Our last full day in Taiwan was mostly taken up by visiting the zoo. Normally I don’t visit zoos when travelling, but this one had pandas. I saw pandas at Auckland zoo many years ago but the Kraut had never seen a panda. So, on the metro to the zoo. When we got there it was already hot. So we decided to see the pandas first, in case later on we decided we were too hot and bothered and just wanted to go back to the hotel.
The zoo has three pandas but we only saw two of them. The pandas have their own building and an outdoor area. There appeared to be no pandas outside, but there were two of them in separate enclosures inside. One of the pandas was sleeping, with his back turned to the thick glass separating the closed in enclosures from the outside world. The other one was pacing back and forth, looking a bit bored. A bit later on he started to climb on the various bits of tree provided for that purpose. It was all a bit sad. The Kraut has now seen pandas, but wishes she had seen them somewhere else.
Then it was time to wander around the rest of the zoo, which is pretty nice, and most of the animals seem to have enough space. There were a lot of Australians there; emus, koalas, kangaroos (who we didn’t see, I guess they were in the pub complaining about the “flamin’ Keewees” – just kidding), and kookaburras (who weren’t laughing).
Quite a few of the animals were not visible (hiding from the heat and humidity I guess), or just sleeping. But we did see the usual assortment of zebras, giraffes, rhinos. hippos, monkeys, etc. The gorillas were hiding as were the lions. The penguin house was nice, as much for the temperature as the penguins. We lingered, enjoying the coolness, as did some locals.
Missing from the zoo were the local animals such as pangolins, leopard cat, clouded leopard, Formosan sika deer, lizards or snakes. A bit strange as most of these animals are not easily seen in the wild (though a clouded leopard was spotted just east of Kaohsiung six months ago).
From the zoo, it was back to the hotel. Not much more was done that day. We had laundry to do and bags to pack; tomorrow Vietnam.
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The Kiwi & The Kraut 