Asian University News: Sarinya changes her mind about the zoo

Tong with a snake

A group of Asian University first year students recently went to the Kao Khaew open zoo, one of the students, Sarinya, wrote about the trip.

Dorothy and Ning at the zoo

“When I first heard from the teacher that we are going on a field trip to Kao Kheaw zoo, my first thought was “my, I’m not a g.4 student anymore; I’m a freshmen in University!”. To be honest, I’ve never been to Kao Kheaw and to be even more honest, I’ve never had any desire to go there because of some previous impressions at the other zoos! I thought of it as a dirty, smelly, small place that locks the poor animals in tiny cages, only a few animals to see, bad food, unclean washrooms, basically anything negative about the place. I guess now you can imagine how horrible I felt, not to mention the fact that my mom is trying to make fun of how I’m a University student going to the zoo because it is for little kids! But all these feelings and issues were gone after I arrived and see everything myself.

Nine shows the head of the snake

We left the school about four p.m. on Friday and arrived at Kao Kheaw, the open zoo, around five o’clock in the afternoon. We had a meal with rice and three Thai courses to eat with rice and 2 seasonal Thai fruit, watermelon and pineapple as dessert. We had about thirty to forty minutes free time to walk around before the night safari tour at seven in the evening. We walked around and took pictures a bit and prepared ourselves for a night safari tour.

About seven p.m. we walked inside the actual zoo gate to wait for the hydraulic bus that would take us for the tour. The zoo sent three staff with animals to show us and for us to get a close observation of them. By close, I mean actually touch, hold and play with them! There were four kinds of animals; type of wild bear, type of porcupine, type of monkey and snake. We were able to touch or hold all of those animals for picture although I dared not to touch the porcupine. At around 7.10 p.m. we started to board the bus, ready for the night safari tour.

The tour was interesting because we got to see these animals’ activities at night time and most of them usually spent day time sleeping, in other words we got to see the animals in their usual routine. The narrator was great also; he had lots of knowledge about all the animals. It was dark of course, one of the staff is the narrator and another one is holding a spotlight to guide us in the direction that the narrator is talking about. It was a good idea also because it focused us only on that part so we were able to see more animals than randomly look around.

Nine bravely held the snake

We saw lots of animals and learnt tons of new information about them. We learnt different types of cats and how they differed, for example, the cheetah is the fastest runner and the Siberian Tiger is the biggest tiger. We saw one of the rarest animals in Thailand called “malayan Tapir” or “som-sret” in Thai it means “the right mixtures” because the animal looks like they combine four features of animals in one. It has a Javan Rhino like feet, eyes, ears and body like a pig and a nose that can stretch and contract like an elephant. We saw different types of birds and various types of monkeys and sorts of deer. The most interesting part that totally changes my attitude towards this zoo was all animals were not in any kind of cages except tigers, of course. These animals were freed to live, to walk, to play and to live their lives. Also, they are not as harmful as we think it would be.

Fang and a bear

The highlights of this zoo is not only animals are free to walk around, they have resorts as an accommodation in the zoo for people who want to stay over night and the zoo has 15 kinds of tiger for us to see even though we only have 9 types in Thailand. The zoo import Siberian Tigers or the biggest 6 tiger species from Russia. We were able to walk around cage by cage to observe the tigers closely through glass display windows.

Geng with a snake

My attitude towards the zoo was changed after we finished the night safari tour. I thought of it differently and I felt a bit of guilt that I judged thing before I see it myself. Going to the zoo is not as bad as I thought. I’ve not only learned more interesting facts about these animals, but I also learned to think positive and be open minded to other things outside my scope of mind.”