Snowleopard's 2024 Road Trip: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore & Indonesia
- Thread starter snowleopard
- Start date
Zz123
Well-Known Member
I am Thai and live in Thailand. I would like to add/supplement some information that I know.
Bangkok doesn't have just one international airport, but also Don Mueang Airport, which is also an international airport. This airport mainly serves low-cost airline. From here, you can travel to countries in Southeast Asia, Japan, China, South Korea, and even India.
In my opinion, since Thailand is not yet a wealthy country, animal welfare in captivity is still viewed through an old-fashioned lens by most Thais. People are still accustomed to the traditional zoo model, which has a concrete floor and bars, where animals can be clearly seen. There's no need to decorate the enclosures to resemble natural habitats. As long as the animals are provided with food, water, and medical care when they are sick, it is considered sufficient. Therefore, most zoos in Thailand are like that. However, many zoos are working on developing and improving to become modern zoos, where animals have better welfare. This requires time and money.
Wildlife Rescue Center No. 1 is under the Royal Forest Department, which doesn't have a large budget. Therefore, what they can provide are basic necessities: water, food, shelter, and medical treatment. Unfortunately, the department and The Zoological Park Organization of Thailand (ZPOT) have not fully cooperated, which has led to the Marbled Cat, a rare and 1 of
reserved wild animals of thailand. living in poor conditions. I hope that the little cat will be relocated to the new national zoo that is planned to open in 2026.
Bangkok doesn't have just one international airport, but also Don Mueang Airport, which is also an international airport. This airport mainly serves low-cost airline. From here, you can travel to countries in Southeast Asia, Japan, China, South Korea, and even India.
In my opinion, since Thailand is not yet a wealthy country, animal welfare in captivity is still viewed through an old-fashioned lens by most Thais. People are still accustomed to the traditional zoo model, which has a concrete floor and bars, where animals can be clearly seen. There's no need to decorate the enclosures to resemble natural habitats. As long as the animals are provided with food, water, and medical care when they are sick, it is considered sufficient. Therefore, most zoos in Thailand are like that. However, many zoos are working on developing and improving to become modern zoos, where animals have better welfare. This requires time and money.
Wildlife Rescue Center No. 1 is under the Royal Forest Department, which doesn't have a large budget. Therefore, what they can provide are basic necessities: water, food, shelter, and medical treatment. Unfortunately, the department and The Zoological Park Organization of Thailand (ZPOT) have not fully cooperated, which has led to the Marbled Cat, a rare and 1 of
reserved wild animals of thailand. living in poor conditions. I hope that the little cat will be relocated to the new national zoo that is planned to open in 2026.
Flat headed cat
Well-Known Member
The craziest thing of all, in my humble opinion, is that there are BRAND-NEW Asiatic Black Bear 'exhibits' that have just been built. Painted in bright yellow, these cages are pretty much identical to the old junky ones but when I spoke with the tour guide he said that the workers are very proud of the new enclosures and now the center can take in more problem bears. It was a really eye-opening situation for Konstantin and I, as we see how so many zoo nerds argue and debate about animal enclosures in rich Western zoos, but here in rural Thailand there are brand-new bear cages being built that are honestly horrendous and yet some of the people living there think these are amazing, modern enclosures. Wow!
The 'modern' cages:
To be honest, from what I've seen, most Thais are still not really knowledgeable about animal welfare They also have a very wrong understanding of animal welfare. As long as the animals are fat and have a clean and sturdy cage, they think they are in a good place. And it's funny that I've surveyed comments on social media and from zoo visitors in Thailand
They think that zoos like Sri Ayutthaya Lion Park are better than Khao Kheow Open Zoo or Nakhon Ratchasima Zoo in waza.
DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
I truly appreciate the input from members @Zz123 and @Flat headed cat as both are based in Thailand and they can offer up some insight into the zoological collections in that part of the world. There's a lot of Western bias on ZooChat and I don't mean that in a bad way but rather the fact that the bulk of the zoo nerds on this site live in Western nations where the zoos are mainly of a half-decent quality. When ZooBeat (the original name!) began, there was a high percentage of Australian zoo nerds, all living in a nation where there's very few roadside menageries. Nowadays, the UK is the overwhelming location of the highest percentage of zoo nerds on ZooChat and there's certainly a lot of wood-and-wire, privately-owned zoos there but no one is drugging big cats, chaining elephants or putting orangutans in clothes and walking them around as if they were children. I saw all of that just in Thailand and the focus for me was on the better zoos and not the truly naff ones. God only knows what goes on at some of the more obscure Thai collections.
So, just as in the case when zoo nerds jet off from Western nations to visit China or Japan or Thailand, or any other Asian country, there is an acclimation period where one realizes that it's perfectly normal for the public to be able to walk up and pet an elephant that happens to be strolling around a zoo, or there are dozens of opportunities to go into enclosures with fully-grown big cats, or you can caress a python, etc. That's just the way it is. There are zoos with new exhibits that they are proud of, but some folks here would be horrified to see those enclosures. The important thing to remember is that all these zoos in Asian nations are improving and you can tell that's the case from reading trip reports about Chinese, Japanese or Thai zoos, just to use those three nations as examples. These places, that many zoo nerds visit, are not getting worse and they are all getting better. Even the awful Pata Zoo is arguably better than it was, with the bears and big cats phased out and many new reptile terrariums and fish tanks being constructed. I can scarcely imagine how abysmal that zoo would have been a decade ago. Later in the trip, while looking at a small, rather poorly built Sun Bear grotto in Indonesia, someone told me that it was actually a "world-class habitat" because the bear had previously been at one of those absolutely demoniacal bear bile farm places and the animal couldn't even roll over in a cage the same size as its body.
Compared to that hellish existence, this particular Sun Bear was now living a life of luxury.
Lastly, you must remember what else I've seen on my travels in supposedly progressive countries. I've visited a ghastly zoo in Arkansas with rows of tiny cement prisons for primates, and a reptile zoo in that same state with a kitchen door covering the American Alligator tank! I've seen a dozen Tigers in small, chain-link cages from the dark ages and that was at a 'sanctuary' in California. Or the 'Tiger King's Zoo' in Oklahoma with 200 big cats in small cages. Or a lot of Harbour Seals crammed into a foul-smelling indoor tank at an aquarium in Oregon. I could go on all day and not even mention the naff zoos of Wisconsin, and what I saw going around zoos in the USA has often been as bad as anywhere else. And each time, on practically every single occasion, I've known very little about the zoo in question. I visit once, document it all and spend hours typing up a report, and then I move on and never return even when I'm back in the local area.
Keeping all that information in perspective, let's look at yet another extensive zoo report from yours truly.
Zoo/Aquarium #7: Sriayuthaya Lion Park (Nong Khanak, Thailand)
After departing the wildlife rescue establishment, we got back into the car with the waiting driver and he drove us approximately 1.5 hours southeast to Nong Khanak. This area is around two hours from Bangkok. Several articles appear online stating that this is a new zoo that opened at the end of 2021, but that doesn’t seem accurate as there are certainly some old-school big cat cages that could well have been built decades ago. Just like the tour of Wildlife Rescue Centre No. 1, Konstantin and I knew next to nothing about this place. It's a zoo with a lot of potential, a lot of ambition, a tremendous primate collection, but hit-and-miss exhibitry and some glaring flaws. Konstantin and I had a great time walking around this zoo for a few hours in the sunshine, but there was a series of bittersweet moments at the end. I would guess that for 70% of our visit we were pleasantly surprised and then the last 30% left a bad taste in our mouths.
I uploaded more than 170 photos of this establishment onto ZooChat. You can locate them in the Thailand - Other gallery and I encourage readers to check them out as I can only include 20 photos as the maximum in each review.
A trend at many Southeast Asian zoos is to have a grandiose entrance and Sriayuthaya Lion Park is no different. All foreigners pay double the amount of a regular ticket, which is also the typical situation at many zoos. "Are you from Thailand? No? Okay, you pay twice each."
Zoos in Southeast Asia think nothing about spending a fortune on statues and entrances, while big cats are in dumpy cages.
There's a couple of large paddocks for Giraffes and Zebras and of course there's options to feed the animals for a minor amount of money. The substrate is mostly all sand here.
One of the highlights of this zoo is the fantastic Common Hippo exhibit, which is even larger than what is shown in my photo. The 'barn' is simply a covered area that's open to the elements on the sides, the land zone is huge and the pool is a decent size. There's two levels of viewing and this was my favourite exhibit in the zoo.
Another highlight is a whole series of crocodilian pools, where visitors can pay to use a fishing line to feed the animals. There's large pull-out areas for sunbathing, a lot of crocs and probably a half-dozen exhibits that all look like the one in my photo. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this zoo had 250 crocodilians in total, of several species, but there's hardly any signage in this section and in fact there's old signs mentioning Spotted Hyenas and a variety of big cats, so that makes me think that it's not in fact a brand-new zoo but a newly developed facility that has replaced an older zoo. Does anyone know the exact details?
The zoo also has a number of smaller mammal exhibits, such as this one for Lesser Mouse-deer, that have natural substrate (quite often sand) and some potted plants. There are enclosures for smaller animals such as Meerkats, Maras and Bat-eared Foxes all over the place. Perhaps tight on space, but nicely done.
The use of sand as a natural substrate is intriguing, but it does soak up urine and is cheap to utilize in animal enclosures. You can see a Giant Anteater in the back of its exhibit here.
I counted FIVE Raccoon exhibits, with all of them being naff little enclosures and this one was the best of the lot. Honestly though...it's not terrible by Southeast Asian standards.
There's a rather unique Green Anaconda exhibit and there's two snakes in the center of the photo.
There's lots of big pythons in small glass boxes as well. These are ex-pets, or confiscated animals, and of course there's opportunities for visitors to pay money to hold the snakes.
My guess is that these are both Eurasian Eagle Owls and they are tethered to the stands and they are able to be held for a small fee. Konstantin and I didn't participate in any of that kind of stuff during our visit and I'm surprised that no one objected to us taking numerous photos.
The primate collection is immense, covering 28 species. There's a number of rarities, such as these Black-shanked Douc Langurs:
An exhibit for Grizzled Tree Kangaroos is mixed in with all the primate enclosures:
Konstantin photographing some Red-faced Spider Monkeys:
There's a couple of Red-tailed Monkeys in this enclosure and you can see numerous other primate exhibits in the background.
For a small amount you can feed the Arapaima and I counted more than 20 of them in this single large tank.
As for the grim stuff, there's several large cages with drugged Tigers and Lions, plus an area with Ligers and another area (with ZERO barriers) containing a leashed Jaguar. It's possible for visitors to pay an extra fee and go inside the enclosures with all these big cats, including paying even more money to walk a Tiger around on a leash inside a fenced-off zone. Almost all the big cats were on short chains, lounging around on cement and not able to move more than a few feet in any direction. We saw one Tiger being walked and it was staggering a little and had copious amounts of saliva coming out of its mouth and so was obviously an example of a drugged cat. Many were very dozy and they probably just lay around on the cement until feeding time each day. Ugh.
Only 3 zoos out of the 59 I visited in Southeast Asia had Sloth Bears and this place was one of them. The single specimen is at the back and it's a bear that's almost all brown and yet it's clearly a Sloth Bear when seen in person.
A junky Chimpanzee cage:
We only watched the last two minutes of the Elephant Show and it certainly did not appeal to us. But, keep in mind that this arena was packed with families eating popcorn and cheering, as off to the left was a full stand filled with people. For local Thais, the Elephant Show might be the highlight of their visit. Konstantin and I were probably the only Westerners in this large, busy zoo and we have different perspectives on such things as old-fashioned animal shows.
Summary:
Sriayuthaya Lion Park has a fantastic entrance, a spacious, modern restaurant, several gift stands, and neatly laid out paths. It gives off the vibes of a brand-new zoo and much of it appears to have been built in the past few years and so in fact it is a brand-new zoo in many ways. The horticulture is tidy, there's friendly staff, free paper maps and lots of shady spots to get out of the heat and humidity that is everywhere in Thailand. That's all wonderful.
Konstantin and I are big primate fans and to see 28 primate species at a single zoo is quite extraordinary. This facility, which I'd never even heard of until maybe a couple of months before the trip as it was a very late addition to our itinerary, has more primate species than perhaps any zoo in North America. Barring a handful of dreadful monkey cages, and the chimps, almost all the primate enclosures are functional with many climbing opportunities. Nothing that great, but okay for the animals and close-up views of Black-shanked Douc Langurs, Red-shanked Douc Langurs, Mona Monkeys, Bearded Sakis and Golden-bellied Mangabeys is not to be missed for any zoo nerd!
With 61 mammal species in total, that's an impressive number and non primate-highlights would be the Common Hippo enclosure, some of the macropod exhibits and the ungulate paddocks were all perfectly fine.
What hurts this zoo badly, especially with Western eyes such as mine, is seeing the Asian Elephants dressed up in shows, the big cats tragically tied to metal stakes via short chains, the raptors and other birds tied to perches, and the big snakes in tiny glass boxes. Most of those are cultural things, as there's plenty of signs up at this zoo advertising the elephants and big cats and in fact we saw line-ups of people waiting to walk a Tiger on a leash. One of my photos in the gallery has a staff member sitting on his iPhone while just a few feet away, and with zero barriers, is a fully-grown Jaguar and it seems harsh to not give the big cats proper, modern facilities with grass and rocks rather than nothing but concrete. You could one day stop the elephant shows, stop drugging and chaining the cats, give the macaws some aviaries instead of being tied to perches, etc. These seem like easy fixes, but I think that in Thailand there's such an imbedded element to a few of these issues that it's difficult to see any changes being made.
Overall, this zoo is a mixed-bag but I feel that if it could clean up some glaring, awful sections, then there's hope for the future. Konstantin and I actually walked down into a construction section and there's a whole new row of very nice looking exhibits currently being built. Several appear to be yet more primate enclosures, but we spotted a few hornbills and so aviaries are also on the horizon. Here is a zoo that I would visit again if I was to ever go back to Thailand, perhaps a decade from now, as I feel that it being new and popular and with signs of progress spells hope for the future. It's really too bad that parts of the zoo leave a nasty lingering image, but will the big cats still be tied down 10 years from now? It's difficult to know what will happen.
Sriayuthaya Lion Park is a bit of a misnomer as there's not very many Lions (a few exhibits along one side), but it's clearly a very mammal heavy facility. There's zero insects, maybe only one fish tank, a large number of snakes and crocodilians but practically zero lizards or amphibians, nothing too notable for birds with some scattered aviaries and a walk-through Bird Dome, but a significant mammal collection that tops many major zoos I've been to.
Non-primate mammal species list (33 species): Asian Elephant, Common Hippo, Giraffe, Plains Zebra, Aoudad, Southern Red Muntjac, Javan Rusa Deer, Lesser Mouse-deer, Alpaca, Llama, Tiger, African Lion, Jaguar, Cougar, Caracal, Serval, Sand Cat, Sloth Bear, Bat-eared Fox, Giant Anteater, Tamandua, Aardvark, Meerkat, Binturong, Raccoon, Coati, Mara, Prairie Dog, Two-toed Sloth, Red Kangaroo, Grizzled Tree Kangaroo, Red-necked Wallaby and Dusky Pademelon.
Primate species list (28 species): Orangutan, Chimpanzee, Siamang, White-handed Gibbon, White-cheeked Gibbon, Red-shanked Douc Langur, Black-shanked Douc Langur, Stump-tailed Macaque, Crab-eating Macaque, Southern Pig-tailed Macaque, Sulawesi Crested Macaque, Colobus Monkey, De Brazza’s Monkey, Black-crested Mangabey, Golden-bellied Mangabey, Red-faced Spider Monkey, Bearded Saki, Red-tailed Monkey, Mona Monkey, Squirrel Monkey, Tufted Capuchin, Golden-handed Tamarin, Cotton-top Tamarin, Common Marmoset, White-headed Marmoset, Ring-tailed Lemur, Black-and-white Ruffed Lemur and Silvery Greater Galago.
DAY 1: Friday, August 2nd
1- Bangkok Snake Farm (Bangkok, Thailand)
2- Peuan Deratchan Mini Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
3- Bangkok Butterfly Garden (Bangkok, Thailand)
4- Pata Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
5- Sea Life Bangkok Ocean World (Bangkok, Thailand)
DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
6- Wildlife Rescue Center No. 1 (Nakhon Nayok, Thailand)
7- Sriayuthaya Lion Park (Nong Khanak, Thailand)
8- ??
I truly appreciate the input from members @Zz123 and @Flat headed cat as both are based in Thailand and they can offer up some insight into the zoological collections in that part of the world. There's a lot of Western bias on ZooChat and I don't mean that in a bad way but rather the fact that the bulk of the zoo nerds on this site live in Western nations where the zoos are mainly of a half-decent quality. When ZooBeat (the original name!) began, there was a high percentage of Australian zoo nerds, all living in a nation where there's very few roadside menageries. Nowadays, the UK is the overwhelming location of the highest percentage of zoo nerds on ZooChat and there's certainly a lot of wood-and-wire, privately-owned zoos there but no one is drugging big cats, chaining elephants or putting orangutans in clothes and walking them around as if they were children. I saw all of that just in Thailand and the focus for me was on the better zoos and not the truly naff ones. God only knows what goes on at some of the more obscure Thai collections.
So, just as in the case when zoo nerds jet off from Western nations to visit China or Japan or Thailand, or any other Asian country, there is an acclimation period where one realizes that it's perfectly normal for the public to be able to walk up and pet an elephant that happens to be strolling around a zoo, or there are dozens of opportunities to go into enclosures with fully-grown big cats, or you can caress a python, etc. That's just the way it is. There are zoos with new exhibits that they are proud of, but some folks here would be horrified to see those enclosures. The important thing to remember is that all these zoos in Asian nations are improving and you can tell that's the case from reading trip reports about Chinese, Japanese or Thai zoos, just to use those three nations as examples. These places, that many zoo nerds visit, are not getting worse and they are all getting better. Even the awful Pata Zoo is arguably better than it was, with the bears and big cats phased out and many new reptile terrariums and fish tanks being constructed. I can scarcely imagine how abysmal that zoo would have been a decade ago. Later in the trip, while looking at a small, rather poorly built Sun Bear grotto in Indonesia, someone told me that it was actually a "world-class habitat" because the bear had previously been at one of those absolutely demoniacal bear bile farm places and the animal couldn't even roll over in a cage the same size as its body.
Compared to that hellish existence, this particular Sun Bear was now living a life of luxury.Lastly, you must remember what else I've seen on my travels in supposedly progressive countries. I've visited a ghastly zoo in Arkansas with rows of tiny cement prisons for primates, and a reptile zoo in that same state with a kitchen door covering the American Alligator tank! I've seen a dozen Tigers in small, chain-link cages from the dark ages and that was at a 'sanctuary' in California. Or the 'Tiger King's Zoo' in Oklahoma with 200 big cats in small cages. Or a lot of Harbour Seals crammed into a foul-smelling indoor tank at an aquarium in Oregon. I could go on all day and not even mention the naff zoos of Wisconsin, and what I saw going around zoos in the USA has often been as bad as anywhere else. And each time, on practically every single occasion, I've known very little about the zoo in question. I visit once, document it all and spend hours typing up a report, and then I move on and never return even when I'm back in the local area.
Keeping all that information in perspective, let's look at yet another extensive zoo report from yours truly.
Zoo/Aquarium #7: Sriayuthaya Lion Park (Nong Khanak, Thailand)
After departing the wildlife rescue establishment, we got back into the car with the waiting driver and he drove us approximately 1.5 hours southeast to Nong Khanak. This area is around two hours from Bangkok. Several articles appear online stating that this is a new zoo that opened at the end of 2021, but that doesn’t seem accurate as there are certainly some old-school big cat cages that could well have been built decades ago. Just like the tour of Wildlife Rescue Centre No. 1, Konstantin and I knew next to nothing about this place. It's a zoo with a lot of potential, a lot of ambition, a tremendous primate collection, but hit-and-miss exhibitry and some glaring flaws. Konstantin and I had a great time walking around this zoo for a few hours in the sunshine, but there was a series of bittersweet moments at the end. I would guess that for 70% of our visit we were pleasantly surprised and then the last 30% left a bad taste in our mouths.
I uploaded more than 170 photos of this establishment onto ZooChat. You can locate them in the Thailand - Other gallery and I encourage readers to check them out as I can only include 20 photos as the maximum in each review.
A trend at many Southeast Asian zoos is to have a grandiose entrance and Sriayuthaya Lion Park is no different. All foreigners pay double the amount of a regular ticket, which is also the typical situation at many zoos. "Are you from Thailand? No? Okay, you pay twice each."
Zoos in Southeast Asia think nothing about spending a fortune on statues and entrances, while big cats are in dumpy cages.
There's a couple of large paddocks for Giraffes and Zebras and of course there's options to feed the animals for a minor amount of money. The substrate is mostly all sand here.
One of the highlights of this zoo is the fantastic Common Hippo exhibit, which is even larger than what is shown in my photo. The 'barn' is simply a covered area that's open to the elements on the sides, the land zone is huge and the pool is a decent size. There's two levels of viewing and this was my favourite exhibit in the zoo.
Another highlight is a whole series of crocodilian pools, where visitors can pay to use a fishing line to feed the animals. There's large pull-out areas for sunbathing, a lot of crocs and probably a half-dozen exhibits that all look like the one in my photo. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this zoo had 250 crocodilians in total, of several species, but there's hardly any signage in this section and in fact there's old signs mentioning Spotted Hyenas and a variety of big cats, so that makes me think that it's not in fact a brand-new zoo but a newly developed facility that has replaced an older zoo. Does anyone know the exact details?
The zoo also has a number of smaller mammal exhibits, such as this one for Lesser Mouse-deer, that have natural substrate (quite often sand) and some potted plants. There are enclosures for smaller animals such as Meerkats, Maras and Bat-eared Foxes all over the place. Perhaps tight on space, but nicely done.
The use of sand as a natural substrate is intriguing, but it does soak up urine and is cheap to utilize in animal enclosures. You can see a Giant Anteater in the back of its exhibit here.
I counted FIVE Raccoon exhibits, with all of them being naff little enclosures and this one was the best of the lot. Honestly though...it's not terrible by Southeast Asian standards.
There's a rather unique Green Anaconda exhibit and there's two snakes in the center of the photo.
There's lots of big pythons in small glass boxes as well. These are ex-pets, or confiscated animals, and of course there's opportunities for visitors to pay money to hold the snakes.
My guess is that these are both Eurasian Eagle Owls and they are tethered to the stands and they are able to be held for a small fee. Konstantin and I didn't participate in any of that kind of stuff during our visit and I'm surprised that no one objected to us taking numerous photos.
The primate collection is immense, covering 28 species. There's a number of rarities, such as these Black-shanked Douc Langurs:
An exhibit for Grizzled Tree Kangaroos is mixed in with all the primate enclosures:
Konstantin photographing some Red-faced Spider Monkeys:
There's a couple of Red-tailed Monkeys in this enclosure and you can see numerous other primate exhibits in the background.
For a small amount you can feed the Arapaima and I counted more than 20 of them in this single large tank.
As for the grim stuff, there's several large cages with drugged Tigers and Lions, plus an area with Ligers and another area (with ZERO barriers) containing a leashed Jaguar. It's possible for visitors to pay an extra fee and go inside the enclosures with all these big cats, including paying even more money to walk a Tiger around on a leash inside a fenced-off zone. Almost all the big cats were on short chains, lounging around on cement and not able to move more than a few feet in any direction. We saw one Tiger being walked and it was staggering a little and had copious amounts of saliva coming out of its mouth and so was obviously an example of a drugged cat. Many were very dozy and they probably just lay around on the cement until feeding time each day. Ugh.
Only 3 zoos out of the 59 I visited in Southeast Asia had Sloth Bears and this place was one of them. The single specimen is at the back and it's a bear that's almost all brown and yet it's clearly a Sloth Bear when seen in person.
A junky Chimpanzee cage:
We only watched the last two minutes of the Elephant Show and it certainly did not appeal to us. But, keep in mind that this arena was packed with families eating popcorn and cheering, as off to the left was a full stand filled with people. For local Thais, the Elephant Show might be the highlight of their visit. Konstantin and I were probably the only Westerners in this large, busy zoo and we have different perspectives on such things as old-fashioned animal shows.
Summary:
Sriayuthaya Lion Park has a fantastic entrance, a spacious, modern restaurant, several gift stands, and neatly laid out paths. It gives off the vibes of a brand-new zoo and much of it appears to have been built in the past few years and so in fact it is a brand-new zoo in many ways. The horticulture is tidy, there's friendly staff, free paper maps and lots of shady spots to get out of the heat and humidity that is everywhere in Thailand. That's all wonderful.
Konstantin and I are big primate fans and to see 28 primate species at a single zoo is quite extraordinary. This facility, which I'd never even heard of until maybe a couple of months before the trip as it was a very late addition to our itinerary, has more primate species than perhaps any zoo in North America. Barring a handful of dreadful monkey cages, and the chimps, almost all the primate enclosures are functional with many climbing opportunities. Nothing that great, but okay for the animals and close-up views of Black-shanked Douc Langurs, Red-shanked Douc Langurs, Mona Monkeys, Bearded Sakis and Golden-bellied Mangabeys is not to be missed for any zoo nerd!
With 61 mammal species in total, that's an impressive number and non primate-highlights would be the Common Hippo enclosure, some of the macropod exhibits and the ungulate paddocks were all perfectly fine.
What hurts this zoo badly, especially with Western eyes such as mine, is seeing the Asian Elephants dressed up in shows, the big cats tragically tied to metal stakes via short chains, the raptors and other birds tied to perches, and the big snakes in tiny glass boxes. Most of those are cultural things, as there's plenty of signs up at this zoo advertising the elephants and big cats and in fact we saw line-ups of people waiting to walk a Tiger on a leash. One of my photos in the gallery has a staff member sitting on his iPhone while just a few feet away, and with zero barriers, is a fully-grown Jaguar and it seems harsh to not give the big cats proper, modern facilities with grass and rocks rather than nothing but concrete. You could one day stop the elephant shows, stop drugging and chaining the cats, give the macaws some aviaries instead of being tied to perches, etc. These seem like easy fixes, but I think that in Thailand there's such an imbedded element to a few of these issues that it's difficult to see any changes being made.
Overall, this zoo is a mixed-bag but I feel that if it could clean up some glaring, awful sections, then there's hope for the future. Konstantin and I actually walked down into a construction section and there's a whole new row of very nice looking exhibits currently being built. Several appear to be yet more primate enclosures, but we spotted a few hornbills and so aviaries are also on the horizon. Here is a zoo that I would visit again if I was to ever go back to Thailand, perhaps a decade from now, as I feel that it being new and popular and with signs of progress spells hope for the future. It's really too bad that parts of the zoo leave a nasty lingering image, but will the big cats still be tied down 10 years from now? It's difficult to know what will happen.
Sriayuthaya Lion Park is a bit of a misnomer as there's not very many Lions (a few exhibits along one side), but it's clearly a very mammal heavy facility. There's zero insects, maybe only one fish tank, a large number of snakes and crocodilians but practically zero lizards or amphibians, nothing too notable for birds with some scattered aviaries and a walk-through Bird Dome, but a significant mammal collection that tops many major zoos I've been to.
Non-primate mammal species list (33 species): Asian Elephant, Common Hippo, Giraffe, Plains Zebra, Aoudad, Southern Red Muntjac, Javan Rusa Deer, Lesser Mouse-deer, Alpaca, Llama, Tiger, African Lion, Jaguar, Cougar, Caracal, Serval, Sand Cat, Sloth Bear, Bat-eared Fox, Giant Anteater, Tamandua, Aardvark, Meerkat, Binturong, Raccoon, Coati, Mara, Prairie Dog, Two-toed Sloth, Red Kangaroo, Grizzled Tree Kangaroo, Red-necked Wallaby and Dusky Pademelon.
Primate species list (28 species): Orangutan, Chimpanzee, Siamang, White-handed Gibbon, White-cheeked Gibbon, Red-shanked Douc Langur, Black-shanked Douc Langur, Stump-tailed Macaque, Crab-eating Macaque, Southern Pig-tailed Macaque, Sulawesi Crested Macaque, Colobus Monkey, De Brazza’s Monkey, Black-crested Mangabey, Golden-bellied Mangabey, Red-faced Spider Monkey, Bearded Saki, Red-tailed Monkey, Mona Monkey, Squirrel Monkey, Tufted Capuchin, Golden-handed Tamarin, Cotton-top Tamarin, Common Marmoset, White-headed Marmoset, Ring-tailed Lemur, Black-and-white Ruffed Lemur and Silvery Greater Galago.
DAY 1: Friday, August 2nd
1- Bangkok Snake Farm (Bangkok, Thailand)
2- Peuan Deratchan Mini Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
3- Bangkok Butterfly Garden (Bangkok, Thailand)
4- Pata Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
5- Sea Life Bangkok Ocean World (Bangkok, Thailand)
DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
6- Wildlife Rescue Center No. 1 (Nakhon Nayok, Thailand)
7- Sriayuthaya Lion Park (Nong Khanak, Thailand)
8- ??
Last edited:
Flat headed cat
Well-Known Member
I think these languar are illegally imported. Recently, Thailand has seen more of these languar, such as the red shaked douc languar, black shaked douc languar ,Laotian langur the private which is surprising Becaus zpot has tried to find these languar many times, but the country of origin has difficulty exporting them, so they have come to an agreement with the Vietnam Zoo Association, so they have a chance to get them.I think the languar cage should be higher and have more climbing space. From what I've seen of red shaked douc languar at Khao Kheow Open Zoo, they need more height And I have seen when I went to the Ayutthaya Lion Park that languar were fed cabbage and morning glory as their main food instead of leaves, which was terrible.The primate collection is immense, covering 28 species. There's a number of rarities, such as these Black-shanked Douc Langurs:
Last edited:
Flat headed cat
Well-Known Member
The Ayutthaya Lion Park is a new zoo in Thailand that has been open for 3 years.The owner is a very rich millionaire in Thailand. Now, they have brought in new and strange animals, some of which are legally laundered in Thailand but are against international standards, such as:Komodo dragons, Laotian languar, black/grey/red shaked douc languar, great hornbills, Chinese red panda were brought into the zoo But he also has a new interesting species that is in good health and legally imported, the Bald Eagle Grizzled Tree Kangaroo Striped hyena, Ocelot. And recently they have imported more than 60 weaned giraffes, and some will be given to zpot.
Aren't all millionaires in Thailand very rich?
Flat headed cat
Well-Known Member
Used as a simile in Thai.
I wonder how many of these animals are confiscated from the illegal pet trade.Here in Mexico government environmental authorities with very limited budgets send confiscated animals that survive to zoos because there are so few rehabilitation centers.As a result all collections have green iguanas, turtles, and spider monkeys.
Flat headed cat
Well-Known Member
In Thailand, animals seized from illegal animal trade are not sent to public zoos, but rather to wildlife rescue centers and wildlife breeding stations operated by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of Thailand and will be sent to the Zoological Park Organization of Thailand (zpot) a government organization On occasion.
DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
We left Sriayuthaya Lion Park and its 61 mammal species, including a whopping 28 primate species, and the driver took Konstantin and I an hour south to the city of Lopburi. Apparently this part of Thailand is famous for its thousands of Crab-eating Macaques (also called Long-tailed Macaques) that are prevalent in the area, and we saw many scrambling over ruins in the midst of the city's core. By having a driver, it made transportation very easy and with two of us the cost was obviously 50% what it would be for a solo traveller and so we felt it was quite manageable. The idea of waiting around for buses and trains was not something we wished to do early in the trip, although later on when we covered vast distances we would use both those modes of transportation. While being driven around, with drivers who mainly spoke very limited English, we were able to watch the countryside disappear as we made our way through an urban area that seemed to be quite poor, with lots of dilapidated buildings and wild monkeys absolutely everywhere. You really don't have to travel too far to see wildlife in Southeast Asia.
Zoo/Aquarium #8: Lopburi Zoo (Lopburi, Thailand)
Remember when I said there was a total of 3-4 stinkers on this trip? Well, Lopburi Zoo is one of them and it's a ghastly zoo. It has early morning hours, and literally 10 of the 19 zoos I visited in Thailand opened at either 8:00 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. Has it always been like that in Thailand? Perhaps visitors are up and about in order to beat the afternoon heat and occasional hour-long thunderstorm? Lopburi Zoo is also open late and Konstantin and I were there until probably near to the 6:00 p.m. closing time as it was a very long day with our three zoo visits and afterwards we had a 2.5 hour drive all the way back to our rented apartment in Bangkok. We actually arrived late at night, grabbed a McDonald's meal, and bought cheap ponchos from a convenience store as the rain bucketed down at a tremendous speed. Rain in the tropics can hurtle down so fast that it can hurt a little as it strikes you, but usually after a brief period of time the rain stops and there's the feeling that the temperature is hotter than it was before.
We hardly knew a thing about this zoo, as if you look on TripAdvisor you can see that there's been ONE review in the past 7 years! What I produce here, along with my 89 photos in the 'Thailand - Other' section of the ZooChat gallery, will likely be the definitive review of this dump for many years to come. Already, 5 of the first 8 zoos I've reviewed in this thread don't even have a dedicated photo gallery on this site. You name an obscure zoo and I'll visit it because no one else will...haha!
So, walking into Lopburi Zoo, I had no clue what species were there, if there would be any rarities, or if the zoo would be a good one or a bad one. In fact, locating an accurate opening date (1940?) and size (25 acres?) is extremely difficult. My fingers were crossed. The typically grandiose Southeast Asian zoo entrance greeted us with its huge fake tree logs and numerous animal sculptures.
There's a bunch of kiddie-themed items near the entrance, plus 3 Marvel characters!
Things begin well enough, with paddocks for species such as Axis Deer (below), Hog Deer, Javan Rusa Deer, Eld's Deer and Cassowary. There's plenty of trees and a nice visitor boardwalk around this zone. After that, it's pretty much all downhill.
Eld's/Brow-antlered Deer enclosure:
There's a couple of turtle pools, mostly containing Yellow-headed Temple Turtles, with an outrageous number of chelonians.
There's a few pits for a variety of smaller animals, including this open-topped one for Monocled Cobras.
The zoo has two Small-clawed Otter exhibits that are both small, stinky, filled with brown water and with very basic accommodation. I think that the keepers must just leap down from the wall to get inside to clean out the enclosure. That's if it ever gets cleaned!
Here's a half-decent enclosure, painted with garish colours, for a couple of Saltwater Crocodiles. Nearby, there's also Siamese Crocodiles, Reticulated Pythons and Green Iguanas in a reptile zone.
Seeing a Golden Jackal, a true rarity for me, in such a tiny, barbaric space that was half-flooded with water, was rather depressing.
A row of pheasant aviaries are possibly as bare as they could be, with several of the cages devoid of almost anything.
A row of macaque cages for 4 species (Stump-tailed, Crab-eating, Southern Pig-tailed, Rhesus) are atrocious, being ultra-tiny and with almost nothing inside any of them.
There's a few abandoned exhibits scattered around the zoo's grounds and several are now used for storage spaces.
This long row once consisted of perhaps 10 small animal exhibits...all empty now and that's likely for the best.
We saw a couple of Asiatic Black Bears in a grim pair of joined cages, all cement and bars and dark, dire little enclosures. The murals are totally bizarre as well and the one on the left reminds me of a more scantily clad version of 'The Gimp' in Pulp Fiction.
The Big Monkey Show has a large, grassy yard with several climbing areas, but it seemed closed down. Maybe it was just shut for the off-season?
There's two Orangutan exhibits and they are both horrible. You can see two apes in my photo and a background wall painted with sunflowers.
A series of gibbon cages are just that...nothing but cages. I don't see any ropes, hammocks, or anything other than the actual cage, a miniscule ledge, and a stained cement floor. Some gibbons live for 50 years in captivity and that's something to think about while staring at this image.
The lowest point of the zoo is the Chimpanzee exhibit. It's dreadful and all cement, metal and swinging tires and would have been outdated half a century ago. The roof beams are rusty and I think there was maybe 4 chimps in total. One huge one, who can be seen sitting on a ledge in my photo, spat at me and I had to jump out of the way. The chimp then spat a second time and again just barely missed and I hurriedly strolled away. What a sad, boring life it must be to sit in that cage for probably years, if not decades. And what does it say about the individuals that keep the animals in these conditions? Is it a lack of money and education? Obviously that's part of the problem.
If the zoo could spruce up a few sections, such as this tall aviary for Painted Storks and Purple Swamphens, then some areas could be salvageable.
The Woolly-necked Stork aviary is built around a massive tree, with its branches protruding from the top, and it's honestly quite a unique structure. It clearly has potential, as do a number of smaller aviaries in this part of the zoo.
Summary:
Lopburi Zoo is obviously a prison for most of its inhabitants, even though some of the aviaries set further back in the acreage are nicely done. There's some big trees there, many wild lizards, but also a ton of empty and abandoned areas and so walking around this place is like being in a ghost town at times. Konstantin and I both hated the zoo and other than perhaps one other place (coming up tomorrow), it's arguably the worst zoo of the trip. All 8 primate species are in atrocious environments, equally as bad as anything at Pata Zoo. The bears, jackals, otters, multiple civet cages, etc., are all nauseating to see and we didn't spend long here as we just wanted to get the hell out.
As I said before, 5 of my first 8 zoos didn't even have images on ZooChat and so I had no idea what to expect, but seeing the Orangutans and Chimpanzees, so close to humans in many ways, in old-fashioned cages was distressing. The good news is that the first couple of days in Thailand had a few horrible duds, but things began to improve after that. In fact, the next morning we visited Thailand's best zoo, Khao Kheow Open Zoo, and it's fantastic and parts of that facility are world-class. It's miles better than the naff zoos of Pata and Lopburi, which I would highly recommend avoiding as they both appear to be severely struggling these days and one can only hope they end up closing in the future. Sending the animals to practically any other zoo would improve their lives.
Mammal species list (19 species): Orangutan, Chimpanzee, White-handed Gibbon, Indochinese Silvered Langur, Stump-tailed Macaque, Southern Pig-tailed Macaque, Rhesus Macaque, Crab-eating Macaque, Asiatic Black Bear, Golden Jackal, Small-clawed Otter, Meerkat, Common Palm Civet, Malayan Porcupine, Large/Indomalayan Bamboo Rat, Javan Rusa Deer, Axis Deer, Hog Deer and Eld’s Deer.
DAY 1: Friday, August 2nd
1- Bangkok Snake Farm (Bangkok, Thailand)
2- Peuan Deratchan Mini Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
3- Bangkok Butterfly Garden (Bangkok, Thailand)
4- Pata Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
5- Sea Life Bangkok Ocean World (Bangkok, Thailand)
DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
6- Wildlife Rescue Center No. 1 (Nakhon Nayok, Thailand)
7- Sriayuthaya Lion Park (Nong Khanak, Thailand)
8- Lopburi Zoo (Lopburi, Thailand)
Two days done...up next is Khao Kheow Open Zoo.
We left Sriayuthaya Lion Park and its 61 mammal species, including a whopping 28 primate species, and the driver took Konstantin and I an hour south to the city of Lopburi. Apparently this part of Thailand is famous for its thousands of Crab-eating Macaques (also called Long-tailed Macaques) that are prevalent in the area, and we saw many scrambling over ruins in the midst of the city's core. By having a driver, it made transportation very easy and with two of us the cost was obviously 50% what it would be for a solo traveller and so we felt it was quite manageable. The idea of waiting around for buses and trains was not something we wished to do early in the trip, although later on when we covered vast distances we would use both those modes of transportation. While being driven around, with drivers who mainly spoke very limited English, we were able to watch the countryside disappear as we made our way through an urban area that seemed to be quite poor, with lots of dilapidated buildings and wild monkeys absolutely everywhere. You really don't have to travel too far to see wildlife in Southeast Asia.
Zoo/Aquarium #8: Lopburi Zoo (Lopburi, Thailand)
Remember when I said there was a total of 3-4 stinkers on this trip? Well, Lopburi Zoo is one of them and it's a ghastly zoo. It has early morning hours, and literally 10 of the 19 zoos I visited in Thailand opened at either 8:00 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. Has it always been like that in Thailand? Perhaps visitors are up and about in order to beat the afternoon heat and occasional hour-long thunderstorm? Lopburi Zoo is also open late and Konstantin and I were there until probably near to the 6:00 p.m. closing time as it was a very long day with our three zoo visits and afterwards we had a 2.5 hour drive all the way back to our rented apartment in Bangkok. We actually arrived late at night, grabbed a McDonald's meal, and bought cheap ponchos from a convenience store as the rain bucketed down at a tremendous speed. Rain in the tropics can hurtle down so fast that it can hurt a little as it strikes you, but usually after a brief period of time the rain stops and there's the feeling that the temperature is hotter than it was before.
We hardly knew a thing about this zoo, as if you look on TripAdvisor you can see that there's been ONE review in the past 7 years! What I produce here, along with my 89 photos in the 'Thailand - Other' section of the ZooChat gallery, will likely be the definitive review of this dump for many years to come. Already, 5 of the first 8 zoos I've reviewed in this thread don't even have a dedicated photo gallery on this site. You name an obscure zoo and I'll visit it because no one else will...haha!
So, walking into Lopburi Zoo, I had no clue what species were there, if there would be any rarities, or if the zoo would be a good one or a bad one. In fact, locating an accurate opening date (1940?) and size (25 acres?) is extremely difficult. My fingers were crossed. The typically grandiose Southeast Asian zoo entrance greeted us with its huge fake tree logs and numerous animal sculptures.
There's a bunch of kiddie-themed items near the entrance, plus 3 Marvel characters!
Things begin well enough, with paddocks for species such as Axis Deer (below), Hog Deer, Javan Rusa Deer, Eld's Deer and Cassowary. There's plenty of trees and a nice visitor boardwalk around this zone. After that, it's pretty much all downhill.
Eld's/Brow-antlered Deer enclosure:
There's a couple of turtle pools, mostly containing Yellow-headed Temple Turtles, with an outrageous number of chelonians.
There's a few pits for a variety of smaller animals, including this open-topped one for Monocled Cobras.
The zoo has two Small-clawed Otter exhibits that are both small, stinky, filled with brown water and with very basic accommodation. I think that the keepers must just leap down from the wall to get inside to clean out the enclosure. That's if it ever gets cleaned!
Here's a half-decent enclosure, painted with garish colours, for a couple of Saltwater Crocodiles. Nearby, there's also Siamese Crocodiles, Reticulated Pythons and Green Iguanas in a reptile zone.
Seeing a Golden Jackal, a true rarity for me, in such a tiny, barbaric space that was half-flooded with water, was rather depressing.
A row of pheasant aviaries are possibly as bare as they could be, with several of the cages devoid of almost anything.
A row of macaque cages for 4 species (Stump-tailed, Crab-eating, Southern Pig-tailed, Rhesus) are atrocious, being ultra-tiny and with almost nothing inside any of them.
There's a few abandoned exhibits scattered around the zoo's grounds and several are now used for storage spaces.
This long row once consisted of perhaps 10 small animal exhibits...all empty now and that's likely for the best.
We saw a couple of Asiatic Black Bears in a grim pair of joined cages, all cement and bars and dark, dire little enclosures. The murals are totally bizarre as well and the one on the left reminds me of a more scantily clad version of 'The Gimp' in Pulp Fiction.
The Big Monkey Show has a large, grassy yard with several climbing areas, but it seemed closed down. Maybe it was just shut for the off-season?
There's two Orangutan exhibits and they are both horrible. You can see two apes in my photo and a background wall painted with sunflowers.
A series of gibbon cages are just that...nothing but cages. I don't see any ropes, hammocks, or anything other than the actual cage, a miniscule ledge, and a stained cement floor. Some gibbons live for 50 years in captivity and that's something to think about while staring at this image.
The lowest point of the zoo is the Chimpanzee exhibit. It's dreadful and all cement, metal and swinging tires and would have been outdated half a century ago. The roof beams are rusty and I think there was maybe 4 chimps in total. One huge one, who can be seen sitting on a ledge in my photo, spat at me and I had to jump out of the way. The chimp then spat a second time and again just barely missed and I hurriedly strolled away. What a sad, boring life it must be to sit in that cage for probably years, if not decades. And what does it say about the individuals that keep the animals in these conditions? Is it a lack of money and education? Obviously that's part of the problem.
If the zoo could spruce up a few sections, such as this tall aviary for Painted Storks and Purple Swamphens, then some areas could be salvageable.
The Woolly-necked Stork aviary is built around a massive tree, with its branches protruding from the top, and it's honestly quite a unique structure. It clearly has potential, as do a number of smaller aviaries in this part of the zoo.
Summary:
Lopburi Zoo is obviously a prison for most of its inhabitants, even though some of the aviaries set further back in the acreage are nicely done. There's some big trees there, many wild lizards, but also a ton of empty and abandoned areas and so walking around this place is like being in a ghost town at times. Konstantin and I both hated the zoo and other than perhaps one other place (coming up tomorrow), it's arguably the worst zoo of the trip. All 8 primate species are in atrocious environments, equally as bad as anything at Pata Zoo. The bears, jackals, otters, multiple civet cages, etc., are all nauseating to see and we didn't spend long here as we just wanted to get the hell out.
As I said before, 5 of my first 8 zoos didn't even have images on ZooChat and so I had no idea what to expect, but seeing the Orangutans and Chimpanzees, so close to humans in many ways, in old-fashioned cages was distressing. The good news is that the first couple of days in Thailand had a few horrible duds, but things began to improve after that. In fact, the next morning we visited Thailand's best zoo, Khao Kheow Open Zoo, and it's fantastic and parts of that facility are world-class. It's miles better than the naff zoos of Pata and Lopburi, which I would highly recommend avoiding as they both appear to be severely struggling these days and one can only hope they end up closing in the future. Sending the animals to practically any other zoo would improve their lives.
Mammal species list (19 species): Orangutan, Chimpanzee, White-handed Gibbon, Indochinese Silvered Langur, Stump-tailed Macaque, Southern Pig-tailed Macaque, Rhesus Macaque, Crab-eating Macaque, Asiatic Black Bear, Golden Jackal, Small-clawed Otter, Meerkat, Common Palm Civet, Malayan Porcupine, Large/Indomalayan Bamboo Rat, Javan Rusa Deer, Axis Deer, Hog Deer and Eld’s Deer.
DAY 1: Friday, August 2nd
1- Bangkok Snake Farm (Bangkok, Thailand)
2- Peuan Deratchan Mini Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
3- Bangkok Butterfly Garden (Bangkok, Thailand)
4- Pata Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
5- Sea Life Bangkok Ocean World (Bangkok, Thailand)
DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
6- Wildlife Rescue Center No. 1 (Nakhon Nayok, Thailand)
7- Sriayuthaya Lion Park (Nong Khanak, Thailand)
8- Lopburi Zoo (Lopburi, Thailand)
Two days done...up next is Khao Kheow Open Zoo.
Nile Hippo Expert
Well-Known Member
I'm guessing Khao Kheow Open Zoo was the busiest zoo you went because thousands of people go there see one particular animal of the less cool species of a certain species and goes by the name of Moo Deng.DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
We left Sriayuthaya Lion Park and its 61 mammal species, including a whopping 28 primate species, and the driver took Konstantin and I an hour south to the city of Lopburi. Apparently this part of Thailand is famous for its thousands of Crab-eating Macaques (also called Long-tailed Macaques) that are prevalent in the area, and we saw many scrambling over ruins in the midst of the city's core. By having a driver, it made transportation very easy and with two of us the cost was obviously 50% what it would be for a solo traveller and so we felt it was quite manageable. The idea of waiting around for buses and trains was not something we wished to do early in the trip, although later on when we covered vast distances we would use both those modes of transportation. While being driven around, with drivers who mainly spoke very limited English, we were able to watch the countryside disappear as we made our way through an urban area that seemed to be quite poor, with lots of dilapidated buildings and wild monkeys absolutely everywhere. You really don't have to travel too far to see wildlife in Southeast Asia.
Zoo/Aquarium #8: Lopburi Zoo (Lopburi, Thailand)
Remember when I said there was a total of 3-4 stinkers on this trip? Well, Lopburi Zoo is one of them and it's a ghastly zoo. It has early morning hours, and literally 10 of the 19 zoos I visited in Thailand opened at either 8:00 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. Has it always been like that in Thailand? Perhaps visitors are up and about in order to beat the afternoon heat and occasional hour-long thunderstorm? Lopburi Zoo is also open late and Konstantin and I were there until probably near to the 6:00 p.m. closing time as it was a very long day with our three zoo visits and afterwards we had a 2.5 hour drive all the way back to our rented apartment in Bangkok. We actually arrived late at night, grabbed a McDonald's meal, and bought cheap ponchos from a convenience store as the rain bucketed down at a tremendous speed. Rain in the tropics can hurtle down so fast that it can hurt a little as it strikes you, but usually after a brief period of time the rain stops and there's the feeling that the temperature is hotter than it was before.
We hardly knew a thing about this zoo, as if you look on TripAdvisor you can see that there's been ONE review in the past 7 years! What I produce here, along with my 89 photos in the 'Thailand - Other' section of the ZooChat gallery, will likely be the definitive review of this dump for many years to come. Already, 5 of the first 8 zoos I've reviewed in this thread don't even have a dedicated photo gallery on this site. You name an obscure zoo and I'll visit it because no one else will...haha!
So, walking into Lopburi Zoo, I had no clue what species were there, if there would be any rarities, or if the zoo would be a good one or a bad one. In fact, locating an accurate opening date (1940?) and size (25 acres?) is extremely difficult. My fingers were crossed. The typically grandiose Southeast Asian zoo entrance greeted us with its huge fake tree logs and numerous animal sculptures.
There's a bunch of kiddie-themed items near the entrance, plus 3 Marvel characters!
Things begin well enough, with paddocks for species such as Axis Deer (below), Hog Deer, Javan Rusa Deer, Eld's Deer and Cassowary. There's plenty of trees and a nice visitor boardwalk around this zone. After that, it's pretty much all downhill.
Eld's/Brow-antlered Deer enclosure:
There's a couple of turtle pools, mostly containing Yellow-headed Temple Turtles, with an outrageous number of chelonians.
There's a few pits for a variety of smaller animals, including this open-topped one for Monocled Cobras.
The zoo has two Small-clawed Otter exhibits that are both small, stinky, filled with brown water and with very basic accommodation. I think that the keepers must just leap down from the wall to get inside to clean out the enclosure. That's if it ever gets cleaned!
Here's a half-decent enclosure, painted with garish colours, for a couple of Saltwater Crocodiles. Nearby, there's also Siamese Crocodiles, Reticulated Pythons and Green Iguanas in a reptile zone.
Seeing a Golden Jackal, a true rarity for me, in such a tiny, barbaric space that was half-flooded with water, was rather depressing.
A row of pheasant aviaries are possibly as bare as they could be, with several of the cages devoid of almost anything.
A row of macaque cages for 4 species (Stump-tailed, Crab-eating, Southern Pig-tailed, Rhesus) are atrocious, being ultra-tiny and with almost nothing inside any of them.
There's a few abandoned exhibits scattered around the zoo's grounds and several are now used for storage spaces.
This long row once consisted of perhaps 10 small animal exhibits...all empty now and that's likely for the best.
We saw a couple of Asiatic Black Bears in a grim pair of joined cages, all cement and bars and dark, dire little enclosures. The murals are totally bizarre as well and the one on the left reminds me of a more scantily clad version of 'The Gimp' in Pulp Fiction.
The Big Monkey Show has a large, grassy yard with several climbing areas, but it seemed closed down. Maybe it was just shut for the off-season?
There's two Orangutan exhibits and they are both horrible. You can see two apes in my photo and a background wall painted with sunflowers.
A series of gibbon cages are just that...nothing but cages. I don't see any ropes, hammocks, or anything other than the actual cage, a miniscule ledge, and a stained cement floor. Some gibbons live for 50 years in captivity and that's something to think about while staring at this image.
The lowest point of the zoo is the Chimpanzee exhibit. It's dreadful and all cement, metal and swinging tires and would have been outdated half a century ago. The roof beams are rusty and I think there was maybe 4 chimps in total. One huge one, who can be seen sitting on a ledge in my photo, spat at me and I had to jump out of the way. The chimp then spat a second time and again just barely missed and I hurriedly strolled away. What a sad, boring life it must be to sit in that cage for probably years, if not decades. And what does it say about the individuals that keep the animals in these conditions? Is it a lack of money and education? Obviously that's part of the problem.
If the zoo could spruce up a few sections, such as this tall aviary for Painted Storks and Purple Swamphens, then some areas could be salvageable.
The Woolly-necked Stork aviary is built around a massive tree, with its branches protruding from the top, and it's honestly quite a unique structure. It clearly has potential, as do a number of smaller aviaries in this part of the zoo.
Summary:
Lopburi Zoo is obviously a prison for most of its inhabitants, even though some of the aviaries set further back in the acreage are nicely done. There's some big trees there, many wild lizards, but also a ton of empty and abandoned areas and so walking around this place is like being in a ghost town at times. Konstantin and I both hated the zoo and other than perhaps one other place (coming up tomorrow), it's arguably the worst zoo of the trip. All 8 primate species are in atrocious environments, equally as bad as anything at Pata Zoo. The bears, jackals, otters, multiple civet cages, etc., are all nauseating to see and we didn't spend long here as we just wanted to get the hell out.
As I said before, 5 of my first 8 zoos didn't even have images on ZooChat and so I had no idea what to expect, but seeing the Orangutans and Chimpanzees, so close to humans in many ways, in old-fashioned cages was distressing. The good news is that the first couple of days in Thailand had a few horrible duds, but things began to improve after that. In fact, the next morning we visited Thailand's best zoo, Khao Kheow Open Zoo, and it's fantastic and parts of that facility are world-class. It's miles better than the naff zoos of Pata and Lopburi, which I would highly recommend avoiding as they both appear to be severely struggling these days and one can only hope they end up closing in the future. Sending the animals to practically any other zoo would improve their lives.
Mammal species list (19 species): Orangutan, Chimpanzee, White-handed Gibbon, Indochinese Silvered Langur, Stump-tailed Macaque, Southern Pig-tailed Macaque, Rhesus Macaque, Crab-eating Macaque, Asiatic Black Bear, Golden Jackal, Small-clawed Otter, Meerkat, Common Palm Civet, Malayan Porcupine, Large/Indomalayan Bamboo Rat, Javan Rusa Deer, Axis Deer, Hog Deer and Eld’s Deer.
DAY 1: Friday, August 2nd
1- Bangkok Snake Farm (Bangkok, Thailand)
2- Peuan Deratchan Mini Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
3- Bangkok Butterfly Garden (Bangkok, Thailand)
4- Pata Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
5- Sea Life Bangkok Ocean World (Bangkok, Thailand)
DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
6- Wildlife Rescue Center No. 1 (Nakhon Nayok, Thailand)
7- Sriayuthaya Lion Park (Nong Khanak, Thailand)
8- Lopburi Zoo (Lopburi, Thailand)
Two days done...up next is Khao Kheow Open Zoo.
Flat headed cat
Well-Known Member
In 2024, Khao Kheow Open Zoo will be the zoo with the most tourists in Thailand. If this year's trend continues, it is thought that it will still be the zoo with the most tourists in Thailand.
Flat headed cat
Well-Known Member
Over the years, the Wildlife Friends Foundation has been trying to help animals from Lopburi Zoo, especially chimpanzees, but due to some procedures in the Thai government, they still cannot be removed Lopburi Zoo is under the care of the Royal Thai Army, which lacks expertise in zoo management.
Wonderfull reading of your trip and how true is your preface as a prelude to day 2.
However, drugged leashed/chained big cats in such numbers was definitely not something I expected. That awful chimpanzee cage, on the other hand, was.
Those last two round aviaries would not look out of place in many European zoo if thoroughly refurbished.
However, drugged leashed/chained big cats in such numbers was definitely not something I expected. That awful chimpanzee cage, on the other hand, was.
Those last two round aviaries would not look out of place in many European zoo if thoroughly refurbished.
It has been almost a week since Zz123 posted this and I would like to second this as someone from the other side of the world (or from the other of the Pacific Ocean). Zoos in developing countries still need to improve a lot and, unfortunately, many professionals have old-school views about animal exhibitry.
You may ask Brazilian users about how they feel everytime a government-owned zoo announces it will go through "renovations" and they'll surely tell you they are not very excited for the upcoming results. Of course, I am generalizing because a few zoos either do follow a modern concept or have the money to give their residents better homes.
However, there are crucial differences between Latin America and Asia.
I have come to notice most Asian countries pale in comparison when it comes to animal ethics (I mean, chained elephants and drugged tigers are still common attractions in Thailand). However, the zoos on the other side of the Pacific (mostly in China and Thailand) have way more money to improve their exhibits, so I'd say they're faring better at building top-notch enclosures than South American zoos are.
Holy moly, that is a huge primate collection! Of course, their Asian primates steal the show, but I'm more surprised about the zoo's golden-bellied mangabeys! How did they get there.DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
I truly appreciate the input from members @Zz123 and @Flat headed cat as both are based in Thailand and they can offer up some insight into the zoological collections in that part of the world. There's a lot of Western bias on ZooChat and I don't mean that in a bad way but rather the fact that the bulk of the zoo nerds on this site live in Western nations where the zoos are mainly of a half-decent quality. When ZooBeat (the original name!) began, there was a high percentage of Australian zoo nerds, all living in a nation where there's very few roadside menageries. Nowadays, the UK is the overwhelming location of the highest percentage of zoo nerds on ZooChat and there's certainly a lot of wood-and-wire, privately-owned zoos there but no one is drugging big cats, chaining elephants or putting orangutans in clothes and walking them around as if they were children. I saw all of that just in Thailand and the focus for me was on the better zoos and not the truly naff ones. God only knows what goes on at some of the more obscure Thai collections.
So, just as in the case when zoo nerds jet off from Western nations to visit China or Japan or Thailand, or any other Asian country, there is an acclimation period where one realizes that it's perfectly normal for the public to be able to walk up and pet an elephant that happens to be strolling around a zoo, or there are dozens of opportunities to go into enclosures with fully-grown big cats, or you can caress a python, etc. That's just the way it is. There are zoos with new exhibits that they are proud of, but some folks here would be horrified to see those enclosures. The important thing to remember is that all these zoos in Asian nations are improving and you can tell that's the case from reading trip reports about Chinese, Japanese or Thai zoos, just to use those three nations as examples. These places, that many zoo nerds visit, are not getting worse and they are all getting better. Even the awful Pata Zoo is arguably better than it was, with the bears and big cats phased out and many new reptile terrariums and fish tanks being constructed. I can scarcely imagine how abysmal that zoo would have been a decade ago. Later in the trip, while looking at a small, rather poorly built Sun Bear grotto in Indonesia, someone told me that it was actually a "world-class habitat" because the bear had previously been at one of those absolutely demoniacal bear bile farm places and the animal couldn't even roll over in a cage the same size as its body.
Lastly, you must remember what else I've seen on my travels in supposedly progressive countries. I've visited a ghastly zoo in Arkansas with rows of tiny cement prisons for primates, and a reptile zoo in that same state with a kitchen door covering the American Alligator tank! I've seen a dozen Tigers in small, chain-link cages from the dark ages and that was at a 'sanctuary' in California. Or the 'Tiger King's Zoo' in Oklahoma with 200 big cats in small cages. Or a lot of Harbour Seals crammed into a foul-smelling indoor tank at an aquarium in Oregon. I could go on all day and not even mention the naff zoos of Wisconsin, and what I saw going around zoos in the USA has often been as bad as anywhere else. And each time, on practically every single occasion, I've known very little about the zoo in question. I visit once, document it all and spend hours typing up a report, and then I move on and never return even when I'm back in the local area.
Keeping all that information in perspective, let's look at yet another extensive zoo report from yours truly.
Zoo/Aquarium #7: Sriayuthaya Lion Park (Nong Khanak, Thailand)
After departing the wildlife rescue establishment, we got back into the car with the waiting driver and he drove us approximately 1.5 hours southeast to Nong Khanak. This area is around two hours from Bangkok. Several articles appear online stating that this is a new zoo that opened at the end of 2021, but that doesn’t seem accurate as there are certainly some old-school big cat cages that could well have been built decades ago. Just like the tour of Wildlife Rescue Centre No. 1, Konstantin and I knew next to nothing about this place. It's a zoo with a lot of potential, a lot of ambition, a tremendous primate collection, but hit-and-miss exhibitry and some glaring flaws. Konstantin and I had a great time walking around this zoo for a few hours in the sunshine, but there was a series of bittersweet moments at the end. I would guess that for 70% of our visit we were pleasantly surprised and then the last 30% left a bad taste in our mouths.
I uploaded more than 170 photos of this establishment onto ZooChat. You can locate them in the Thailand - Other gallery and I encourage readers to check them out as I can only include 20 photos as the maximum in each review.
A trend at many Southeast Asian zoos is to have a grandiose entrance and Sriayuthaya Lion Park is no different. All foreigners pay double the amount of a regular ticket, which is also the typical situation at many zoos. "Are you from Thailand? No? Okay, you pay twice each."
Zoos in Southeast Asia think nothing about spending a fortune on statues and entrances, while big cats are in dumpy cages.
There's a couple of large paddocks for Giraffes and Zebras and of course there's options to feed the animals for a minor amount of money. The substrate is mostly all sand here.
One of the highlights of this zoo is the fantastic Common Hippo exhibit, which is even larger than what is shown in my photo. The 'barn' is simply a covered area that's open to the elements on the sides, the land zone is huge and the pool is a decent size. There's two levels of viewing and this was my favourite exhibit in the zoo.
Another highlight is a whole series of crocodilian pools, where visitors can pay to use a fishing line to feed the animals. There's large pull-out areas for sunbathing, a lot of crocs and probably a half-dozen exhibits that all look like the one in my photo. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this zoo had 250 crocodilians in total, of several species, but there's hardly any signage in this section and in fact there's old signs mentioning Spotted Hyenas and a variety of big cats, so that makes me think that it's not in fact a brand-new zoo but a newly developed facility that has replaced an older zoo. Does anyone know the exact details?
The zoo also has a number of smaller mammal exhibits, such as this one for Lesser Mouse-deer, that have natural substrate (quite often sand) and some potted plants. There are enclosures for smaller animals such as Meerkats, Maras and Bat-eared Foxes all over the place. Perhaps tight on space, but nicely done.
The use of sand as a natural substrate is intriguing, but it does soak up urine and is cheap to utilize in animal enclosures. You can see a Giant Anteater in the back of its exhibit here.
I counted FIVE Raccoon exhibits, with all of them being naff little enclosures and this one was the best of the lot. Honestly though...it's not terrible by Southeast Asian standards.
There's a rather unique Green Anaconda exhibit and there's two snakes in the center of the photo.
There's lots of big pythons in small glass boxes as well. These are ex-pets, or confiscated animals, and of course there's opportunities for visitors to pay money to hold the snakes.
My guess is that these are both Eurasian Eagle Owls and they are tethered to the stands and they are able to be held for a small fee. Konstantin and I didn't participate in any of that kind of stuff during our visit and I'm surprised that no one objected to us taking numerous photos.
The primate collection is immense, covering 28 species. There's a number of rarities, such as these Black-shanked Douc Langurs:
An exhibit for Grizzled Tree Kangaroos is mixed in with all the primate enclosures:
Konstantin photographing some Red-faced Spider Monkeys:
There's a couple of Red-tailed Monkeys in this enclosure and you can see numerous other primate exhibits in the background.
For a small amount you can feed the Arapaima and I counted more than 20 of them in this single large tank.
As for the grim stuff, there's several large cages with drugged Tigers and Lions, plus an area with Ligers and another area (with ZERO barriers) containing a leashed Jaguar. It's possible for visitors to pay an extra fee and go inside the enclosures with all these big cats, including paying even more money to walk a Tiger around on a leash inside a fenced-off zone. Almost all the big cats were on short chains, lounging around on cement and not able to move more than a few feet in any direction. We saw one Tiger being walked and it was staggering a little and had copious amounts of saliva coming out of its mouth and so was obviously an example of a drugged cat. Many were very dozy and they probably just lay around on the cement until feeding time each day. Ugh.
Only 3 zoos out of the 59 I visited in Southeast Asia had Sloth Bears and this place was one of them. The single specimen is at the back and it's a bear that's almost all brown and yet it's clearly a Sloth Bear when seen in person.
A junky Chimpanzee cage:
We only watched the last two minutes of the Elephant Show and it certainly did not appeal to us. But, keep in mind that this arena was packed with families eating popcorn and cheering, as off to the left was a full stand filled with people. For local Thais, the Elephant Show might be the highlight of their visit. Konstantin and I were probably the only Westerners in this large, busy zoo and we have different perspectives on such things as old-fashioned animal shows.
Summary:
Sriayuthaya Lion Park has a fantastic entrance, a spacious, modern restaurant, several gift stands, and neatly laid out paths. It gives off the vibes of a brand-new zoo and much of it appears to have been built in the past few years and so in fact it is a brand-new zoo in many ways. The horticulture is tidy, there's friendly staff, free paper maps and lots of shady spots to get out of the heat and humidity that is everywhere in Thailand. That's all wonderful.
Konstantin and I are big primate fans and to see 28 primate species at a single zoo is quite extraordinary. This facility, which I'd never even heard of until maybe a couple of months before the trip as it was a very late addition to our itinerary, has more primate species than perhaps any zoo in North America. Barring a handful of dreadful monkey cages, and the chimps, almost all the primate enclosures are functional with many climbing opportunities. Nothing that great, but okay for the animals and close-up views of Black-shanked Douc Langurs, Red-shanked Douc Langurs, Mona Monkeys, Bearded Sakis and Golden-bellied Mangabeys is not to be missed for any zoo nerd!
With 61 mammal species in total, that's an impressive number and non primate-highlights would be the Common Hippo enclosure, some of the macropod exhibits and the ungulate paddocks were all perfectly fine.
What hurts this zoo badly, especially with Western eyes such as mine, is seeing the Asian Elephants dressed up in shows, the big cats tragically tied to metal stakes via short chains, the raptors and other birds tied to perches, and the big snakes in tiny glass boxes. Most of those are cultural things, as there's plenty of signs up at this zoo advertising the elephants and big cats and in fact we saw line-ups of people waiting to walk a Tiger on a leash. One of my photos in the gallery has a staff member sitting on his iPhone while just a few feet away, and with zero barriers, is a fully-grown Jaguar and it seems harsh to not give the big cats proper, modern facilities with grass and rocks rather than nothing but concrete. You could one day stop the elephant shows, stop drugging and chaining the cats, give the macaws some aviaries instead of being tied to perches, etc. These seem like easy fixes, but I think that in Thailand there's such an imbedded element to a few of these issues that it's difficult to see any changes being made.
Overall, this zoo is a mixed-bag but I feel that if it could clean up some glaring, awful sections, then there's hope for the future. Konstantin and I actually walked down into a construction section and there's a whole new row of very nice looking exhibits currently being built. Several appear to be yet more primate enclosures, but we spotted a few hornbills and so aviaries are also on the horizon. Here is a zoo that I would visit again if I was to ever go back to Thailand, perhaps a decade from now, as I feel that it being new and popular and with signs of progress spells hope for the future. It's really too bad that parts of the zoo leave a nasty lingering image, but will the big cats still be tied down 10 years from now? It's difficult to know what will happen.
Sriayuthaya Lion Park is a bit of a misnomer as there's not very many Lions (a few exhibits along one side), but it's clearly a very mammal heavy facility. There's zero insects, maybe only one fish tank, a large number of snakes and crocodilians but practically zero lizards or amphibians, nothing too notable for birds with some scattered aviaries and a walk-through Bird Dome, but a significant mammal collection that tops many major zoos I've been to.
Non-primate mammal species list (33 species): Asian Elephant, Common Hippo, Giraffe, Plains Zebra, Aoudad, Southern Red Muntjac, Javan Rusa Deer, Lesser Mouse-deer, Alpaca, Llama, Tiger, African Lion, Jaguar, Cougar, Caracal, Serval, Sand Cat, Sloth Bear, Bat-eared Fox, Giant Anteater, Tamandua, Aardvark, Meerkat, Binturong, Raccoon, Coati, Mara, Prairie Dog, Two-toed Sloth, Red Kangaroo, Grizzled Tree Kangaroo, Red-necked Wallaby and Dusky Pademelon.
Primate species list (28 species): Orangutan, Chimpanzee, Siamang, White-handed Gibbon, White-cheeked Gibbon, Red-shanked Douc Langur, Black-shanked Douc Langur, Stump-tailed Macaque, Crab-eating Macaque, Southern Pig-tailed Macaque, Sulawesi Crested Macaque, Colobus Monkey, De Brazza’s Monkey, Black-crested Mangabey, Golden-bellied Mangabey, Red-faced Spider Monkey, Bearded Saki, Red-tailed Monkey, Mona Monkey, Squirrel Monkey, Tufted Capuchin, Golden-handed Tamarin, Cotton-top Tamarin, Common Marmoset, White-headed Marmoset, Ring-tailed Lemur, Black-and-white Ruffed Lemur and Silvery Greater Galago.
DAY 1: Friday, August 2nd
1- Bangkok Snake Farm (Bangkok, Thailand)
2- Peuan Deratchan Mini Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
3- Bangkok Butterfly Garden (Bangkok, Thailand)
4- Pata Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
5- Sea Life Bangkok Ocean World (Bangkok, Thailand)
DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
6- Wildlife Rescue Center No. 1 (Nakhon Nayok, Thailand)
7- Sriayuthaya Lion Park (Nong Khanak, Thailand)
8- ??
Also, I am longing to see a grizzled tree-kangaroo (or any tree-kangaroo, for that matter). My local zoo had Dendrolagus inustus from 1975 to around 1991, with a few births taking place, but I have never the chance to see one of them (I was born in 2006).
Last edited:
It seems developing countries face the same issues when it comes to good and bad zoos (and exhibits).DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
We left Sriayuthaya Lion Park and its 61 mammal species, including a whopping 28 primate species, and the driver took Konstantin and I an hour south to the city of Lopburi. Apparently this part of Thailand is famous for its thousands of Crab-eating Macaques (also called Long-tailed Macaques) that are prevalent in the area, and we saw many scrambling over ruins in the midst of the city's core. By having a driver, it made transportation very easy and with two of us the cost was obviously 50% what it would be for a solo traveller and so we felt it was quite manageable. The idea of waiting around for buses and trains was not something we wished to do early in the trip, although later on when we covered vast distances we would use both those modes of transportation. While being driven around, with drivers who mainly spoke very limited English, we were able to watch the countryside disappear as we made our way through an urban area that seemed to be quite poor, with lots of dilapidated buildings and wild monkeys absolutely everywhere. You really don't have to travel too far to see wildlife in Southeast Asia.
Zoo/Aquarium #8: Lopburi Zoo (Lopburi, Thailand)
Remember when I said there was a total of 3-4 stinkers on this trip? Well, Lopburi Zoo is one of them and it's a ghastly zoo. It has early morning hours, and literally 10 of the 19 zoos I visited in Thailand opened at either 8:00 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. Has it always been like that in Thailand? Perhaps visitors are up and about in order to beat the afternoon heat and occasional hour-long thunderstorm? Lopburi Zoo is also open late and Konstantin and I were there until probably near to the 6:00 p.m. closing time as it was a very long day with our three zoo visits and afterwards we had a 2.5 hour drive all the way back to our rented apartment in Bangkok. We actually arrived late at night, grabbed a McDonald's meal, and bought cheap ponchos from a convenience store as the rain bucketed down at a tremendous speed. Rain in the tropics can hurtle down so fast that it can hurt a little as it strikes you, but usually after a brief period of time the rain stops and there's the feeling that the temperature is hotter than it was before.
We hardly knew a thing about this zoo, as if you look on TripAdvisor you can see that there's been ONE review in the past 7 years! What I produce here, along with my 89 photos in the 'Thailand - Other' section of the ZooChat gallery, will likely be the definitive review of this dump for many years to come. Already, 5 of the first 8 zoos I've reviewed in this thread don't even have a dedicated photo gallery on this site. You name an obscure zoo and I'll visit it because no one else will...haha!
So, walking into Lopburi Zoo, I had no clue what species were there, if there would be any rarities, or if the zoo would be a good one or a bad one. In fact, locating an accurate opening date (1940?) and size (25 acres?) is extremely difficult. My fingers were crossed. The typically grandiose Southeast Asian zoo entrance greeted us with its huge fake tree logs and numerous animal sculptures.
There's a bunch of kiddie-themed items near the entrance, plus 3 Marvel characters!
Things begin well enough, with paddocks for species such as Axis Deer (below), Hog Deer, Javan Rusa Deer, Eld's Deer and Cassowary. There's plenty of trees and a nice visitor boardwalk around this zone. After that, it's pretty much all downhill.
Eld's/Brow-antlered Deer enclosure:
There's a couple of turtle pools, mostly containing Yellow-headed Temple Turtles, with an outrageous number of chelonians.
There's a few pits for a variety of smaller animals, including this open-topped one for Monocled Cobras.
The zoo has two Small-clawed Otter exhibits that are both small, stinky, filled with brown water and with very basic accommodation. I think that the keepers must just leap down from the wall to get inside to clean out the enclosure. That's if it ever gets cleaned!
Here's a half-decent enclosure, painted with garish colours, for a couple of Saltwater Crocodiles. Nearby, there's also Siamese Crocodiles, Reticulated Pythons and Green Iguanas in a reptile zone.
Seeing a Golden Jackal, a true rarity for me, in such a tiny, barbaric space that was half-flooded with water, was rather depressing.
A row of pheasant aviaries are possibly as bare as they could be, with several of the cages devoid of almost anything.
A row of macaque cages for 4 species (Stump-tailed, Crab-eating, Southern Pig-tailed, Rhesus) are atrocious, being ultra-tiny and with almost nothing inside any of them.
There's a few abandoned exhibits scattered around the zoo's grounds and several are now used for storage spaces.
This long row once consisted of perhaps 10 small animal exhibits...all empty now and that's likely for the best.
We saw a couple of Asiatic Black Bears in a grim pair of joined cages, all cement and bars and dark, dire little enclosures. The murals are totally bizarre as well and the one on the left reminds me of a more scantily clad version of 'The Gimp' in Pulp Fiction.
The Big Monkey Show has a large, grassy yard with several climbing areas, but it seemed closed down. Maybe it was just shut for the off-season?
There's two Orangutan exhibits and they are both horrible. You can see two apes in my photo and a background wall painted with sunflowers.
A series of gibbon cages are just that...nothing but cages. I don't see any ropes, hammocks, or anything other than the actual cage, a miniscule ledge, and a stained cement floor. Some gibbons live for 50 years in captivity and that's something to think about while staring at this image.
The lowest point of the zoo is the Chimpanzee exhibit. It's dreadful and all cement, metal and swinging tires and would have been outdated half a century ago. The roof beams are rusty and I think there was maybe 4 chimps in total. One huge one, who can be seen sitting on a ledge in my photo, spat at me and I had to jump out of the way. The chimp then spat a second time and again just barely missed and I hurriedly strolled away. What a sad, boring life it must be to sit in that cage for probably years, if not decades. And what does it say about the individuals that keep the animals in these conditions? Is it a lack of money and education? Obviously that's part of the problem.
If the zoo could spruce up a few sections, such as this tall aviary for Painted Storks and Purple Swamphens, then some areas could be salvageable.
The Woolly-necked Stork aviary is built around a massive tree, with its branches protruding from the top, and it's honestly quite a unique structure. It clearly has potential, as do a number of smaller aviaries in this part of the zoo.
Summary:
Lopburi Zoo is obviously a prison for most of its inhabitants, even though some of the aviaries set further back in the acreage are nicely done. There's some big trees there, many wild lizards, but also a ton of empty and abandoned areas and so walking around this place is like being in a ghost town at times. Konstantin and I both hated the zoo and other than perhaps one other place (coming up tomorrow), it's arguably the worst zoo of the trip. All 8 primate species are in atrocious environments, equally as bad as anything at Pata Zoo. The bears, jackals, otters, multiple civet cages, etc., are all nauseating to see and we didn't spend long here as we just wanted to get the hell out.
As I said before, 5 of my first 8 zoos didn't even have images on ZooChat and so I had no idea what to expect, but seeing the Orangutans and Chimpanzees, so close to humans in many ways, in old-fashioned cages was distressing. The good news is that the first couple of days in Thailand had a few horrible duds, but things began to improve after that. In fact, the next morning we visited Thailand's best zoo, Khao Kheow Open Zoo, and it's fantastic and parts of that facility are world-class. It's miles better than the naff zoos of Pata and Lopburi, which I would highly recommend avoiding as they both appear to be severely struggling these days and one can only hope they end up closing in the future. Sending the animals to practically any other zoo would improve their lives.
Mammal species list (19 species): Orangutan, Chimpanzee, White-handed Gibbon, Indochinese Silvered Langur, Stump-tailed Macaque, Southern Pig-tailed Macaque, Rhesus Macaque, Crab-eating Macaque, Asiatic Black Bear, Golden Jackal, Small-clawed Otter, Meerkat, Common Palm Civet, Malayan Porcupine, Large/Indomalayan Bamboo Rat, Javan Rusa Deer, Axis Deer, Hog Deer and Eld’s Deer.
DAY 1: Friday, August 2nd
1- Bangkok Snake Farm (Bangkok, Thailand)
2- Peuan Deratchan Mini Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
3- Bangkok Butterfly Garden (Bangkok, Thailand)
4- Pata Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
5- Sea Life Bangkok Ocean World (Bangkok, Thailand)
DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
6- Wildlife Rescue Center No. 1 (Nakhon Nayok, Thailand)
7- Sriayuthaya Lion Park (Nong Khanak, Thailand)
8- Lopburi Zoo (Lopburi, Thailand)
Two days done...up next is Khao Kheow Open Zoo.
Government-owned zoos, which tend to be way older than their privately-owned counterparts, usually get the short end of the stick when it comes to exhibitry. That usually happens because, as pointed out by Zz123, they lack the resources to go through major reforms or many professionals still have old-fashioned views about how zoos should work. Most state-owned Brazilian parks, however, seem to have better exhibitry than their Asian counterparts.
Also: @snowleopard I was not notified about your new posts, so I apologize for writing three messages one after the other.
DAY 3: Sunday, August 4th
After visiting 5 zoos on my first day, all in and around Bangkok, then 4 zoos on the second day with Konstantin (@twilighter), all approximately two hours north of Bangkok, on our third day we visited 4 zoos to the south of Bangkok. A day centrally, a day north and a day south. For the 3rd consecutive day, it was a hired driver who picked us up from our rented apartment and took us 1.5 hours south to Khao Kheow Open Zoo, which has early morning hours, and after a solid 6 hours at that notable establishment, the driver then drove us a further hour south and we toured a trio of smaller zoos all in Pattaya. We were picked up in the morning before 7:00 a.m. and we didn't get back to the Bangkok apartment until 9:00 p.m. and therefore it was obviously an epically long, 14-hour day of 4 zoos. What else would one do in Thailand?
One thing that is already apparent, is that a Snowleopard Road Trip is not for the faint of heart and it means walking 20,000 steps day-after-day for weeks on end. I come back from these trips with exhausted muscles, destroyed shoes and plenty of lifetime memories.
Zoo/Aquarium #9: Khao Kheow Open Zoo (Chon Buri, Thailand) - PART 1 of 3
Here is one of the great zoos of Southeast Asia and this is the best zoo in Thailand. It’s a relatively new facility, opening in 1978, and an absolutely massive place that is around 2,000 acres/800 hectares and one of the largest zoos on the planet. I’d be curious to know how much acreage is actually set aside for the zoo’s exhibits and pathways, as there’s jungle everywhere and the atmosphere of being inside a jungle zoo is fantastic. KK Zoo is divided into two distinct areas, Zone 1 (green) and Zone 2 (pink). It’s possible to walk around Zone 1, but there are some hilly sections and Konstantin and I rented a golf cart as we knew that we’d need it for Zone 2 anyway. Zone 2 is massive and not walkable at all, so either one’s personal vehicle or a golf cart is the only way to access this enormous area. The way of seeing the zoo is to drive a golf cart, get out and look around at a couple of exhibits, jump back into the golf cart and head off to the next section, repeated for 6 hours. If you stayed for presentations, or animal shows, or had a leisurely lunch, or had kids who spent time at a playground, or spent a long time in the enormous Bird Aviary, then I can imagine some zoo nerds would be here from open to close.
I uploaded approximately 220 photos into the gallery and I'm going to divide my comprehensive review of KK Zoo into THREE parts. This is a zoo that if it were picked up and plunked down in North America then it would be one of the best zoos on the continent.
The zoo's map shows pathways in Zone 1 (green - walkable) and Zone 2 (pink - inaccessible by foot) as well as the 8:00 a.m. opening time. Brilliant!
@twilighter
One amazing thing about KK Zoo is its setting. There is jungle everywhere and the amount of wildlife that invades the zoo must be startling. I can only imagine the lizards and snakes that must be seen by visitors throughout the year, let alone the ungulates and primates. We saw two huge Asian Monitor Lizards, both at least 5 feet long from nose to tail and one of them was swimming in the Chimpanzee moat. I would estimate that we saw at least a few hundred Crab-eating Macaques during our visit. In fact, these primates are pests and near the African Savanna we saw a keeper shooting what appeared to either be an air gun or some kind of pellet gun at a troop of the macaques. The monkeys are invariably drawn to food and of course at a zoo there is plenty of food in all directions, both for humans and captive animals. Early on, some macaques jumped on our golf cart and stole half a chocolate bar that I had sitting there wrapped up in a bag, which also never returned. Later on, we had our water bottles taken and Konstantin and I understandably didn’t want to drink from them after some macaques had been sucking on the nozzles.
The monkeys became a bit of a pain, as we couldn’t leave anything on the golf cart or else it would be ransacked and so at each stop we had to make sure to bring our hats, zoo maps, etc., with us or else our stuff would disappear into the jungle. The Crab-eating Macaques are bold, showing up on playgrounds, near the entrance, even in a group of 50 near the row of Binturong exhibits. Everywhere is pure jungle, so the monkeys can effortlessly disappear into the rainforest if a human approaches. The big males are bold and inquisitive; thus, they are not easily scared away and in truth it’s best to steer clear of them. For Konstantin and I, the army of Crab-eating Macaques at the zoo weren’t really a major issue once we understood that we couldn’t leave anything on the golf cart. However, for families with little kids they had to make sure to shove everything into a backpack and carry their stuff around with them or else the macaques would descend on their golf carts with delight.
The African Savanna has a brilliant, huge exhibit that's full of Crab-eating Macaques as well as captive exotic species such as Giraffe, Common Eland, Nyala, Blackbuck, Blue Wildebeest, Gemsbok and Ostrich. There's multiple vantage points for visitor viewing and lush jungle as a backdrop and I loved it.
Nearby, one can find an extensive Common Hippo complex with a large pool and a spacious amount of land area. It's a very nice habitat, with the pool shaded from the burning sunshine.
A modern, good-sized Lion exhibit is close to the sprawling savanna. I bet the rampaging macaques avoid this zone! There's also species such as White Rhinos, Plains Zebras, Meerkats, a flamingo pool (one of two flamingo exhibits at this zoo), Ring-tailed Lemurs and Spotted Hyenas in the top-notch African area. This whole section is absolutely first class.
You can see two Spotted Hyenas in their multi-level enclosure set against a wall of jungle. The animals have access to the lower and upper levels, as does a Tiger in an adjacent exhibit.
Close by are several Asian species, all in exemplary exhibits. An enclosure for Asiatic Black Bears stretches even farther back than what is shown in my photo and it's one of the best bear exhibits I saw on the trip.
There's also a great exhibit for Sun Bears and they were Kung Fu fighting.
We saw several Red-shanked Douc Langurs, in multiple exhibits, in Zone 1 of the zoo. These are very tall enclosures with glass bottoms and netted tops. There's an absolute minimum of FIVE exhibits for Red-shanked Douc Langurs at this zoo and in the space of a few hours I saw more of these monkeys than I had in my lifetime! Everywhere are keepers who are not planting vegetation as they would in European and North American zoos, but instead they have chainsaws and are cutting back the encroaching jungle that threatens to take over everything.
Zone 1 also has Forest of Asia, an interesting building that allows visitors to walk into a large structure and continue down a narrow corridor while inside a spacious aviary. I don't have a species lineup as the bird signage was quite sparse, but in terms of mammals this area has Bengal Slow Loris, Southern Red Muntjac and outdoor, nearby exhibits for several larger species.
Mainland Serow are found here in a large exhibit with rocks and shade and bumpy jungle tree roots. Wild monkeys can sometimes be seen up in the treetops.
Malayan Tapirs, Malayan Porcupines, Binturongs (the zoo has loads of these guys) and Siamese Crocodiles are all found next to the Forest of Asia building in a series of excellent exhibits.
Of course, KK Zoo has Asian Elephants and here's my photo that provides an overview of the exhibit. The nearest elephant, on the right-hand side, was chained to that location, a few elephants were free to wander around their enclosure, and then the enormous elephant at the very back was also chained to one spot. This zoo has been chaining its male elephants for more years than I care to contemplate, which is a tragedy in many ways, and there's more than 20 photos in the gallery of the zoo's elephants if one wishes to see which individuals are chained throughout the day and which ones are unchained. Apparently, WAZA is aware of the situation and for safety reasons the big males are kept on chains, but I have no idea if they are let loose at night (maybe when the females are put inside?) or if the males are chained for most of their lives. This zoo desperately needs a bull elephant enclosure.
There's an Elephant Learning Center, which is like a cool elephant museum, and KK Zoo is renowned for having underwater viewing of elephants during specific time slots. Also, the elephant paddock had a tremendous herd of FIFTY Hog Deer in with the elephants and the enclosure is much larger than what is shown in my photo.
A chained bull with massive tusks:
We didn't stick around for the ultra-popular underwater viewing of the Asian Elephants, as there are set time slots, but here's what it looks like.
@DannySG
There's also a Zoology Discovery Center, which is essentially a Reptile House with many boring, common species such as Leopard Geckos, Green Iguanas and Bearded Dragons.
Here's the memorable interior:
Up next will be PART TWO and PART THREE of my KK Zoo review, which will mainly look at Zone 2 which is inaccessible by foot. All visitors must either drive their own vehicle or rent a golf cart for that half of the zoo as it's a vast area of land. Zone 2 includes a world-class pair of hillside habitats for Banteng and Gaur, an above-average Australian area, top-notch enclosures for Chimpanzees and Orangutans, Tiger Valley with its 10 feline species, and I will also discuss the gigantic Bird Aviary (which is fantastic) and some surrounding aviaries and other smaller exhibits that are found in Zone 1. Stay tuned...
The itinerary so far:
DAY 1: Friday, August 2nd
1- Bangkok Snake Farm (Bangkok, Thailand)
2- Peuan Deratchan Mini Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
3- Bangkok Butterfly Garden (Bangkok, Thailand)
4- Pata Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
5- Sea Life Bangkok Ocean World (Bangkok, Thailand)
DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
6- Wildlife Rescue Center No. 1 (Nakhon Nayok, Thailand)
7- Sriayuthaya Lion Park (Nong Khanak, Thailand)
8- Lopburi Zoo (Lopburi, Thailand)
DAY 3: Sunday, August 4th
9- Khao Kheow Open Zoo (Chon Buri, Thailand) 3-part review
10- ??
11- ??
12- ??
After visiting 5 zoos on my first day, all in and around Bangkok, then 4 zoos on the second day with Konstantin (@twilighter), all approximately two hours north of Bangkok, on our third day we visited 4 zoos to the south of Bangkok. A day centrally, a day north and a day south. For the 3rd consecutive day, it was a hired driver who picked us up from our rented apartment and took us 1.5 hours south to Khao Kheow Open Zoo, which has early morning hours, and after a solid 6 hours at that notable establishment, the driver then drove us a further hour south and we toured a trio of smaller zoos all in Pattaya. We were picked up in the morning before 7:00 a.m. and we didn't get back to the Bangkok apartment until 9:00 p.m. and therefore it was obviously an epically long, 14-hour day of 4 zoos. What else would one do in Thailand?
One thing that is already apparent, is that a Snowleopard Road Trip is not for the faint of heart and it means walking 20,000 steps day-after-day for weeks on end. I come back from these trips with exhausted muscles, destroyed shoes and plenty of lifetime memories.Zoo/Aquarium #9: Khao Kheow Open Zoo (Chon Buri, Thailand) - PART 1 of 3
Here is one of the great zoos of Southeast Asia and this is the best zoo in Thailand. It’s a relatively new facility, opening in 1978, and an absolutely massive place that is around 2,000 acres/800 hectares and one of the largest zoos on the planet. I’d be curious to know how much acreage is actually set aside for the zoo’s exhibits and pathways, as there’s jungle everywhere and the atmosphere of being inside a jungle zoo is fantastic. KK Zoo is divided into two distinct areas, Zone 1 (green) and Zone 2 (pink). It’s possible to walk around Zone 1, but there are some hilly sections and Konstantin and I rented a golf cart as we knew that we’d need it for Zone 2 anyway. Zone 2 is massive and not walkable at all, so either one’s personal vehicle or a golf cart is the only way to access this enormous area. The way of seeing the zoo is to drive a golf cart, get out and look around at a couple of exhibits, jump back into the golf cart and head off to the next section, repeated for 6 hours. If you stayed for presentations, or animal shows, or had a leisurely lunch, or had kids who spent time at a playground, or spent a long time in the enormous Bird Aviary, then I can imagine some zoo nerds would be here from open to close.
I uploaded approximately 220 photos into the gallery and I'm going to divide my comprehensive review of KK Zoo into THREE parts. This is a zoo that if it were picked up and plunked down in North America then it would be one of the best zoos on the continent.
The zoo's map shows pathways in Zone 1 (green - walkable) and Zone 2 (pink - inaccessible by foot) as well as the 8:00 a.m. opening time. Brilliant!
@twilighter
One amazing thing about KK Zoo is its setting. There is jungle everywhere and the amount of wildlife that invades the zoo must be startling. I can only imagine the lizards and snakes that must be seen by visitors throughout the year, let alone the ungulates and primates. We saw two huge Asian Monitor Lizards, both at least 5 feet long from nose to tail and one of them was swimming in the Chimpanzee moat. I would estimate that we saw at least a few hundred Crab-eating Macaques during our visit. In fact, these primates are pests and near the African Savanna we saw a keeper shooting what appeared to either be an air gun or some kind of pellet gun at a troop of the macaques. The monkeys are invariably drawn to food and of course at a zoo there is plenty of food in all directions, both for humans and captive animals. Early on, some macaques jumped on our golf cart and stole half a chocolate bar that I had sitting there wrapped up in a bag, which also never returned. Later on, we had our water bottles taken and Konstantin and I understandably didn’t want to drink from them after some macaques had been sucking on the nozzles.
The monkeys became a bit of a pain, as we couldn’t leave anything on the golf cart or else it would be ransacked and so at each stop we had to make sure to bring our hats, zoo maps, etc., with us or else our stuff would disappear into the jungle. The Crab-eating Macaques are bold, showing up on playgrounds, near the entrance, even in a group of 50 near the row of Binturong exhibits. Everywhere is pure jungle, so the monkeys can effortlessly disappear into the rainforest if a human approaches. The big males are bold and inquisitive; thus, they are not easily scared away and in truth it’s best to steer clear of them. For Konstantin and I, the army of Crab-eating Macaques at the zoo weren’t really a major issue once we understood that we couldn’t leave anything on the golf cart. However, for families with little kids they had to make sure to shove everything into a backpack and carry their stuff around with them or else the macaques would descend on their golf carts with delight.
The African Savanna has a brilliant, huge exhibit that's full of Crab-eating Macaques as well as captive exotic species such as Giraffe, Common Eland, Nyala, Blackbuck, Blue Wildebeest, Gemsbok and Ostrich. There's multiple vantage points for visitor viewing and lush jungle as a backdrop and I loved it.
Nearby, one can find an extensive Common Hippo complex with a large pool and a spacious amount of land area. It's a very nice habitat, with the pool shaded from the burning sunshine.
A modern, good-sized Lion exhibit is close to the sprawling savanna. I bet the rampaging macaques avoid this zone! There's also species such as White Rhinos, Plains Zebras, Meerkats, a flamingo pool (one of two flamingo exhibits at this zoo), Ring-tailed Lemurs and Spotted Hyenas in the top-notch African area. This whole section is absolutely first class.
You can see two Spotted Hyenas in their multi-level enclosure set against a wall of jungle. The animals have access to the lower and upper levels, as does a Tiger in an adjacent exhibit.
Close by are several Asian species, all in exemplary exhibits. An enclosure for Asiatic Black Bears stretches even farther back than what is shown in my photo and it's one of the best bear exhibits I saw on the trip.
There's also a great exhibit for Sun Bears and they were Kung Fu fighting.
We saw several Red-shanked Douc Langurs, in multiple exhibits, in Zone 1 of the zoo. These are very tall enclosures with glass bottoms and netted tops. There's an absolute minimum of FIVE exhibits for Red-shanked Douc Langurs at this zoo and in the space of a few hours I saw more of these monkeys than I had in my lifetime! Everywhere are keepers who are not planting vegetation as they would in European and North American zoos, but instead they have chainsaws and are cutting back the encroaching jungle that threatens to take over everything.
Zone 1 also has Forest of Asia, an interesting building that allows visitors to walk into a large structure and continue down a narrow corridor while inside a spacious aviary. I don't have a species lineup as the bird signage was quite sparse, but in terms of mammals this area has Bengal Slow Loris, Southern Red Muntjac and outdoor, nearby exhibits for several larger species.
Mainland Serow are found here in a large exhibit with rocks and shade and bumpy jungle tree roots. Wild monkeys can sometimes be seen up in the treetops.
Malayan Tapirs, Malayan Porcupines, Binturongs (the zoo has loads of these guys) and Siamese Crocodiles are all found next to the Forest of Asia building in a series of excellent exhibits.
Of course, KK Zoo has Asian Elephants and here's my photo that provides an overview of the exhibit. The nearest elephant, on the right-hand side, was chained to that location, a few elephants were free to wander around their enclosure, and then the enormous elephant at the very back was also chained to one spot. This zoo has been chaining its male elephants for more years than I care to contemplate, which is a tragedy in many ways, and there's more than 20 photos in the gallery of the zoo's elephants if one wishes to see which individuals are chained throughout the day and which ones are unchained. Apparently, WAZA is aware of the situation and for safety reasons the big males are kept on chains, but I have no idea if they are let loose at night (maybe when the females are put inside?) or if the males are chained for most of their lives. This zoo desperately needs a bull elephant enclosure.
There's an Elephant Learning Center, which is like a cool elephant museum, and KK Zoo is renowned for having underwater viewing of elephants during specific time slots. Also, the elephant paddock had a tremendous herd of FIFTY Hog Deer in with the elephants and the enclosure is much larger than what is shown in my photo.
A chained bull with massive tusks:
We didn't stick around for the ultra-popular underwater viewing of the Asian Elephants, as there are set time slots, but here's what it looks like.
@DannySG
There's also a Zoology Discovery Center, which is essentially a Reptile House with many boring, common species such as Leopard Geckos, Green Iguanas and Bearded Dragons.
Here's the memorable interior:
Up next will be PART TWO and PART THREE of my KK Zoo review, which will mainly look at Zone 2 which is inaccessible by foot. All visitors must either drive their own vehicle or rent a golf cart for that half of the zoo as it's a vast area of land. Zone 2 includes a world-class pair of hillside habitats for Banteng and Gaur, an above-average Australian area, top-notch enclosures for Chimpanzees and Orangutans, Tiger Valley with its 10 feline species, and I will also discuss the gigantic Bird Aviary (which is fantastic) and some surrounding aviaries and other smaller exhibits that are found in Zone 1. Stay tuned...
The itinerary so far:
DAY 1: Friday, August 2nd
1- Bangkok Snake Farm (Bangkok, Thailand)
2- Peuan Deratchan Mini Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
3- Bangkok Butterfly Garden (Bangkok, Thailand)
4- Pata Zoo (Bangkok, Thailand)
5- Sea Life Bangkok Ocean World (Bangkok, Thailand)
DAY 2: Saturday, August 3rd
6- Wildlife Rescue Center No. 1 (Nakhon Nayok, Thailand)
7- Sriayuthaya Lion Park (Nong Khanak, Thailand)
8- Lopburi Zoo (Lopburi, Thailand)
DAY 3: Sunday, August 4th
9- Khao Kheow Open Zoo (Chon Buri, Thailand) 3-part review
10- ??
11- ??
12- ??
Last edited: