Southeast Asia Travels: Animals - Ragunan Zoo and Taman Safari

Since I have been here I have visited the Jakarta Zoo, Ragunan, and also something called Taman Safari in Bogor, which is a much cooler version of African Lion Safari near Hamilton Ontario!

The Jakarta Zoo, Ragunan, was quite disappointing! The animal areas were not that nice, and well...maybe I just didnt see very much, but it wasn't that great! I saw some Komodo Dragons, which I was soooo pumped for, and they were huge, but were a little dull...its better to watch footage of them from BBC.

One cool thing was me with a GIANT snake around my neck!! Classic shot, but like everything else, a little anticlimatic. It was a little scary though, I'll admit!

Then, there was a nice ape park, with gorillas in their natural environment but even it was a little run down/needed some maitnenance for the orangutan and other monkey areas. Also, you might be interested to know that orangutan is an Indonesian word. "Orang" means person and "hutan" means forest - so its means person of the forest. Cool, eh?

The one really cool thing was, well, it was beautiful there! The natural environment is a jungle, so there was no 'jungle pavillion' like we have in the Toronto Zoo, it is all the jungle pavillion!!

I look afraid because i was!

Taman Safari, which means Safari Park, was a lot like Jurassic Park. In other words, it was really, really cool!

We drove around through the mountains, and saw lots of animals up close and personal! The big cat sections were very amazing, and it was the most lions and tigers I have seen up close before! and they had automatic gates like Jurassic Park, also adding to the cool factor! I felt like a kid again!

Then Emannuale and I rode a giant elephant named Honey. The ride was through the park, and lasted for about 30 minutes, which was very impressive. It was fun, it felt like a mix of riding a horse and sitting on a boat on a rocky sea. The first stretch we were walking past cars, and it was a little embarrassing because we felt like part of the attraction, with people taking a picture of two whities on the elephant...but it was all a good time, and everyone was having fun, so it was ok:)

So, with that, enjoy some animal shots...sorry they all didnt upload:) Also, see if you can spot the orangutan repeat and bonus points for the sideways white tiger;)