We started the day at the crack of dawn with breakfast an hour before our 10:30 am departure. We wanted to get to the safari park well before the animals woke up.
Jothnathan had his usual obscene amount of food and dipped each bite in his orange juice. I stuck to my typical low calorie diet of fruit, danish, omellete, croissant, dumplings, noodle soup, and sausage. Jack, you'll be happy to know, is now limiting his bacon consumption to 3-4 slices per day.
Upon arriving at the safari park, we hopped on a guided tour through the open grazing areas. Its a typical trolley car ride that you find at most amusment parks, but they let most of the animals roam freely. If you pay extra, you can even drive your own car into the park. The whole park is full of zoo keepers with long bamboo poles that chase the animals back into position after each car passes. We should have known things were going to be different when we saw the bears standing up and performing for some of the private cars that passed. People would throw food out and feed the bears! Stay tuned because it gets better.
After finishing the safari part of the tour we moved on to the "zoo" part of the experience. Our guide took us to see the tiger show. We walked around looking at the various types of tigers in their enclosures. It turns out that this park has half of the world's captive white tigers and run a very successful breeding program. We walked in to an enclosure to see 4-5 tiger cubs playing with eachother. It was very cute. As we were walking towards the exit, Jen and I both noticed a salesman selling bowls of raw meet. That's right, for around $2, you can throw raw meet at the tiger cubs. We quickly bought a bowl of meet and the attendant yelled at the tigers who came running over. We spent the next fifteen minutes watching Jack feed the tiger cubs. Now that's what I call a zoo experience! But wait, it gets better!
That's right, we also got to throw bananas to elephants and got great views of pandas snacking and cooling off. We were almost able to get close enough to one that we could have reached out and touched it. This is not like DC, where you might catch a glimpse of the panda if you are lucky. These guys are front and center and perform for the crowds. One walked right by us and climbed into a swing.
The tour finished with some amusement park rides. Johnathan loved the merry-go-round. As we were leaving we also got to watch some monkeys fishing in a river. It was fantastic! Prior to this trip, the night zoo in Singapore was hands down my favorite. Now, I might need to go on safari in Africa to top this. The three of us could not believe how much we got to see.
We finished the day with dinner at our favorite restaraunt on Shamian Island. After three adoption trips, we are practically regulars there. Johnathan enjoyed the plentiful amount of meat on a stick.