A visit to the Chiang Mai Zoo was one thing that the girls had been looking forward to since first arriving in Thailand. This may be in part due to the book series I am currently reading to them called ‘The Secret Zoo’, all about the adventures of four kids into the world of animals and a secret world.

Whilst zoos are not among my favourite places, we are not including Africa as part of this trip so this will actually be the first visit to a zoo and one the girls will remember as our last was Sydney’s Taronga Park Zoo when Phoebe was about two. Their excitement was palpable as they chattered to each other wondering whether they would see ‘Podgy’ the penguin, ‘Little Bighorn’ the Rhino and ‘Mr Bigtail’ the monkey; all characters from the books.  After reading some reviews about the zoo on trusty Trip Advisor, I had to stress to them that this zoo may not be quite like what we have been reading about.

Indeed the zoo was a bit of a sorry sight, quite run down and in need of a good high pressure water clean! Apart from the main entrance, very few staff spoke English, the signposting was almost non-existent, not in English or just plain incorrect. At one stage, we found ourselves on a wild goose chase trying to find the male lion enclosure. After following a signpost with a picture of the lion and an arrow pointing up a hill, we eventually had to resort to a game of charades with some of the zoo staff while saying ‘roaaaarrrr’ in order to get some pointers in the right direction. It turned out to be in the opposite direction to the sign!

On the plus side, the zoo has very inexpensive admission prices and food. I had read in dismay to people’s reactions about having two entry prices; one for the locals, and one for foreigners at double the rate.  Foreigners can clearly afford to pay a higher rate than the locals, and at only 100 baht or $3 per person it is hardly an expensive outing. We think it makes good sense to keep the entry for these types of attractions within reasonable reach of the local citizens.

We thought we were being clever by posponing our visit until Monday in order to avoid the local weekend crowd, as the zoo can be quite a popular day out.  However,  we didn’t count on how popular it is with local school groups!

We made our way to the zoos Animal Show and discovered there were three different start times; a brochure had 10:30am, the big sign near the entry to the show had 11:30am, and the man at the gate advised it would start at 11:00am. We went with the verbal advice and made our way to the show at 11:00am to find we were the only non-Asian faces in the crowd. Unfortantely, the commentary was not bi-lingual as I naively assumed it would be, and when it started drizzling we were left sitting while everyone was getting up and leaving. We eventually resorted to asking the school kids what was happening using the universal ‘palms up’ gesture, while looking around and they in turn crossed their forearms in an X to indicate the show had been cancelled. We finally made it to the afternoon show at 2pm.

Nevertheless, the girls didn’t notice any of the negatives and thought it was a great day discovering what was going to be around each corner. The zoo is spread over 80 hectares with winding roads and tracks and we made good use of the bus shuttle which continually runs within the grounds. The girls expressed great delight at getting to see the animals up close – the rhino, hippos, lions, tigers, monkeys and black leopard and the wonderful pandas (which were an additional exhibit thus additional charge but still very reasonable).

The Chiang Mai zoo is located at the base of Doi Suthep Mountain about 5km from town, so we took the opportunity after the zoo excursion to visit Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, the most well-known of temples in Chiang Mai  in the relative quiet of late afternoon. Our apartment actually faced this mountain and we could see its shiny copper plated (gold painted) chedi or stupa from our balcony.

The winding road up the mountain to the temple took us through the forest a further 15km giving an amazing view over Chiang Mai, once the cloud had cleared. It was an exquisitely detailed temple with pagodas, statues, bells and shrines, and despite being a popular place with tourists and locals it was still surprisingly peaceful and serene.

After spending nearly two hours soaking up the vista and atmosphere we descended the 300 steps to our waiting taxi and a further 30 minutes to get back to our apartment. The winding mountain road is popular with cyclists and  many of the bikes we passed heading up the mountain now passed us on the back way down!