Day 2 - (17 December 2022)
Like every person that have a waking up early plan, I do planned to woke up at 5 AM as I want to went out as early as possible to maximize my experience in Bandung. I did woke up early, earlier actually on around 4:54 AM. I took a bath, not really a pleasant one since the shower have a leakage, I prepared to go out and enjoy the sunny Bandung morning. I just got out of my room and wow, I haven't even got out from the hotel and the atmosphere was cool. I got out from the hotel, the pond felt more alive with the active waterfall system, I even found out that the pond also have an plecostomous and an quite large walking catfish. The air felt so fresh and my hotel is located in a residential area filled with pretty old houses, really fun.
Another angle of the interior of the hotel, most specificly the bar.
Words to live by.
The pond at the hotel I'm in.
Outside of the hotel.
I rode to Lembang, on my way to Lembang Park and Zoo. As I expected, the atmosphere are just so good, even better at daytime. I passed through some great buildings and parks, one of them is several colleges like Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, a teaching college. I entered this beautiful mountainside town in Bandung Barat, a lot of mosques and there's always plant sellers on both side of the road, I believe the weather is great to cultivate these plants. And these plants are very, very pretty. After several minutes, I didn't expect it to be quite short, I arrived at the zoo.
Road to Lembang Park and Zoo.
It was suprisingly quite empty, probably because I went and arrived early in the morning. The ticket price is IDR. 70.000, honestly pretty standard for me, not that expensive but atleast the weekly income could feed these animals. The first area in the zoo is this cafe called Quagga Cafe, which was still closed. Then there is this large pond with a children playground and also a boat rides with these decorated boats. The pond is very clear, you can even see the green and red water plants in there.
I went further and there is a restaurant, surrounded by this nice pond with some flamingo status, that I know have tigers as their main attraction. There are two exhibits, one for a pair of Bengal tigers and the other have a single white tiger. Of course, I ordered some food and drink since I haven't eaten this morning, all the restaurants near this zoo are still closed. I ordered a chicken noodle with mushrooms and a hot tea, not a big meal as my previous one at Paris van Java but still tasty.
After that, I don't go through the main route, I went for the primate first. There's this row of aviaries with several species of hornbills. The first are writhed hornbills, from the Philippines, inside the same aviaries, there's this medium-sized cage with another Filipino hornbill, an rufous hornbill, in it. I guess they planned to mix these two, but I don't think it would ended well. The next few aviaries are for local yet magnificent birds: Wreathed hornbill, oriental pied hornbill, knobbed hornbill, and a empty aviary that supposed to house rhinoceros hornbill. After passing through some typical exhibits for farm animals, alpacas and Shetland ponies, I can't enter the primate area from there because apparently its a one-way route. So, I went to this area with several large reptiles. There's two water turtles exhibit, the left one have an yellow-colored morph common snapping turtle and the right have a group of red-eared sliders, with an albino individual as its centerpiece. Next to it is two exhibits for salties (Saltwater crocs), all of them are basking in the dirt and they're quite huge and I never seen large crocs that close. On the other side, there's a large exhibit for tortoises, the Asian forest tortoises and African spurred tortoises. It was a very sunny morning, so these reptiles must have a good time.
Then, I went inside the "Big Bird Aviary", Lembang Park and Zoo's golden kid. After paying IDR. 20.000 and being given a plastic bowl with some sunflower seeds, I entered the aviary. The birds are mostly parrots, with the addition of several African turacos. I was greeted by several cockatoos, salmon-crested cockatoo and sulphur-crested cockatoos (Eleonora and triton cockatoos), I think I spend all those sunflower seeds for them. The aviary itself is small for a walkthrough aviary and circular, with several high wood branches for the birds to perch on and a waterfall for them to bath, as well as a elevated path around the inside of the aviary. There are dozens of species here: cockatoos (Galah, Tanimbar correlas, little correlas, yellow-crested cockatoos, eleonora cockatoos, triton cockatoos, salmon-crested cockatoos, white cockatoos, palm cockatoos), lories (Red lories, black- winged lories, rainbow lorikeets, dusky lories, black-capped lories) parrots (Grey parrots, eclectus parrots, green-cheeked parakeets, sun parakeets, Alexandrine parakeets, Pesquet's parrots, yellow-crowned amazons), macaws (red-bellied macaw, chestnut-fronted macaw, scarlet macaw, red-and-green macaws, and blue-and-yellow macaws), as well as turacos (White-cheeked turacos and violet turacos).
Exiting the aviary, there's four glassed exhibits for some small cats, two have each an Asian golden cats, the biggest I've ever seen. The third is empty, while the fourth have a stressed caracal. Quite far from that, there's this exhibit with I think was supposed to be decorated with fake snowy rocks, which housed three Siberian tigers, two normal tigers and an supposedly "white Siberian tiger", which probably is a white Bengal Tiger. Adjacent from that, there's four aviaries in the edge of nowhere in the zoo. Poor raptors lmao, I never understand why Indonesian zoos often display their raptors in the most obscure locations in the zoo, aside from the show, like Lembang Park Zoo and Taman Safari Bogor. Anyway, there's four aviaries, the first aviary have brahminy kites (Supposedly also mixed with a black kite, but was nowhere to be seen), the other have crested serpent eagles, Javan hawk-eagle, and crested goshawks, respectively.
Going back to the main aviary, I passed through the bird of prey show stage and near there, there's a small island with minimal enrichments that have an male Sumatran orangutan. A long time since I see one, felt mystical. The orangutan looks really bored, if you look at the exhibit there's no suprise there, as he cover beneath the woods from the heat of the sun. Pass that, I went to the primate route. There's this small exhibit with peafowls (Javan and Indian), next to that is a similary-sized exhibit with several Sunda porcupines. After climbing up the stairs, I arrived at the primate area. At the far left of that thought, there is an area for tethered raptors, with covers from the sun. The birds that are signed are the buffy fish owl and barred eagle-owl. There is a couple of unsigned birds, like an brahminy kite and also apparently a peregrine falcon, so I guess they are non-permanent. Poor owls thought, having no will to move and fly around for most of the day in their possibly long-term "houses" in the most obscure area of the zoo.
The primates are housed in these tall aviaries, adjacent to that there is an exhibit for a Onagadori chicken, the long-tailed chicken originated from Japan. The siamangs are very loud, not complaining as I found it to be good, even better to hear that in a more natural setting. Other primates are southern pig-tailed macaques, West Javan langur, Celebes crested macaques, and several other gibbons like the agile gibbon, silvery gibbons, and Müller's gibbon. There is also quite a suprise in this area, they apparently have an Natuna Island surili and a pair of young, very active proboscis monkeys.
By this time, I honestly feel like I don't want to continue around the zoo. I just felt really bored, I'm going to talk about it further when I eventually do a review. But essentialy, I don't want to stay any longer.
Before I exited thought, I decided to go the passerine area first because why not. Passing through the reptile area and this one area with food and drink booths, plane toys both, as well as reticulated python and green iguana for photo props, the first aviary have a group of Bali mynas and then the second aviary which is where I saw my first magnificent riflebird. I didn't get to see his magnificent (As the name said) blue neon feathers on his chest, but still a fun sight. The aviary also have a twelve-wired birds-of-paradise. Located at the back on this garden-esque pathway, there is another birds-of-paradise aviaries. The first housed lesser birds-of-paradise, an male and a bunch of female. While the second houses greater bird-of-paradise, which I didn't managed to see. It was very crowded and I had to costantly moved as to not cause a human traffic. There was a long, glassed exhibit which was empty and apparently under a refinement. The next two similar exhibits, thought not glassed, are my favorite. The first houses four native passerines: fire-tufted barbet, Javan green magpie, black-naped oriole, and also a Sunda laughingthrush which I didn't managed to find. I really worried with the mix as I saw the green magpie and the barbet seemingly being hostile to each other, the aviary isn't quite large. While the oriole just chilling in the right corner. The other also similar-looking exhibit have several laughing kookaburras, another suprise. At the other side of the path, there is this area called "mini bird aviary", which is five tall aviaries with parrots: galah, red-and-green macaws, blue-and-yellow macaws, palm cockatoos, and Pesquet's parrots, same species previously seen in the main walkthrough aviary. Going back the the left side of the path, there's the aviary for a pair of toco toucans, beautiful birds and two of the many original inhabitants of the zoo. Just next to it, there is a small, open-topped exhibit for young lesser adjutants. Back to the right side of the path next to the "mini bird aviary", there is several weirdly-designed exhibits for birds. In the first two, I didn't see any, the first had black-winged starlings and the second had hill mynas. The third have an flame bowerbird, a really pretty New Guinean bird. The last one is a bizarre mix of red-winged parrots and various color variations of the yellow-collared lovebirds.
After that, I decided to go elsewhere as I really don't want to continue my visit here. Before exiting, the staff gave me, and also other peoples exiting, some snacks. That actually really sweet, like those elementary school kids coming back from a school trip. I went out to find what else to visit in Lembang, which then I decided that my next trip would be Floating Market Lembang.
The Snack given to me by the zoo staff.
