About a week before my birthday Kingsley started dropping hints about this amazing birthday surprise he had planned for me. The only solid information I could get out of him was "bring bug spray, because you are gonna need it". I'll admit that I did spend a bit of time on google searching for "Singapore, bug spray" locations but didnt find anything useful. So I grabbed my best bug spray and met Kingsley at the designated time with no idea what to expect from the evening. First thing we did was hop into a taxi where I was forced to block out all sound as Kingsley described the directions. A blindfold was deemed "not necessary" as I still dont really know my way around Singapore. We drove "north-ish" (I think) for about 35 minutes and arrived at....THE SINGAPORE ZOO NIGHT SAFARI! I was pretty excited as I love the animals and had heard that the night safari, which is the first of its kind in the world, was pretty amazing. We didnt just have normal passes for the safari, we had premier passes which means we had our own private tour guide and buggy for the night and were given special access to the animals. And boy did we get the VIP treatment, which is how it should be when it's your birthday! It also meant that I was the one chosen for the demonstrations all night which was fantastic but also lead to one of my most emabarassing moments ever!

The evening started with a very nice dinner at the Ulu Ulu restaurant. As we were eating I noticed a large group of Japanese photographers taking photos and videos of these two Japanese girls eating at the table next to us. They were very dressed up, hair and makeup professionally done and had a team of staff around them to attend to their every whim. Kingsley and I were speculating that they were perhaps famous actresses or popstars in Japan when the sound of tribal drums started beating and in walked 7-10 Borneo native dancers who proceeded to choose the 2 Japanese starlets and ME to participate in the tribal dance infront of everyone and the hundreds of Japanese photographers! I was MORTIFIED! Just to give a bit of background. The starlets were wearing designer dresses and high heels. They also already knew about the dance so had cute dance moves picked out and...they had each other for moral support. I on the other hand, was wearing adventure clothes. I figured anything that needed excessive bug spray in Singapore was going to be pretty rustic. I also had NO idea I was going to have to perform tribal dances in front of hundreds of people as well as the Japanese paparatzi. If looks could kill Kingsley would not have survived the evening. So there I was attempting to look as graceful and carefree as the 2 startlets while being forced to hop around on one foot, flail my arms and grunt and hoot in some other language. All of this was captured on video by Kingsley and hundreds of Japanese photographers. There is not a doubt in my mind that I will end up in some Japanese tabloid in the next few days.

After what seemed like hours, the song ended and we were allowed to return to our seats. At this point I was not sure I wanted to be sitting next to Kingsley anymore who had the biggest grin on his face, so I bonded with the starlets. They were impressed with my Japanese (they spoke no english) and we became great friends, for about 2 minutes. I found out that they are famous in some way but didnt understand what they did that made them famous (does anyone ever?). I also learned that they were at the night safari doing a photoshoot for some Japanese magazine called: grama, granma, gama? Eventually they were whisked away for the next photo-op and I returned to Kingsley and made this promise to him "I dont know when and I dont know where but one of these days, I will get my revenge." And I meant it!

The picture is blurry because we were dancing THAT fast!

Unfortunatly, my emotional scars are still too fresh to display the video of me dancing on the blog but I will show you a video of the tribal dance so you can visualize the moves I was trying to gracefully emulate.

After dinner we were introduced to our guide for the night who ushered us off to our front row seats for the fire dance. This performance was amazing and a little scary from the front row.

The rest of the evening was spent exploring the animals with our premier tour guide. We hand fed elephants, had to duck and cover as flying squirls dive bombed our heads, took photos with boa contrictors and saw so many amazing animals.

No flash photography is allowed so we didnt get many photos but I did find a video that gives a great overview of the Night Safari which I would highly recommend to everyone (minus the dancing).

It really was such a magical evening, almost magical enough for me to forgive Kingsley...but I will never forget!