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Published: November 9th 2009
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Well I did make it to KLCC Aquaria after all. I was even going to attempt a little invalid's totter around the park next door to up my status from just "disease-ridden" to "disease-ridden birdwatcher" but it was too hot so I thought better of it. The first part of the aquarium has changed quite a bit from my last visit in 2006, notably the very first tank which used to hold a revolving swirl of rays now holds a tumbling ball of maybe 200 piranhas. There are now separate tanks for various small electric fish ("the Electric Zone") while the tanks that used to be nice planted exhibits for small electric and "primitive" fish now house the larger versions they have become although some are looking decidedly the worse for wear. The tanks for baby sea turtles are gone, replaced by others for lizards and scorpions. The reptile/invertebrate section is much the same, with the same miniscule wall-tanks. The huge Blyth's frog that was such an attraction for me last time has gone, but there is a big river toad instead. Just along from these is a single coati in a sad little cage (formerly housing marmosets). The rest of
the aquarium is pretty much the same.
One thing that really stood out though which ticked me off no end, was that there is only one route through the aquarium. Electric fish, reptiles, "rainforest", ocean tank, other marinefish, and then there's a one-way escalator which when you go up takes you into the giftshop and exit and there's no way back in. I wanted to see the 4pm piranha feeding so, seeing as how I'd just come out, figured I should be able to show my receipt to get back in the entrance to see it. But no, it turned out that because I'd come in at 2.53pm and it was now about 3.45pm I couldn't come back in because I'D BEEN IN THE AQUARIUM FOR TOO LONG!!!! Fortunately the piranha tank is right at the entrance so I just stood by the gate and watched from there, but a pretty poor show of affairs I thought.
I didn't really feel up to doing much else, but I did get well enough to catch a plane from Kuala Lumpur up to Bangkok. By the time I got there I only had a couple of days left before my
flight home and I was still feeling pretty dodgy, so all I managed to do was have an early morning wander round Lumphini Park where the water monitors stomp around like they're all that, but really they're nothing but eensy-weensy Komodo dragons; and go to the Dusit Zoo which was very good.
The Dusit Zoo officially opened in 1938 and despite its age its actually a very good zoo. I would say that it is easily the second-best zoo in Asia, and there are many things there that compare more than favourably with the more famous Singapore Zoo (not least that most of the enclosures are larger!). Singapore Zoo has more money so it looks a bit flasher and there is more vegetation, but Dusit still stands up well in the comparison. I last visited here in 2006 and surprisingly for an Asian zoo (where things tend to stand still, getting neither better nor worse) I saw many instances of improvements in the last few years. The nocturnal house, which on my last visit I liked a lot for the amount of room given to its inhabitants but which I also criticised for the bare concrete floors and lack
of furnishings, now has substrate or leaf-litter in almost all exhibits as well as branches etc. The reptile house still looks very good, with larger terrariums than seen in most zoos. There are new exhibits scattered around the zoo, especially in the African area. A further improvement for the visitor is the massively-increased amount of signage, not just because they provide more information (much of it on a conservation theme), but they are also all now bilingual (in Thai and English) whereas there used to be just Thai ones. Some few things I can still criticise are the bird aviaries on Bird Island which aren’t bad but they are glass-fronted and situated in a manner that makes viewing and photography difficult with the reflections. The monkey cages look quite unpleasant, being bars and concrete but there’s no denying the success of their breeding programme for douc langurs of which they are very proud (I believe they have 25 of them in several troups). The cat cages are also fronted with bars, but heavily planted inside (and much larger than the Singapore Zoo equivalents). In fact many of the cages are now quite well planted, even the gibbons and sun bears,
quite a difference to my 2006 visit. Really the Dusit Zoo is almost an aberration in Asian zoos - one that is not only good but that is actively getting better! A return trip in another three or four years may well provide even more surprises.
On the way home to New Zealand I had a eight hour stop-over at Melbourne Airport but I couldn't leave the building because I was in transit, which was a pain. It was funny being back in New Zealand after spending so long in one of the most over-populated countries on Earth. Just Jakarta alone has well over twice the population of the whole of NZ. I got back and it felt like a public holiday because the country seemed deserted!
It was a great trip. I visited islands that had always been dreams, like Borneo and Sulawesi, and places like Ujung Kulon and the Danum Valley that had always been in my head. I saw animals that most people will only ever see in zoos and that I thought I would never see in my lifetime, like babirusa, anoa, tarsiers and Komodo dragons. There were lots of animals I missed out
on seeing, things like Javan rhinos and Flores giant rats, but with a trip of this scope that was inevitable. Maybe they'll be there in the future to see or maybe they won't. Babirusa for example, are pretty much now only to be found at Nantu Reserve, everywhere else they are so reduced in number as to be almost unviable, and who knows if the Nantu population can hold out even with the constant armed guards patrolling the area. The Flores giant rats according to the locals aren't seen as commonly as they once were, and everyone knows the sorry story of the Javan and Sumatran rhinos.
The whole thing cost me an arm and a leg, and Indonesia was far more expensive than I'd been led to believe. I actually ran out of money a couple of weeks before the end and had to borrow some off my sister to finish. I lost 21kg of muscle, almost 20% of my body weight, which is going to take a lot of gym-work to put back on, and I think that may be why I ended up so sick in Malaysia, just because I was too weak for my system
to fight off the bugs.
All in all though, a fantastic trip, really the trip of a lifetime, and I'm very happy I did it.
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Nic
non-member comment
I've been there! But there wasn't a stormtrooper then!