Ni Haowdy: Chimelong Safari in Gaungzhou

Yesterday we went to the Chimelong Safari, which essentially was a zoo. This zoo is famous for their panda triplets and everyone was excited to see them. We started by going through their drive-thru safari in a little train; notice the Mercedes-Benz logo on the front? I didn't know Mercedes made little vehicles like this, part of me wondered if they just slapped those on there so they would look classier.

The drive-thru safari was very good, the only negative I had was that people could drive their own cars through and they would block our view from the train. The animals were right there, you could literally reach out and touch them if you wanted to, except for the dangerous animals who were behind a big ravine.

The zookeepers would come out and feed the carnivore animals, like the bears, wolves, lions and tigers by throwing meet to them. It was awesome! We saw the bear stand up to catch his meat and it was very cool.

This place was huge! After we got off the drive-thru safari we had 2 hours to explore and it was not enough time to explore this massive zoo. We first saw some Red Panda's, which I did not know existed, and they are very cool. Cute and cuddly, kind of a cross between a cat and a raccoon, I started calling them catcoons. The we went and fed some giraffes, yes, we fed giraffes. For 15 Yuan, which is less than $2, we bought a twig with leaves and fed the giraffe. It was worth every penny!

I heard somewhere that a family that feeds giraffes together, stays together...or something like that. Besides feeding the giraffes you could feed pretty much any animal in the zoo for a few dollars. One of our friends fed the tigers by throwing chunks of steak and chicken at the tigers. I saw one dude who was trying to feed the elephant a banana by throwing it at his mouth - he missed and hit it in the head.

The only other thing here that was not good was the food, which really would apply to China as a whole. First thing we saw when exiting the drive-thru safari was a popcorn stand and we were so excited. Popcorn! Really!? Awesome!! Only it wasn't butter popcorn, it was caramel popcorn, which wasn't very good. Major let down. Really craving some good ole buttery, salty popcorn.

We passed on the "American" Hot Dog, one because Brooke can't eat it and we wanted to share and second, look at it. Need I say more? We settled on a grilled chicken with white rice. Sounds good right? Wrong. It tasted like chicken that was cooked in Spaghetti O's sauce. N-A-S-T-Y. It earned the eternal nickname of Spaghetti O Chicken.