Devilfish's Asian Adventure

I’ve had a fair bit of trouble with electronics the last few days. My phone has now failed and so I’m writing this in an internet café until I find a suitable replacement. It’s likely, unfortunately, that the cost of a replacement phone and camera will impact heavily on my available budget and thus the frequency of my zoo visits later in the trip. We’ll see.
 
Tiger Kingdom

Today I visited a few of the small collections near Mae Rim, outside Chiang Mai. A peculiar day. Most of these collections have corresponding competitors in the area. Day tours usually take visitors to 3 collections, so I hired a taxi with my friends and we went to a bunch of them. We started off with Tiger Kingdom. A controversial collection which I wasn’t a fan of. I’d read a lot about this place, and similar places. The tigers didn’t seem very poorly cared for, although many seemed to lack some of the expected muscle bulk. A great deal of hybridisation (some were half-white, others cross-eyed). Blue-and-gold macaws – the only birds on display – had been feather plucking to a severe level. Their general level of activity was not particularly out of place for tigers at a standard zoo – the only reason I think sedation can be so strongly suspected is because they don’t flinch when strangers lie across them. I don’t have any experience of training methods which could havea similar effect, so I’m not sure what goes on. I was also very disappointed to see so many young cubs taken away from their mothers. There definitely seems to be a bit of a farming scheme, as only 60 tigers were said to be on site. This is just a controversial place to have a photo taken with a tiger. Not much else to it.

Incidentally, this came up on my facebook feed today: Wildlife Extra News - Thailand's Tiger Temple: Unsafe, cruel, and riddled with false marketing, claims new report
 
Taisha said:
Devilfish,

I cannot forget the horror I felt some years ago at Chiang Mai Zoo, watching a young, constantly weaving elephant, used to welcome the zoo carriages, that were arriving about every two minutes, filled with screaming visitors, who were all too eager to feed him with junk food.
After coming home I tried in vain to find somebody who could make an attempt to interfer.
If you should come across the same, maybe you would have an idea, how to go about it?
Click to expand...

Thanks. I'll keep my eyes peeled. :)
 
Taisha said:
http://thepetitionsite.com/1/The-Wildlife-Trade-Tiger-Temple-Behind-the-Cloak-of-Buddha/

Care2 offers a more detailed description about the background of the Tiger Temple.

By the way, right on a street close to the River Kwai bridge somebody tried to convince tourists to be photographed with an apparently drugged leopard.
​

Thanks Devilfish. The elephant used to be at the first carriage stop, left from the entrance.
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Just to clarify for anyone who might have missed the jump, Tiger temple, tiger kingdom and Sri racha tiger zoo are three major but different collections which focus on the same ideas. They're in different areas of the country and there are many similar, smaller collections near tourist centres.
 
Maesa elephant camp

The next visit was to Mae Sa Elephant camp. It seems to be the only other local collection without a similar competitor. With over 70 adult elephants, that's probably understandable. I wasn't happy about the use of elephant hooks, nor by the fact that even the elephants in rest bays seemed to be working. The bathing show wasn't really a show, and the real show displayed aspects of their intelligence and dexterity (inc. 20 mins of painting) but with no educational aspect whatsoever.
 
Siam insect zoo

Next was Siam insect zoo. a very nice collection with excellent displays including museum, breeding and free-flight areas. A step above the other local collections and well worth a visit if you're in the area. Highlights include two Troides birdwing species and flying frogs.
 
Monkey school

I left the insect zoo to find my friends and taxi waiting outside. Because a show had been starting at the nearby monkey school, i suggested that i'd meet them there after the insects. It turned out that they'd left midway through the show in disgust. They recommended against a visit, but being so close, i wanted to see it for myself. I've said before that although i dislike visiting these collections i think a good deal of benefit can be gained from a visit.

'Monkey school'. Already sounds like a bad idea. The signs everywhere saying 'no refunds' reinforce that. Inside are just two species: a pair of male lar gibbons and a large number of pig-tailed macaques. No single animal is adequately housed. The cages for stressed youngsters are worse than those I've seen in Egyptian pet shops. The gibbons have a small enclosure, and all the other macaques are chained to posts on bare ground. Many are stereotyping. The centre claims that they keep the animals tied on short chains because they are dangerous, and they are all released after closing at 5pm each day. I didn't stay for the show. I wasn't a big fan of Tiger Kingdom or the elephant camp, but this was definitely the worst place of the day (and hopefully the entire trip). Epickoala and co. should be ashamed to have omitted this collection, or to have put places like Giza above it on their lists of worst collections. (That's not a recommendation to just add it to the list, but to research in much more detail.)
 
King Cobra

The next stop was king cobra, one of the snake farms on the roadside. I thought the show was reasonable in that although it was stressful for the animals, there wasn't much aggressive handling, commentary was educational and informative and geared around questions the audience had asked whilst walking around the centre. For this kind of show it was much better than i had expected. The collection included an elephant trunk snake for handling (a very strange sensation), banded kraits, water snakes and a number of cobra species.
 
Gater farm

The last visit of the day was to a crocodile farm with a show. Three enclosures housed Siamese crocodiles with one of them doubling up as a show pool. The show was a bit of a circus set-up, with the trainer dragging the crocodiles out of the water and then placing his hand or head inside their mouths.
 
The last few days I've been on a hill trek, staying at an elephant camp, and yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting Chiang Mai Zoo with Jackwow, before going to Night Safari on the way to the airport. I'm now in Phuket.

Taisha said:
Devilfish,

I cannot forget the horror I felt some years ago at Chiang Mai Zoo, watching a young, constantly weaving elephant, used to welcome the zoo carriages, that were arriving about every two minutes, filled with screaming visitors, who were all too eager to feed him with junk food.
After coming home I tried in vain to find somebody who could make an attempt to interfer.
If you should come across the same, maybe you would have an idea, how to go about it?
Click to expand...

Fortunately we didn't see anything like this. There were a few elephants on the tram route who could be fed - including a mother &aby and a great tusker, but we didn't see any abnormal behaviour.
 
Mae Rim butterfly & orchid farm

At the start of a two day hill trek, I paid a brief visit to Mae Rim butterfly and orchid farm. A feeble free flight enclosure for butterflies within an interesting orchid farm. Not worth a long visit.
 
Jumbo elephant camp

As part of our trek, we rode elephants at Jumbo elephant camp, and stayed there overnight. Home to five mature females, they looked well to us but i really didn't like the number of scabs on their backs. A reall nice view over the rest of the valley, but this is a working elephant camp.
 
I'm now on Koh Samui. A few days behind on this thread but i'll try to catch up. I had a very productive (and expensive) zoo day in Phuket yesterday.
 
Chiang Mai Zoo

On Sunday I met Jackwow and we spent the day in Chiang Mai Zoo. We started early and finished near closing time. An interesting zoo. Because he'd visited a few months ago, Jackwow planned a rough route arun the zoo. The place is enormous. A vast hilly area with odd maps. There was a lot of building work, and many empy enclosures. The collection was very nice though. The aquarium was nice, but there are several areas which could truly be excellent, yet they fall far short. Again, many empty tanks.
It looks like plans for the future are bright, and i had a very enjoyable day.
 
devilfish said:
On Sunday I met Jackwow and we spent the day in Chiang Mai Zoo. We started early and finished near closing time. An interesting zoo. Because he'd visited a few months ago, Jackwow planned a rough route arun the zoo. The place is enormous. A vast hilly area with odd maps. There was a lot of building work, and many empy enclosures. The collection was very nice though. The aquarium was nice, but there are several areas which could truly be excellent, yet they fall far short. Again, many empty tanks.
It looks like plans for the future are bright, and i had a very enjoyable day.
Click to expand...
I visited in 2006 and was quite impressed with it from memory. The maps were absolutely useless. I completely missed the koalas and didn't realise until after I'd left. The aquarium was closed up unfortunately (and it took me quite some time to even find where it was supposed to be); I had heard they had Mekong giant catfish there so that was a disappointment. One thing that sticks in my mind were the steep narrow concrete staircases everywhere with back-sloping steps which were slick with algae!
 
Chlidonias said:
I visited in 2006 and was quite impressed with it from memory. The maps were absolutely useless. I completely missed the koalas and didn't realise until after I'd left. The aquarium was closed up unfortunately (and it took me quite some time to even find where it was supposed to be); I had heard they had Mekong giant catfish there so that was a disappointment. One thing that sticks in my mind were the steep narrow concrete staircases everywhere with back-sloping steps which were slick with algae!
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Luckily we didn't find any slippery steps. The aquarium still has giant catfish & freshwater stingrays, but they're not shown off very well.
 
Chiang Mai night safari

Because I had a flight that night, Sunday evening was my only chance to visit the night safari, and so i did. It was brilliant. Devilfish would recommend that enthusiasts plan to visit during the day and repeat at night (park is open from 11am-10/11pm). A great park, and very nicely done. The main complex wouldn't be out of place at an exclusive beach resort. Some great enclosures, interesting animals and nice displays. The tram rides are also well done. There are obviously weak points, including the tiger programme (a new tiger complex is due to open soon). A very pleasant surprise.
 
My Phuket marathon day started late, and was nearly cancelled following a bit of illness.
I ended up visiting Siam snake show, Phuket bird paradise, Phuket aquarium, Big bee farm, Cashew nut farm, a souvenir warehouse & snake show, and Phuket zoo. Phuket bird park and Patong snake farm are both closed - so my visit to the snake show and bird paradise were pretty much as replacement collections.
 
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Siam snake show

My first visit of the day was to Siam snake show, a very small snake farm on the island. My driver had said it was “medium-sized”, so I paid the 500 baht (£ 11) for entry. There wasn’t much special about the collection. I was led around by the lady who takes photos, and in one of the king cobra enclosures there was a dead smaller cobra placed for food. The show was performed just for me but didn’t seem much different from other snake farm shows. It was also filled with facts and information, which was good. Within 25 minutes I had seen just about everything. I complained about the ridiculous entry fee, and requested that I get some of it back to tip the handlers in the show, but they refused.
 
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