26/08/2026
A tale about why following the crowd is sometimes actually a good idea…
One of the first places we went on our holiday this year was to the Gardens by the Bay, in Singapore. It’s absolutely amazing - obviously huge, impressive and beautiful, with the highlight for us being the enormous cloud forest dome full of stunning tropical plants and flowers.
After a long morning exploring in the pretty challenging heat, we needed some lunch. Options were a bit limited so reluctantly we joined the (stupidly long) queue in McDonalds (they really do have a restaurant everywhere on the planet it turns out…!)
To say it was chaos would be an understatement. If there was a system for getting the food out quickly to the not-at-all-patiently-waiting crowd, it wasn’t visible. There were a lot of increasingly angry customers, hot and hungry, not helping the delay by complaining and pushing in.
We, however, watched on in mild amusement.
Anyway, I digress.
We eventually got our food and turned round to try and find somewhere to sit and eat. But of course the place was packed to the rafters and there wasn’t a single chair to be had, let alone a table.
So we decided to take our food outside. There was a beautiful path outside (we’re still in the Gardens by the Bay, remember), lined on both sides by jungle-like forests, and there were loads of huge rocks, shaped into seats dotted around.
But nobody was using them. (Like, NO-ONE!)
So we chose a spot that looked pretty and settled in to eat our local delicacies (err, or our filet of fish and chicken nuggets..)
Life was good.
Until it all of a sudden really wasn’t.
All at once there was a blood curdling scream from my son and I felt something sharp and painful in my leg.
His lunch went flying. He shot up from the rock he was sitting on and started to run.
Then my daughter started to scream, and she too was on her feet, running.
Turns out, we’d been attacked by a very aggressive and clearly very hungry crow. It had made a bee-line for one of Josh’s chicken nuggets and we all got caught in the crossfire.
In the madness that ensued, the bird managed to get Josh on the arm, me on my leg, my daughter on her head and then my husband too for good measure.
It was genuinely terrifying!! We were all ok in the end but the kids were pretty shaken and it turns out that crows’ beaks are really ruddy sharp!!
The moral of the story?
Sometimes there’s a good reason to follow the crowd. Seems the locals knew better than to sit outside, totally exposed, attempting to eat under the watchful gaze of the local corvids.
It’s not always a good idea to be a maverick!
(Pics of the cloud forest and some of the beautiful tropical flowers that made the whole encounter worth it in the end!)
