The zoo, my second time around

The Saigon Zoo is awesome. The animal habitats range from fair to good--definitely better than the San Diego Zoo fifteen years ago. Here's a hippo getting fatter:


Elephants never look happy in captivity. But for a dollar you can feed them sugarcane and vegetables. That trunk is pretty far reaching. Male elephants(right) don't play nice with others, so they have sucky treatment.


Rhinos aren't very entertaining in 45 degree heat.


Here's a Sloth Bear. Maybe you can figure out how it got its name.


The beautiful and highly deadly Cassowary from Australia. Its inner toe is a straight 5 inch dagger with the hurting and the poking and the ouchie.


Mom and Pop in front of the floral clock. At this minute, it actually had good time.


Here's a Vietnamese bird called an Adjutant that reminds me of Grandpa. Many storks here were injured, which is probably how they ended up here. It's a good practice--gives them a happy retirement.


There are a lot of wild birds here. Many fruit trees, free animal feed, and some undergrowth makes this a bird hotspot, with plenty of opportunities for bad binocular photos. Here's a Black-lored Oriole and a Collared Kingfisher, which is common but a life-bird for me.


Aw, Dad really got into bird watching. So cute!


This long-horn behemoth was the highlight of my whole trip so far (besides Jenny, of course). It was right on the sidewalk, ambling fearlessly. I've been wondering where all those awesome, trophy-worthy bugs are. Now I feel like I'm someplace exciting.


This is actually where I found the beetle. There are loads of these kiddie parks all over Vietnam, derelict-looking during the day and lit up at night.


Here's the adjacent history museum. a few cents for locals, two dollars for foreigners. Sometimes it makes sense, other times it nettles me. The museum itself wasn't too impressive. Its highlights were little diaramas of red figures killing blue figures, the former Vietnamese and the latter Chams, Mongols, Chinese, Siamese, or French Colonists, all successfully ousted from Vietnam. Oh, and the constant twitter of bats and swifts roosting in the rafters was pretty cool.


Here's us three. Apparently its bad luck for three people to be in the same photo, so we took turns. In front of this...thing.