We only had the scooter reserved until 2:30pm today, so we had to take advantage of our time with it in the morning. We drove over to the Phuket Zoo because we had seen an ad for it where a person was holding a baby tiger cub. We hadn't yet seen a tiger up close, so we were excited about the prospects :)
The zoo is priced fairly expensive for foreigners (500 Baht). The first animal we came across after entering was a baby lion. It was probably a year old or so, and very very cute. It was not yet bored with the zoo visitors and was interested in us and others as we approached. The crazy thing is that there wasn't any real cage, just a square pen with bars about waist high - meaning you could stick your hand in and touch the lion if you were stupid enough to! We had to tear ourselves away from the lion cub...it was just so cute!
Next we came upon the place where you can take your picture with not a tiger cub, but a full grown tiger! This tiger is 5 years old, and is enormous. We have never seen a cat this big! Some people were taking their picture with it when we got there and the tiger was showing its fangs and making a low moaning sound. It was pretty intimidating. Enough so that even being the cat lovers that we are, we were considering backing out on the photo op :) Eventually, we decided to risk it, and both took turns posing with the tiger. It was chained up on a short leash, but still very dangerous looking. You could tell that it didn't like the trainer guy one bit, as every time he got near, it bared its teeth and made an awful face. Funny thing is, the guy was missing one arm (we think it was a birth defect though...).
After that thrilling experience, we made our way through the zoo visiting the elephants, crocodiles, monkeys, ostrich, porcupines, and more. They have various animal shows going on throughout the day and we watched the monkey show - kind of strange and we felt sorry for the monkeys a little. This zoo, like the one in Manaus, does not provide the best living conditions for the animals, mostly because the enclosures are too small. The larger elephants had to be chained by one foot with only a few feet of distance they could move. We feel sorry for the animals in zoos like this, and now appreciate more the conditions provided in the US zoos (please forgive us for going in).
We had to get back to return the scooter, so we grabbed a quick lunch on the way back and took a short drive up to the Promthrep Cape, near our beach. The cape had a nice lookout and also a few temples.
The rest of the afternoon, we rested down on the beach at our hotel, enjoying the ocean waves for the last time in Thailand. We were going to walk down the road the 800 meters to the restaurants for dinner, but on our way out, we noticed our scooter was still parked in the hotel lot. We went into the office and asked if we might be able to take it to dinner and back, for a dollar, and it was OK. We scootered back down the hill, stopping at a "rest stop" to have a couple beers while we watched the setting sun and the ocean waves crashing on the rocks below. We opted for the pizzeria again where we had bruschetta and a pizza. Then back to the hotel to finish off our wine and cheese - a good ending to our beach rest.
View Thailand Photo Gallery
Day 105 - Phuket < | Index | Photo Galleries | > Day 107 - Phuket/Bangkok
