The Zoo!

Two days ago we took the day off school and took the four older kids to the zoo. The zoo here is similar to the one depicted in the book “Curious George Goes to the Zoo.” Wow, the animal enclosures are small and the animals look rather underfed. It cost us only 9,000 rups each person to get in, which is probably why the animals are underfed. The zoo itself is quite old, obviously, if it looks like the one in the Curious George book. I felt most sorry for the elephants who were all chained by their front legs and living in habitats most certainly smaller than Tina’s habitat was at the Greater Vancouver Zoo. I’ve also included a photo of the pygmy hippopotamus’s habitat. Hazina at the Greater Vancouver Zoo has nothing to complain about at all. The one main advantage of a zoo such as this was that we could really get up close to the animals in a way that we could never at the average zoo back home. We got to ride a camel and an elephant! I have to admit riding the elephant was a little intimidating as you are up very high. The elephant trainer rode in front and “bribed” the elephant with food all the while we walked. The cost of the ride was 2,000 rups per person. That’s about .30 canadian. We also checked out the museum/aquarium exhibit for 500 rups each. The exhibit consisted of many stuffed animals, particularly unique birds, and the skeletons of quite a few large animals. Aidan thought the monkey skeleton was the skeleton of a man. The most unique part of the museum was the many bottles of preserved animal fetuses… We got to see a baby horse, baby monkeys, snakes, eggs and some other interesting animal that I forget. In two other rooms of the museum were aquariums with some interesting fish. But the highlight of the day for the boys was when they got to use their allowance, 5,000 rupiahs, to buy a sword/knife set complete with sheath. The knife and sword are made out of bamboo and the holder is made out of foam. They are quite neatly made. I find it hard to believe that they are so cheap as there are obviously some man hours that went into making them. While we were walking around there were various people who would occasionally trail us in the hopes that we would buy something from them. But I have to say that they weren’t as aggressive as these types of salesmen can be. While we waited at the entrance for a taxi to come to take us home, we were the “zoo animals”. One old toothless guy asked if all the kids were ours and proudly told us that he has 12 kids himself.

Note: I found out yesterday that the elephants are chained up because last year one went wild running around the zoo...