The Night Safari

The other night I went to The Night Safari. It is a brand new attraction in Chiang Mai, and it is conveniently located less than 10 minutes from where I am staying. It also happens to be free until the end of January (after that it is 500 Baht per person!). It is a massive beautiful new zoo, with very nice landscapery. The interesting thing about this zoo is that in order to experience it the way the designers had intended, the Night Safari should be visited at night. The problem this is, it very dark at night.

I took the Jaguar trail. It is about 1km, and you walk around a lake. As you walk, you pass by animals in their cages--doing whatever it is that they do at night (which seems to be either sleeping or hiding from the visitors). Many of the cages were "open", meaning there was a deep cement wall surrounding the cage area, so the animals couldn't get out. Other cages had glass in front of them. Each cage was lit, but in order to keep the serenity of the night, the lighting was more like mood lighting or "Where's the animal?" lighting. The result of it was, I saw only about 40% of the animals. At one point I found myself laughing as I peered into a fairly dark cage, trying to spot a black leopard. By the end of it, I decided I would have to come back again in the daytime, so I could fully appreciate all the animals and landscaping. And I recommend that for anyone else who is thinking of going.