Fun Coming Out the Wa-Zoo

Ilda, Louis, Stephanie and I went to the zoo today. Yesterday I went to Chatachuk Weekend Market with Catherine, Darcy and Zinc: that was quite the experience. Rumour has it that it is the largest market in the world. I think that might be true....
Anyway, today was Zoo Day. The Zoo is right across the street from the King's Palace (which seems to be a serious spectacle, but I'm not sure anyone's allowed close up or on the grounds), which is a fair distance from our apartments but the traffic was fairly good.
The zoo costs 100 baht to get in-$3. This was a pleasant surprise because I've heard rumours that attractions charge extremely inflated prices- about $20- for tourists, but 100 baht is certainly reasonable.
The zoo is quite large, so we took a little tour train around before deciding where to walk and what to see. There's an amusement park section and a large lake in the middle with paddle boats. There's also a large restaurant in the middle and throughout the park there are food and beverage stands, including a KFC and a 7-11.
The enclosures are fairly spacious and seem well-maintained. There is beautiful landscaping- it seems that the Thai people are quite concerned with aesthetics.





This was funny: on the backs of the seats in the train there were pictures of what looked like Canadian winter scenes. There was another one with a lighthouse and more snow.



There is a air-raid shelter in the zoo- apparently, the area has been a zoo and a public park since before the second world war so an air-raid shelter was built right in the zoo.



This statue is outside the air-raid shelter. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be, but it sure looks like two children huddled down on the ground in fear, waiting for a bomb to fall on them. Seriously.





There are two kinds of hippos at the zoo- I guess one would be called "regular" hippos and the other Pygmy hippos. This sign is by the regular hippos- it is probably the funniest educational sign I've ever seen. The hippo uses its tail to spread feces to mark territory- and hit birds in the face.



And I thought I was hot...the Malaysian Sun Bear doesn't seem to care too much for the sun, strangely enough....







There is an extensive Amphibian and Reptile Exhibit- although it's mostly reptiles. I think they had two kinds of frogs and then about 25 species of turtles, some alligators, some iguanas and other lizards and about 25 different snakes. The one pictured above was some kind of albino snake- this zoo seems to have a high number of albino animals, including an albino toad and an albino goat.





There are two types of tigers at the zoo- white ones and orange ones. The white one was sleeping on its back, which was pretty cute.



This big guy was perhaps my favorite animal at the zoo- he seemed to have the right idea about life: sit around and get fat.







There are four elephants at the zoo, and they are very large. They seem to really like people, probably because people are close enough that they can throw food to the elephants. Whether or not that's a good thing I'm not sure...



AAAAAH! The wildest animals of all!!!

Until next time,
Heather