Weirdest Zoo Ever

We must have had animals on the mind today, because not only did we decide to go to the zoo, but we also went over to the Old Shekou wet market where you can see just about every animal you can imagine (to eat). I know the area of Shenzhen that we live in is kind of a "bubble" that caters to expats so I figured the wet market was probably the best representation of the real China that Jason would get to see on his visit.

We walked through the bird section first, the conditions of which make it real easy to picture how something like bird flu could have gotten started. I mean, it's pretty gross. Everything, from the ground to the cages to everything around is beyond dirty. The birds themselves are covered in crap with large patches of missing feathers and sores on their bodies. It's ducks stuffed in small cages with pigeons and chickens, with the as-yet unsold heads, legs or other body parts laying not too far away.

I had to do a double take in the seafood section (which makes up the majority of the market)... that's alligator on the left there! The floor is really wet and things are always splashing around sending more water flying at you... it's pretty nasty, especially if you're wearing open toe sandals!! Oh, and on this day we even saw a crab make a run for it out of his basin. He got out and started crab walking up the aisle in front of us. It was pretty damn funny looking to see him go.

Blurry, but those are the hind legs of dogs. I hear that's the best cut of meat :D

God only knows what this is drying on the ground in front of the market.

Well, after that little tour, we got on the subway and headed towards the Safari Park zoo to witness another interesting display of animals. 

The subway doesn't go all the way there, so we had to take a taxi the rest of the way. That's me at the entrance. In my guide book it said it was 100 yuan ($17) to get in, which is kind of expensive for a zoo, but when we got there the price had been jacked up to 200 yuan! Can you imagine... a $34 zoo? Isn't China supposed to be cheap? We paid, but I doubt we would have gone there if we'd known the price in advance. Luckily, we didn't know it yet, but this zoo was worth every penny.

The sign advised that there is "no tooting" in the zoo.

Our visit was off to a great start when the very first animal we saw was a goat actually giving birth! The baby had literally just dropped out of her and the afterbirth was still hanging from her body. There were zoo employees around, but they all looked completely oblivious.

The next exhibit was the exotic... household dog?

Cage number three was... a single light bulb.

Cage number 4 was a turtle pond with garbage floating in it, but I must have forgotten to upload that picture. Damn. Anyway, the next stop for me was the ice cream man, where I bought a strawberry cone and then proceeded to drop it right on the ground. At home, people are generally pretty cool about that and offer to scoop you another cone, but this guy went out of his way to avoid all eye contact or acknowledge my tragic loss. There would be no second cone :(

Kangaroos! I don't know if I'd ever actually seen kangaroos in real life before? They have really big balls.

List of sights to the right: herbivores, giraffe, camel, buffet. Hmmm... wonder what's at the buffet?

"Note: Carefully fall down stairs". Don't even think about walking!

A man and his emus. It was around this time that we noticed the insufficient fencing at this zoo. Like the emu fences were raised by about a foot at the bottom and you can see in the photo how low they are on the top. I could've reached in and given one of those birds a noogie if I wanted to. And they could have eaten me if they wanted to.

Surprisingly healthy-looking camels. I'm used to the hump-flopped-over/mangy fur variety. Also, two of them were getting really frisky with each other, but Mel wouldn't let us stay to watch. How hilarious would camel sex be?!! Some people have no sense of humor.

Pissed off ostriches and another case of too-low fencing. I had to jump away at one point when one came too close to me.

You could pay a few bucks to feed a lot of the animals, including these elephants.

They just slid their trunks up, rested them on the fence, and kids stuck carrots in their nostrils.

The first of many incidences of overpopulation at the zoo. I mean, look at how many koi are in that water!

It was insane! There were thousands of them fighting for the food people were throwing down. Occasionally, they'd climb up over each other and out of the water.

Next to the koi pond was this elephant friend. For 20 yuan, you could either sit on him (nothing to hold on to at all once you did) or he'd PICK YOU UP WITH HIS TRUNK!!! Really! For some reason, Jason went with the "sitting on him" option.

Next to the elephants, there was this group of girls with snakes around their necks. You could pay to have your picture taken with the snake on you. For good measure, they'd also stick a parrot on your arm. The girls approached us and we said "no thanks", but they must have sensed weakness in Jason because two of them actually CHASED him, with the snake.

One girl caught Jason, took him by the arm and dragged him back towards the snake. He's kind of freaked out by snakes so this wasn't cool. That's the red mark she left on his arm.

It took a while for Jason's heart rate to go down after the snake scare, but when it did he was hungry. We were all hungry... even though I'd already replaced that one dropped ice cream with two other cones along the way. For some reason, we didn't hit up this Elephant restaurant, though I'm sure their roast trunk is amazing.

We wound up at this fast food burger-type place, and it was so horrible. I got ice cold chicken nuggets. And see that pop machine in the picture? Yeah, our colas were served from the juice pitcher next to it.

Baby monkeys <3>

The next section we came to was pretty weird. It was like this really long walkway, raised off the ground, where you could look down on different animal exhibits. First, we came to the bears.

You could pay to throw meat down at the bears. They just stood there the whole time waiting for food.

Next to the bears were the wolves. For the wolves, you could pay to put meat on the end of a rope tied to a stick, and lower it down for them to eat. It was so strange!

Then, for 50 yuan, you could pay to ride in this armored car and they'd drive you through the tiger habitat where the tigers jump up at the caged vehicle and try to eat you.

It was almost closing time, and we hadn't yet seen any of the animal shows that the zoo puts on, so we headed over to the dolphin show. It had already started and I'd lost my ticket, but the guy let me in anyway. We got there just in time to watch a seal play dead for like 5 minutes straight, and then after the seal was done, three white guys dressed as clowns (we were the only foreigners in the park that day, so it was kind of surprising) and a dude dressed as Spider-man came running out.

They did a diving routine, and then for some reason, Spider-man got out of the pool and picked up a broom.

He climbed up a tall ladder, broom in hand, and dove into the water with it. Then a white girl dressed as a mermaid swam around for a bit, some dolphins hopped around, and that was it.

The zoo was closing- we could tell by the announcements- but, hey, they were all in Chinese so we pretended not to notice. There was still one small part of the park we hadn't seen yet. It was an all-bird section, starting with (over-population again) wayyyyy too many peacocks in one place.

When we saw the giant chicken we were really glad we'd stuck around to see this last part of the zoo.

This thing was huge. I'm pretty sure it was a dinosaur.

Gimme five!

And with that, it was (way past time) to leave the weirdest zoo ever. Jason had never been to an Ikea before, so we got a cab there, because he totally needed to pack some home furnishings in his suitcase to take back to Canada.

It's hard to go to Ikea and not get the meatballs. It costs like $2! Such an awesome deal.

The funny thing about Ikea in China is that it's kind of like a museum of sorts to the Chinese. The top floor of Ikea is all these little showrooms; bedrooms, living rooms, and kitchens showing off the products. Well, the locals here might be shopping but just as often it looks like they're either playing house (their rooms probably don't look like these westernized rooms) or studying these strange foreign room designs. This couple in the above photo was having a photo shoot! Not the first time I've seen this. I wonder if anyone bought some cookware at Ikea to cook up some crocodile with :D