Valentines day at the zoo and the new water park in Khon Kaen

So this year, Valentine's day was falling on a national holiday. It was Makha Bucha day which is an
important Buddhist festival celebrated on the full moon day of Magha in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand, and on the full moon day of Phalguna in Myanmar.
The spiritual aims of the day are: not to commit any kinds of sins; do only good and purify one's mind. Magha Puja is a public holiday. It is an occasion when Buddhists tend to go to temple to preform "merit-making activities", which I hope is some kind of Wipe-out style competition involving all the games from the TV show "Gladiators", with the finale involving something akin to the travelator. 

So what this basically meant for us, was no Valentine's day meal or drinks, as most bars and restaurants were closed, so we decided to go to the Zoo which was 50 km from the city. "That's just as romantic".. right?  In saying that, I want to clarify I do hate Valentine's day and think it's a ridiculous holiday. You go for a meal and you are hurried out the door and that's if you can book anywhere that's half decent. I read that 190 million cards are sent each year and 198 million roses were produced in 2010 for the day and it is increasing yearly. Meh!

So back to the day, we are not usually big fans of most zoos as a lot of the ones we've visited, end up being depressing and the enclosures are not very big or fitted for the animals. This place however, had more of a safari style feel and we would highly recommend it. It cost 150 Baht for entry (4 euro ) for the day (Kristine showed her work permit and they let us all in for 100baht each) The zoo is open from 9-5pm. 

Our friend Rainny drove out and I (Stephen) was spending my valentines day with 3 girls (lucky me). incl. Kristine, just to clarify :). The zoo allowed you to rent golf buggies/cars to drive around the grounds or you can pay 20 baht (50 cent) to take the hop on/hop off bus going around the compound. 

We started in the Madagascar section and it seemed like a fairly normal zoo until the next section were you go into a huge Avery the size of a warehouse with 100's of exotic birds and animals just walking around past you and animals we have never heard of or seen before happily walking side by side with the humans wandering around their house. The second section was a large area and was home to 6 black bears, which I'm still not convinced isn't just a couple of Thai guys in costume, because the way they walk and move is very unusual and looks slightly unnatural. 

We spent a few hours walking around the grounds and at every stop they had more animals to take pics with or feed which gave you a more hands on feel rather than staring at some depressed chimpanzee through a foot of glass. They had a Lions and tigers section with large enclosures and all the animals looked very healthy and well cared for. We got up close with Rhinos, White tigers, Bears, Deers,  and of course our favourite the  Meerkats, Rainny did a few impressions before we left. Oh!! slightly off point. If you haven't watched "Meerkat Manor" do yourself a favour and get it/download it. They are amazing little creatures and it's an awesome documentary following the survival of one tribe of Meerkats in a constant battle with other tribes in the Kalahari Dessert over the space of 6 years.

Part of the bus tour is you can hop off in Deer-land, which is an enclosure with up to 300 adult and baby deer's, reindeer's ... and ... well I guess that's the only types of deer I know. 
But you don't need to know the types, just that the minute you step off your surrounded by 100 Bambi's and they are all docile enough to pet and feed... We now both want a pet deer.

There is some amazing view all around the zoo as it's situated on the side of a mountain and we have been telling every one to visit when they can, so we may take another trip back here once the water park is fully up and running. 

We finished the tour and got our pics taken with some snakes, Iguana's, birds and mice, which after leaving I was unsure why they had mice and a huge python in the same area for people to hold, I can see that going horribly wrong as some poor child goes to pet or pick up a mouse just to see a 10ft Python coming towards his face.  

After the zoo we drove 2 km into the park and came to the water park. The water park was not open yet but they let us and a few other groups to walk around and check it out but the heat got to us and we went for a quick dip when no one was looking. 

The park is only a 40 minute drive so once it's up and running we will be spending every second weekend there :).  We also heard they are building another water park in the city only 10 minutes drive from us so it's exactly what we need with the temperature going up so rapidly. Driving to work I was quite shocked to see the temperature claiming 38 degrees and was told that next month it could rise as high as 48 for the summer.... now that just aint normal. Don't think I have experienced that kind of heat before. If we were travelling from Europe to that temperature I may have canceled the flight, but as we are currently being acclimatized to the 

stage that when I seen it was 38 degrees I was wearing a shirt, tie, black trousers, shoes and socks and not a bead of sweat in sight. Thank the stars for Air-con because before my only chance to cool down was driving the bike, but it's already at the stage were even at high speed it's like driving through a thick wall of dead heat.

Beside the park was another enclosure were you can feed giraffes, camels and donkeys... but we've seen a million donkeys (slight exaggeration, but hey, who likes donkeys). 
They were advertising Zip line swings, huge trampolines and what we're looking forward to doing is Zorbing, If you haven't done Zorbing before, it's basically 30 minutes of getting to live as a hamster. They put you into a large inflatable ball and throw you down a hill, sometimes filled with some water.

Next week there is a Black-light UV party in Supan's House in Khon Kaen and we said we would help with decoration, so we are looking forward to that. Kristine has also been told that in 1 week she has to have her (up to 20) kids perform a 10 minute show with some choreography. Kristine is currently teaching them the full Hokey Pokey and said when you get to the "put your backside in and shake it all about..." part, she feels like she is teaching 5 year olds how to tweerk.

I will be going to the show to take pictures and of course a video for the next update.
Looking forward to that... ;-)