Sunday, August 20, 2006

Chiang Mai Zoo

Here are some of the photos I took at the Chiang Mai Zoo. I'm not a huge fan of zoos and was less than excited about going. I think animals in captivity are a bit sad and would rather see them in a more natural environment. At the Chiang Mai zoo, the main attraction are the pandas. Aside from nature documentaries, I've never actually seen a wild panda. There were two in this enclosure that was temperature controlled and actually compared to the temps outside, it was real pleasant. Being that this was the main attraction, there was a separate charge to go see these animals, well in a word, sleep. I think the only thing this one panda did was wake up, stretch, relieve itself, and go right back to sleep. I was in the process of taking a photo of my girlfriend when the panda was in the process of relieving itself and decided to delete that photo.

I have a couple other photos of a few of the big cats housed at the zoo, a tiger and a leopard. Both were less than captive subjects for my camera choosing to look the other way and sleep also (how dare they). The last photo is of an animal that wasn't even a permanent resident of the zoo or at least it wasn't in an enclosure or a cage.









This lizard wasn't actually in any exhibit. I came upon it as we were walking back to the van to head out to see one of the handicraft markets outside of Chiang Mai. It is neat how it is mimicing the color of the tree and the greenish post next to the tree.


Its been a while since I've posted and I'll try to get more photos up on a more frequent basis. I've been trying to get out to the gym and run at least three times a week and when I get home, the last thing that I'm thinking about is posting photos as it honestly takes a few minutes to get the photos up on the blog and then moving them all onto one post. I just went through my photos and have a lot that I haven't posted from Cambodia so I might just put a few up every other day or as time permits.