zoo day

On our way up the elevator last weekend we saw a notice informing us the power would be out on our street for the entire upcoming day. Power outages are not especially unusual but having the power out for the whole day is torture. It's only happened once before, this past April (the month when all of Bangkok turns into molten lava). It was a nightmare. This time we were determined to avoid the same sweaty, hot disaster. 

We packed ourselves a lunch and headed out by Chonburi, about an hour and twenty minutes from our house to a drive thru zoo. I'd read we could feed the animals so we bought $5 worth of corn, beans, carrots and bananas from the vendors at the entrance. Basically the amount we had could have fed most of the zoo. 

Rocky didn't think one of this bags was enough and insisted on a second.

And extra beans.

Violet is really into animals right now.

Unfortunately, it was mid-late afternoon on the weekend and none of the animals were hungry--having been fed a steady stream of vegetables since the zoo opened, several hours before.

 We did feed this gigantic hippo.

 He was pretty far down there so you had to have good aim to get it into his mouth. That's all the food I threw, scattered around him in the water. 

 If we'd wanted to, we could have easily climbed over the scrawny fence and jumped atop a rhino. Luckily, Vi's not that adventurous yet. 

 Basically no animals wanted our food and we were running out of options. 

 Luckily the zoo was completely overrun by wild monkeys who were not over fed. 

 Nor especially friendly 

 Violet is now convinced she is a monkey and has completely regressed in her speech to only monkey noises. Which she makes perfectly.

 Eliot's been to monkey island, she was a bit more skeptical and kept saying, "Mom, are you sure this is safe?"

"Of course it's safe," I told her, "Now go stick her hands were the rabid monkeys can easily bite them."

 And of course we couldn't leave without visiting the elephants. 

 At least they were hungry.

 Eliot wanted me to give them cash, like some of the other visitors were doing, but I've seen that trick before (the elephant takes the money in his trunk and hands it to his trainer) and I'd rather unload the bushel of vegetables I already paid for. 

Eliot loves elephants. If you ask her her whole name she always responds, Eliot Smart the Elephant. Luckily we live in Thailand, where elephants are plentiful.

We arrived home just in time to be able to open the fridge that we'd accidentally left open all night the night before and turn on the air conditioning. Because we are complete hot wimps.