Hi All Heading off for school holidays to Indonesia. Starting with a brief stop in Jakarta so I can get to Ragunan then over to Bali for a week including a night at the Elephant Safari Lodge. Also hoping to get to the Bali zoo and bird and reptile park. Also want to get to a civet coffee farm. Not sure the safari park and marine land is worth a visit. We end the trip with a quick visit to Yogjakarta to see the Borobudur temple but not likely to go to Yogyakarta zoo. My youngest is 12 and will be keen for the animal experience. The 17 year old son and 19 year old daughter with boyfriend not so much. My wifee will probably do one or two visits and reach her limit Not sure how reliable wifi will be but will post some reviews as we go and do some photos when I get back to Sydney Greg
My tip is to get to Bali Bird Park early to do the feeding in the Papua aviary, my highlight. Remember you can't bring civet coffee back into Australia, so enjoy it there. Have fun.
really? Can it be imported at all (i.e. commercially)? In NZ there are no problems bringing it into the country, either commercially or as a personal item.
Ragunan Zoo Well after an aborted trip to get to Ragunan Zoo earlier this year i finally got there on our family trip to Bali. I was last at Ragunan Zoo almost 20 years ago and that was a very quick trip because I won't on a Sunday with a 15 month old blonde daughter and we were swamped for photos until we left in under 30 minutes. We had read the zoo opened at 7 and since we had only one full day in Jakarta we arrived about 8 am. Unfortunately the zoo was closed until 1 pm that day so headed off to do other things. My 12 year old son and I arrived back and one with my main goal to see primates and his to see reptiles. Despite the fact that I thought I had come prepared by reading in everything I could, looking at species lists, printing and memorizing maps and all the*advice on here especially from chlidonias we still weren't ready for just how confusing the zoo was. I tried my usual plan of always taking the left most path until I can't any further or get back to the start and then carving up the middle but to no avail. Going with a child even a 12 year old comes with the inevitable can we stop, can we get a drink, can I look at the shop, can we go yet. Add to that he wore new shoes and ended up bare foot after the first hour then it wasn't the exhaustive viewing of every exhibit I had hoped. Even a 12 year old westerner is popular for photos and cheek pinches so this didn't endear the visit to him. Arriving at the main gate we headed straight to the reptile section. *Not a huge collection and as will be a common theme in the zoo an abundance of albino pythons. They also have the biggest and fattest reticulated python I have ever seen. *No small fish tank size exhibits. All encloses were very large with the bulk of the occupants large pythons (reticulated or Burmese) and a lot of babies. The glass wasn't particularly clean and the tanks full of vegetation so it wasn't really easy to get good photos. Signage throughout the zoo was pretty poor. Other exhibits included black monitor, *rainforest tortoise Next was the first of the primate sections. Ragunan has a new primate as well as older ones. This area was pretty bad. Small concrete cages, *with *one two climbing branches, roped or bars and usually as concrete shelf. The visitors teased and fed them all and as a consequence they spent the bulk of their time begging at the front of the cage. A lot of monkeys I have never seen before including some of the Indonesian macaques - *- and a lot of lutung (leaf monkeys). The bulk of this see tin though was devoted to gibbons with agile, Javan, Kloss's, siamang and Silvery in abundance. To be fair all the cages were clean, with fresh water and fresh fruit and greens - so the main concerns were the size of the cages and the type of human interaction they have. There was a lot of showing of teeth and flashing of eyes by both the leaf monkeys and the macaques. The *most*depressing sight was a young pig-tailed macaque eating a plastic bag someone had given him. At this point William decided he didn't like the zoo or the visitors and he wanted to go home. It didn't help his shoes were already hurting and he was getting constantly asked by people to be in photos with them. I managed to convince him to see the better primate area first but it's at this point the crowds, lack of sings and even clear pathways meant we really had no idea how to get there. This was a good thing because at least I saw a few more things in the aimless wandering to find more monkeys and apes. So on our search for the primate centre we came across a couple of orangutan open top encloses with next to no climbing opportunities, the fattest raccoon I have ever seen, a pit with 3 sun bears that everyone was teasing and feeding and who just stood at the moat wall begging, and a small mammal section. This was another set of fairly uninspiring cages with glass viewing windows in some cases, vegetation , climbing logs and nest boxes. Again there was a leaning towards albino or pale versions of animals with white civets and an albino mongoose that looked more like our albino ferret. Plenty of binturong, civets, otters (Asian), raccoon, porcupine and squirrel here the bulk of the exhibits were no shows with just a tail hanging out of a log. By this stage William was bare foot and girls had started coming *up and pinching his cheek so I was getting desperate to find the rest of the primates. The small mammals are close to the centre of the zoo which consists of lots of space for picnics, food sellers and souvenir sellers and no exhibits at all. Here we found a cross roads that had a sign that said primates in both directions. We figured we had come in the general direction of one so went the other way. The Schmultzer Primate Center is a separate part of the zoo with entry higher than general admission to the zoo.bags need to be left at the entrance and no food was allowed. These couple of small measures controlled the crowds so much better - although it was still crowded - and meant the bulk of the residents were going about their monkey business rather than begging at the front. The cages here were bigger and open for gorillas and orangutans or wire mesh with glass viewing windows for others. There were a few solid bar cages but they tended to be very large probably 20 to 30 feet high, lots of climbing and swinging opportunities and at least one glass viewing window. The entire area is done in jungle theme with lianas and rock caves, winding paths and plenty of planting. Until I sort photos a little hard to remember all the southeast Asian species but there were most of the leaf monkeys again plus grizzled, mitred and proboscis monkeys. Similarly many of the same gibbon species with a few enclosures dedicated to Javan gibbons. One of the highlights is the gorilla enclosure. It can be viewed at ground level or from an overhead bridge. The area is the biggest I have seen devoted to gorillas and with so much vegetation they could easily hide away. Fortunately for us they had just been fed and both males were sitting right at the front of the enclosure. The closest I have been to a gorilla that wasn't behind glass. Another higlight was the beautiful open top cage for the Mentawai macaques. Huge green open space that they were foraging around . There should have also been Tonkean macaques but unfortunately we didn't see them of signage may have been wrong. At this point Will could go no further and we got a taxi back to the hotel. All in all a hectic, hot and somewhat rushed trip. From a purely photographing species I hasn't seen before then some outstanding photo opportunities as well as some bad ones with too many metal bars. The new primate centre shows the zoo recognizes the behavior of the visitors as its biggest hurdle but that doesn't help the residents on the wrong side of the security fence. Next stop Bali.
that all sounds about right for Ragunan. A very big zoo, much better than most Indonesian zoos, with many of the enclosures being pretty large, but conversely there are also a lot of smaller cages with I think the primates coming off the worst (in the zoo, not the Schmutzer Primate Centre). I'm sure I missed a lot of the zoo due the confusing lay-out, and you are doubly beaten by the crowds and the oppressive heat. The Schmutzer Pirmate Centre was fantastic.
Bali Bird and Reptile Park For our second animal adventure Will and I headed off to the Bali Bird and Reptile Park followed by Bali Zoo. Given William's love of reptiles we Started at the reptile park. We were the first in and had one of the staff following us through the park and telling us about them reptiles which was nice but Will kept correcting him when he had things wrong or some of the labeling was wrong. Not a super interesting collection and some of the enclosures looked a little on the small side. Of course the usual large pythons in various color morphs.*The park also contains a reptile petting area where we got to hold a water monitor, an iguana and an African Spurred tortoise. Highlight was a large Timor Python. On to the bird park. It was a lot more commercial than the reptile park with numerous professional photographers, super clean grounds and many birds on open display which gave some nice photo opportunities. The main reason I had gone was to see birds of paradise - which I did but*they were difficult to photograph due to the small heavily wired aviary type cages. The 12 wire was the highlight but i wasn't able to get any photos There were some great large aviaries and the feeding opportunities great too and yes MRJ the Papuan aviary and feeding was great. Next review Bali Zoo.
