The Sad Zoo...

Saturday

Ok so Saturday we had planned to meet some of Mike's students and go to the zoo! We hadn't planned on getting so drunk or getting back so late Friday night though... I dragged myself out of bed after a measly 5 hours sleep, probably still drunk, definitely feeling pretty bad. Cecilia had opted out so Mike and I headed into Xining to meet his students. His students who were late... We waited about 45 minutes before one turned up, her name was Katie and I had the pleasure of meeting her at the Ta'er Lamasery. She wanted to take Mike and I for some breakfast while we waited for everyone else to arrive. All I could handle was some bread and potato, so tired! On the plus side I got a cuddly giraffe, which in Chinese is literally long neck deer...

Eventually everyone had turned up (this took an hour and a half...) and we made our way to the zoo. The zoo was rather small but we paid the entrance fee and began our hike up the mountain. 

Number 6- Be respectful to the people around you. Don't try to snapshoot pictures with foreign friends without their permission. Yeah China...

Cecilia joined us and we started with the aquarium; nothing could prepare me for what I saw. The enclosures of these animals were awful, truly disgusting...  The animals had no room, some were longer than their tanks! 

It got worse though, in a small tank of water there wasn't just one seal but two!! And to top it off their finale! SEA TURTLES... They had 4 sea turtles in this TINY tank, one of them was so big it had to be over a century old and it was stuck in a tank that was no more than 6 foot squared...

This set the tone for the day really, some animals looked ok, like the monkeys, but others had no room, such as the hippo. They had some Tibetan dogs that were kept in cages in the sun all day too, very sad.

Funniest looking Red Panda ever...

These poor animals!

We quickly had enough of seeing depressed and unhealthy looking animals and decided to go and have ice cream, especially as it was so hot by this point.



We got to ice cream and got a scoop each; well actually Cecilia ate a bit more than us... half a litre more...

After ice cream Cecilia, Mike, Katie, her friend and I and went and got a snack dinner (still wasn't very hungry). I got a sandwich which was delicious and expensive but hit the spot. We also got fruit salad, well it said fruit salad! What appeared in front of us was fruit (including tomato) in a kind of sweet mayonnaise sauce. Bu Hao Chi. Not delicious. 

After food we said goodbye to Mike's students and met up with Fish. She wanted to take us three out for a drink in a traditional Tibetan bar. Yay more beer... It was fun though! We played some card games and talked about things, I'm going to miss her!