It’s another three-day weekend here and I’m still in Guangzhou. After another
flight change by China
Southern and another round of calls to Expedia (just as frustrating as the
canceled Katmandu
trip, although it took nine calls v. 13 this time) I wound up with no place to
go for the holiday.
My last-minute alternate plan was to hit the safari park,
which is what I tried to do that other three-day here but my friends canceled
out of me. Even though we knew it’d be super hot, over crowded, and a bit more
expensive than a non-holiday weekend, we decided to go for it.
And once again, my friends canceled. Something about the
kids preferred going to a pool party. Imagine that. A 100-degree day and kids
wanted to have fun in the pool rather than be pushed and shoved by locals. Hard
to begrudge them, for sure.
At first, I was just kind of like, oh, man, not again. And
then I figured why not go ahead with the plan? So I schlepped myself out there
and in the end, boy, was I glad I went by myself. Even with good kids, I can’t
imagine dealing with that.
I wound up staying only about five hours, which was enough
time for me to see most of the critters, but at some point, it got to be kind
of like, “Oh look, another monkey.” Since I couldn’t read most of the signs, I
couldn’t decipher the different species of each. And no one spoke English. The
very first exhibit I saw was bears and one of the bears had much bigger ears
than the other. I tried to ask three employees, using a lot of miming, what
kind of bear it was (they had a bunch of lists on the side) but the people
didn’t even try to understand what I was trying to ask.
The park, Chimelong, is a zoo plus “safari park.” The zoo
has white tigers en masse – I loved them – and three panda cubs that are about
a year old now. Lots of other stuff, of course, but those were the important
ones for me.
The safari park is this big area where you can self-drive or
take a little Disney-like mini train (drive train, not one on a track) and see
animals in their “natural habitat.” It was kind of nice but a little sad. I
don’t think camels and spotted deer are found in the same parts of the world.
To that end, it reminded me a little of Wild Adventures. I
think the animals were better cared for – they at least had much more room –
but it was stiff jolting to see. They had a show with monkeys and bears and
even though it wasn’t that big a deal, it still made me sad. (All the bear did
was follow a path that he’d clearly done before and ate treats along the way.
The monkey thing was a little comic routine and it wasn’t like he was being
mistreated, but it still was depressing.)
The “tiger diving show” was 4-5 white tigers in a big
glassed-in area. There was someone on the roof with raw chicken on a pulley
string. The chicken was dropped in view of the cats, trawled around for a bit
until the tigers jumped into a little moat at the glass so people could ooh and
aww at them. Eventually, one of the tigers would get the chicken and it would
start again. I’ve no idea how long it went on because I couldn’t bear to watch
it.
There were a bunch of white tigers spread throughout several
pens and I couldn’t help but think for solitary animals they were pretty tight.
However, it did demonstrate the successful breeding program they have there. I
don’t know that I’ve ever seen one white tiger and suddenly there were 3-4 in
multiple pens. I gave them that.
Same for the pandas, which I saved for last. Their breeding
program has been very successful and the triplet cubs are getting pretty big.
I’d been meaning to see them for awhile and it was nice to finally to cross
that off the list.
The day was brutally hot. I got there around 10 a.m. and most
of the animals were in their after-lunch naps. (I don’t blame them; that’s what
I did as soon as I got home.) Elephants
were getting hosed down and rhinos were wading in the pools. Despite the fact
we’re still in the rainy season, it’s so hot and all the standing water evaporates
quickly. I guess the heat was because the camel’s humps were empty. I’ve never
even seen that before.
For the most part, everyone who could was just chillaxin’ in
the shade. The pandas had the best – solid patches of ice on which to crash. I
was so jealous.
So that’s day one of the three-day weekend. Tomorrow’s plan
is the glasses market again, but I have no idea about Monday. “Jurassic World”
is showing here somewhere so I hope to find it.
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