19th Jan 2008 : Day 2 Part 1
2nd day of the trip was to the zoo, bo sang and shopping mall! food food food~

We plan to visit the Chiang Mai Zoo on our own, so we woke up early, get our Song Thaew driver for a return trip to the Zoo, he will also drive us around inside the Zoo because the Zoo is big and it's not recommended to go on foot.

the package was 300baht for 2. There was no time limit.

The morning was cooling and we were enjoying the breeze at the back of the truck.
Entrance fee for the Zoo was 100baht each. There was another entrance fee for watching the pandas, that was another 100baht each, the tickets can be purchase outside the panda enclosure.

Please be aware of the Zoo brochure u are getting. We picked up the yellowish one from our hotel and was given the one on the right when we enter the zoo, the one that we give out at the Zoo has the updated map.

We weren't aware of that and was following the old map and couldn't find what we wanted to see. Only till the end we discovered that it's outdated.

Our driver dropped us at the first stop in the Zoo, we were greeted by a few huge Hippos, we can actually touch them because they are so close to the side of the wall. Though we wouldn't dare to do that, who knows what will happen. lol

They were huge! Unlike Zoo in SG, they are far away and there's also a glass panel to see them below water and plus we can't feed them.

Here, we can purchase some carrots at 20baht to feed them.

What big mouth you have!!! there are carrot bits in it too! lol
Feeding time :P
Approach with caution though, u won't want to get hurt.

This zoo is just by the mountain, so there's a lot of steep slopes and since land is vast, they build the enclosures quite far from one another. Hippos, giraffes.. etc are together at one spot, then we had to drive to antoher spot for some other animals.. so on...

We don't really recommend those who are interested in the Zoo to go by foot, because it takes too much time and energy just to travel from one spot to another. So either hire a driver or make use of the monorail and tram service in the zoo.
The giraffes were really close!!! O_O As you can see in the photos, I believe they can get out if they want to. hehe.. Probably it's good food and stay there. :P
Same as the hippos, there's a vendor selling food for the giraffes.
Next stop would be the Panda! I've always like pandas and never seen one in real life, so this is something very special and one of the reasons we visited the Zoo.
Look at the lazy face.. LOL they were eating the whole time. If not sleeping.. Really cute creatures and they are very very sensitive too. Sensitive to the surroundings and sounds...
can't miss the chance to take picture with the real panda.. even if it's really tiny at the back. lol
Aww.. look at it.. XD

2 things to be aware of if you are bringing your kids to watch the pandas or you awould love to take some photos of the pandas...

1. No Flash Cameras. It was written at the enclosure that because the pandas have slow reaction in blinking, flash will damage their retinas. So take as many photos as you like, just without flash. :)

2. This is actually really important... to be Really Quiet. The pandas are very sensitive with their surroundings, so they will tend to hide when they hear noise... etc.

When we arrived at the enclosure, it's airconditional and very quiet, we saw the female panda sitting right in front of us having snacks. She wasn't bothered by us looking at her and taking photos of her..

But after awhile, parents with kids came in and the kids were really excited and start making a lot of noise.. that's when the pandas get up and went hidding or they start walking around feeling restless.

They refused to come out and there goes our chance to take photos of them and enjoying looking at them. :(

Since we don't have much time left, we decided to move on to search for the Tiger. But because our map was the out-dated one, we found ourselves some primates on our way. they have really nice grooming. XD

After getting lost in the Zoo for quite some time, we finally found our tiger! :D Sg's Zoo only has the White tigers and we were longing to see some real 'malayan' tigers (orange fur) I didn't catch the species of this tiger so I'm calling it 'Malayan Tiger' at the moment.

It look quite skinny and the enclosure was kinda small.. :( I wasn't that impressed with the enclosure, thought some of the animals got better ones.

Consider us lucky that this tiger decide to stroll back and forth so that we get to capture some photos for our memory. :)

We ran out of time and energy by the time we found the tiger, so we ended our zoo trip and had our driver to bring us back to our hotel. We missed the Koala Bear though. :-\ Too bad but oh well.. We'll see that in Australia then :P

Verdict for the Chiang Mai Zoo:

If you have somewhere else to go, go for it instead of the zoo. Our only trophies from this zoo are the tigers and pandas, if they weren't there, we'll probably not visit it. And after visiting it, we will not go back again.

All the signs were in Thai, so it's really easy to get lost there and probably can't navigate yourself unless you understand what the signs say.

To cover the zoo on foot will probably take a whole day, while we were looking for the tigers, I can't remember how many people I had to ask for directions and non of the directions really help us. ^^;;; and we bumped into 2 lost tourists that were too tired to go on. ^^;

 

  Continue Day 2 at Page 2