dinner plans so we decided to let them sleep a little longer in the car. We drove all the way to Changi beach park and Changi Village before we turned back home. We don't often go to Changi Village but we've been there a couple of times recently and we quite enjoyed our outings there, so I think we'll try to come more often. It has a laidback vibe, an away-from-the-madding-crowds sort of feeling, which we like. Plus it's just somewhere fresh to us.