Pre-review note: Burmese words and place-names tend to have variable spellings when written in English, as may be expected. It is the same in Thailand and China and anywhere else where the local written language is not an ABC one. Generally the city which this post refers to is spelled Naypyidaw. However at the zoo all the official signs say “Naypyitaw Zoo” (with a t instead of a d), so I have used Naypyidaw for the city and Naypyitaw for the zoo (and for the safari park which I didn't visit but which I will reference later).
Naypyidaw is the new capital city of Burma. It was built largely from scratch and took over from Yangon as the capital in 2005. Like any good capital city it needed a zoo and so one was promptly built and filled with animals trucked over from the Yangon Zoo. Opening day was 27 March 2008. According to various internet sources I have read this emptied the Yangon Zoo, but this isn't true at all because Yangon is still (over-)full. I went to a lot of trouble to visit Naypyitaw Zoo but secretly I was dreading it because the other big zoos I had seen so far in Burma (in the cities of Yangon and Mandalay) were awful anachronisms, in many ways exactly how one might imagine the menageries of old, and I fully expected that despite this zoo being so newly-constructed it would have been patterned on those existing zoos. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that my fears were unfounded – the Naypyitaw Zoo is a very good zoo indeed and I am glad I went because otherwise my overall impressions of Burmese zoos would be heavily skewed towards the unpleasant side. Rather oddly though, despite being the best by far of all the zoos in the country, it is also the least interesting for a zoo-nerd. I had been under the impression that there were almost no exotic mammals in Burmese zoos because I had seen relatively few elsewhere. The reason for that is because they are all here in Naypyidaw, at the zoo and safari park!! The result is a zoo top-heavy with typical ABC mammals which can be seen in any zoo overseas. This of course is great from the local visitors' perspectives I suppose (they would want to see giraffes and penguins and white lions), but for me not so much.
The zoo is a fair distance out of the city. I had been expecting it to be inside the city, and in fact we were riding for so long past nothing but empty fields that I got my motorbike driver to stop so I could make sure he did actually understand where I was wanting to go! The entry fee is much more expensive than the other zoos I had been to in Burma at US$10 (the others are only about US$2). The entrance to the zoo is particularly grand – like everything else in Naypyidaw the government went a bit overboard in construction. On the street there's a large entrance way, from which you head onwards to a huge arching gate with white elephant statues either side, and once past that there is another walk to an ornate be-statued fountain with gardens all around, and then beyond that is finally the entrance building itself. There weren't really a lot of other visitors in the zoo (I was there for about six hours I think, and I would have seen more staff than visitors in that time) but then there aren't really many visitors to the city. For most of my time at the zoo I thought there was a “no feeding” policy in place (if you recall from the other threads, at all the other zoos in Burma there are countless little stalls everywhere selling fruit and vegetables to feed to the bears and monkeys and deer and so on). After a while I realised that this zoo did have the food stalls – it was just that there were so few visitors that most of them weren't operating.
A lot of effort went into constructing the Naypyitaw Zoo. With a few notable exceptions all the enclosures are large or very large, and also for the most part well-designed and well-thought-out. The first enclosures I saw were for small-clawed otters and saltwater crocodiles – they are in a lake! A small lake to be honest, but still an actual lake, with a fence around it (divided down the middle to keep the crocs from eating the otters obviously). When was the last time you saw zoo otters in a lake? The test for me was going to be the bears and macaques. No matter how well any other animals are housed, in Asian zoos the bears and macaques always get shafted. Here, not at all! I'll do the whole “walk-around” approach in this review, going exhibit by exhibit because I was so impressed after the nasty stuff I'd seen in the other zoos in Burma, but first a few more generalities. Before going to Burma I had read an article online by an American journalist about how he visited the Naypyitaw Zoo and found that there were almost no real animals there (15 animals according to him), but instead the zoo only had statues of animals. This sounded a bit weird and just from reading it I picked up that that particular journalist was an utter moron and was making stuff up to try and make some sort of political point, which turned out to be the case. Almost literally, everything in the article was absolute nonsense, and he even (I suspect) made up the words he claimed to be from one of the zoo staff. (You can read his effluent here: Burma's Most Decadent Zoo Is Full of Fake Animals | VICE United States). There are indeed animal statues all over the zoo but they are outside the cages and all the cages did have real animals inside. I liked the statues I must say: at the lion enclosure would be lion statues, at the penguin house would be penguin statues. Almost without exception, every enclosure or set of enclosures had an appropriate species depicted in statue form next to it. A lot of thought really did go into this zoo.
The zoo is laid out with a large road right around the outside rim which can be driven around if one has their own car or takes one of the little shuttles. This road actually passes through one of the enclosures (for deer). The centre of the zoo is traversed by smaller roads also suitable for vehicles and by foot paths. It isn't really a proper drive-through zoo because you need to get out of the vehicle at the enclosures to view them, but it is also a fairly large zoo so probably not everybody would have the stamina to walk everywhere. The western side of the zoo in particular is fairly long on walking and fairly short on animals. There is no one route through the zoo because of all the paths and thus you are required to do a bit of retracing of steps and return trips to see something inadvertently missed. In fact I did entirely miss seeing the elephants. I knew they were there – they are in fact the closest animals to the entrance! – but with all the back-and-forth I simply forgot I hadn't seen them. A bit of a shame because while elephants in general don't interest me much at zoos, there was the possibility there may have been white elephants here.
So, here is the walk-through of my visit. Animal lists follow after the review.
From the entrance one can go either right (elephants), left (nothing for quite a while), or straight ahead on one of the smaller roads. I went straight ahead which turned out to be the best direction. First enclosures I saw were for the small-clawed otters and saltwater crocodiles, which as already noted were in a small lake surrounded by a fence and further divided down the middle. There was a viewing platform as well. From here I was going to head left on a walking path because there were hornbills that way, but to the right I spied the Reptile House and excitingly the Nocturnal House. I went through the Nocturnal House first. It wasn't the best really – in fact the cages were pretty tiny – but most Nocturnal Houses have the same small cages inside unfortunately so that isn't something particular to this zoo. There were only a few species on display, in five enclosures, namely a leopard cat, a jungle cat, common palm civets (in two cages), and a group of brown fish owls. The Reptile House was better; although the collection was small, most of the terrariums were quite large (except for the turtles, all of which were housed very poorly indeed in little fish tanks). Unfortunately the labelling was very deficient throughout. There were quite a few tanks for tropical fish (common home aquarium species), three species of turtles and two of tortoise, water monitors and two species of pythons (reticulated and Burmese). Here I saw the first amphibian I had yet seen in a Burmese zoo, namely a Himalayan crocodile salamander.
From the Reptile House I returned past the otter/crocodile lake and headed to the hornbills. To my complete surprise these turned out to be housed in a huge tree-filled walk-through aviary where they actually had room to swoop and fly which if you've ever seen and heard hornbills flying is exactly how they should be displayed! They look magnificent doing so, and I can't really think of anywhere else I have seen this in a zoo. I saw a pair of great hornbills in here (one was very friendly and came down to have his neck scratched) and at least three rufous-necked hornbills. The aviary was also home to a number of green and blue peafowl, and I additionally spied out a grey peacock-pheasant, a male ring-necked pheasant, a helmeted guineafowl, and a pair of kalij pheasants. The only thing I didn't like here was that the entrance porch to the aviary had a smaller aviary either side and these were very dark ugly cages, one with black kites, and the other with a red-billed blue magpie and moustached parakeets.
Continuing on along the same path I came to a tiger enclosure which in total contrast to the tiger cages at the other zoos wasn't a concrete barred pit but a fairly large planted area with a cliff backdrop and glass viewing front. Rather than taking a longer route from the tiger to the wallabies I took a quick short-cut up a little track over the hill (and later checked that there wasn't anything along that other path so in fact I didn't save time anyway). The wallabies were in a standard sort of enclosure – a patch of trees surrounded by a fence; simple but good. There was what appeared to be an empty enclosure next to the wallabies which I guessed at being for red kangaroos (due to it being next to the wallabies and knowing that the safari park houses them). There used to be Asian crested porcupines just near here as well – the statues were still there but the enclosure was mostly gone. It had been a reasonably large one filled with grass and trees, the outside rimmed with a dry moat and a low wall. A hundred times better than any other porcupine enclosure I have seen elsewhere in Asia. The Penguin House (for Humboldt's penguins) was locked up, so I don't know if they are still here or not, nor what the inside was like. The outside of the house was designed to look like a massive pile of ice (but to me it looked more like a pavlova covered in whipped cream). The penguins came from Thailand's Khao Kheow Open Zoo in exchange for Eld's deer and Burmese star tortoises.
I was at the western shore of the zoo's lake now (home to white geese), and following the map I went around the lower part of the lake to reach the gibbon islands – tree-covered and home to very lively white-handed and hoolock gibbon families – and the leopard enclosure which, like the earlier tiger enclosure, was much larger than any Big Cat cage in the other zoos as well as being very tall, with grass on the ground, live trees, branches and logs for climbing, and glass viewing areas. Not quite as nice was the unfortunate smallish cage of bars off to the side housing a clouded leopard. I was now back where I started (by the otter/crocodile lake), so I took a sort of north-easterly path up the eastern side of the lake and found an Aquarium which was unexpected. I think this probably cost quite a bit to construct and was an interesting design – in the centre of the floor were flowing-shaped pools for larger fish such as arapaima, while individual tanks were in the walls around the perimeter – but due to the lay-out of some of the tanks it came across as a sort of odd mixture of public aquarium and pet shop. Unlike the aquarium at Zoo Negara (all southeast Asian species) this aquarium mostly just had general home aquarium fish so for me wasn't very interesting.
Just past the Aquarium was a junction of paths, so I had a good look at the map to decide which direction would be most profitable to take first. The right-hand path seemed most obvious, leading as it did (on my left side) past a smallish but quite acceptable zebra enclosure (for three zebra) and then a huge enclosure for gaur which sprawled over a low hill. On the other side of the path (to my right side) was a huge drive/walk-through area which I first viewed from a raised deck and couldn't see anything except an enclosure for domestic rabbits. After entering the area, across a cattle stop, I realised this was a deer enclosure and housed hog deer, sambar and Eld's deer. Also in here were two roughly-circular dry-moated enclosures which on the map had depictions of what look like a dhole and a Cape hunting dog. The one with the “dhole” was the one which now had rabbits in it and the statue next to it looked like an Arctic fox (just because it was white: I think it was meant to represent some local species of fox or a jackal). The other enclosure, the one pictured for Cape hunting dog (which I think was almost certainly a generic picture they used because I doubt there have ever been hunting dogs in a Burmese zoo) housed “maybe-dholes” and golden jackals [I saw two very nervous “maybe-dholes” – see here: http://www.zoochat.com/755/dhole-358181/#post758532 – and one slightly-less nervous jackal]. The statue next to it could have been representing either a golden jackal or a dhole. This enclosure was fully-grassed with quite a few trees in it.
Re-exiting the deer enclosure (through the same gate I entered because the other gate led back to the zoo entrance) I passed an alright but not particularly large cage for a pair of red pandas, continued on past the other side of the gaur enclosure and then found the Himalayan Griffon Vulture Aviary. This was another very nice surprise to come across unexpectedly at this zoo. The map just showed a picture of two vultures and I was expecting the usual small aviary with a few vultures sitting forlornly on perches with nowhere to go. Instead it was a massive walk-through aviary, traversed by a winding raised boardwalk. The ground area was probably two-thirds water which obviously isn't ideal for vultures but they had plenty of perching opportunities up high and the aviary was also housing lots of water birds as well. I don't know how many vultures there were in here – I counted at least fifteen from memory – and I actually saw some flying; as with the hornbills, not something you can see in most zoos! Other birds I saw (and I probably missed some) were lots of ruddy ducks, some spot-billed ducks and pintails, a few mute swans, black swans and spot-billed pelicans, several woolly-necked storks and probably several great white egrets (one for sure, but some of the others which were mostly hidden in the tops of the trees may have been little egrets). As I was leaving the aviary I also spotted a white-breasted kingfisher shoot past and disappear into a tree.
Beyond the exit to this aviary was an enclosure for lesser mouse deer, quite a good size but although there were several trees in there, the ground level was completely bare. The crab-eating macaques were next. As I said before, the macaques in Asian zoos always get kicked in the groin when it comes to housing, but here was another pleasant find: the enclosure was fairly large with many climbing opportunities. It was an open enclosure surrounded by walls, and not as good as the one at Hlawga Park I have to say, which was even larger and had lots of trees and massive clumps of giant bamboo, but definitely not a bad cage. Surprisingly there were only two primate species in the whole zoo, the other being hamadryas baboons which were housed poorly but I'll come to them later.
I was now at the top (northern) end of the zoo, and it was here that most of the exotic ABC animals were kept. First past the macaques were the white tigers, in a huge enclosure with cliff-faces around the back and able to be viewed from several levels. I only saw one tiger in here (waaaaay up the back on top of the cliff), but round the back of the cage were the mainly-but-not-really-off-display cages where I spied two more white tigers. These cages obviously weren't large, being the inside housing, and I'm not sure if the tigers can all be mixed or if they time-share the outside enclosure.
The Himalayan black bears were next, and it is fair to say that I was pretty flabbergasted by how great their enclosure was. I am of course probably fairly easy to please in this regard given the horrible bear cages I have seen over the years, but I think most people would agree this was a good enclosure. I have seen shocking cages, bad cages, bad cages made better, even a few average cages, but never have I seen in an Asian zoo an enclosure which was really good right from the start. And all they have done here is the very very simple technique of putting a wall up around an existing hillside and adding viewing decks. Exactly what other zoos should do. Nothing fancy, just a large area of ground with earth, grass, trees, and with a couple of pools added. I saw three bears, and they were doing good old bear stuff instead of pacing or standing on their hind legs begging at the visitors. There are ways the enclosure could be better of course (I would have had a lot more trees and shrubbery) but all in all, a fantastic effort by this zoo's creators.
After the bears there is a fairly long walk along the top of the main ring-road to the African section of the zoo. It doesn't look far on the zoo map but the road skirts the outside of the main part of the African area without it being visible; if I had looked at the map more closely I could have gone from the bears past the white tigers again and that path would have taken me past the white lions to the African area much faster. If taking the ring-road as I did the first African animal you find are the hamadryas baboons. The viewing area for these is a big fake rock which covers the indoor housing and from the top of which you look down into the outdoor enclosure. This is a very small and narrow enclosure, so much so that it is actually difficult to see the baboons from the viewing area because you can't get right to the edge. It is so small in fact that the viewing area appeared to be bigger than the actual enclosure! It is also completely bare, just dirt and the remains of grass. Not good at all. I think the indoor cage is also normally viewable but there were men welding in there so I'm not sure. But that did not good either (concrete and bars). From the viewing area you can also look beyond the baboons to the giraffe enclosure, and that really seems to be the main point of putting the baboon enclosure in this spot with this design.
The rest of the African area was very good though. At this zoo enclosures like that for the baboons really stand out as bad because all the others are generally good, unlike at the other Burmese zoos where it is just “bad, worse, bad, not quite as bad, terrible” and so on. The African lions had a very large moated enclosure (these ones were regular tawny lions), and then there is a cluster of enclosures threaded through with a raised boardwalk for common hippos, sarus cranes, greater flamingoes, and giraffes. All of these were well above average for an Asian zoo. There were two hippo enclosures, both with sizeable pools with mud wallows and live vegetation. The sarus cranes had a good-sized enclosure and were busy building a nest. There were only two flamingoes so I'm not sure if they are the remains of a larger flock or if there were only ever two. The four giraffes had a quite large paddock; there may have been ostriches in there as well (there was an ostrich statue nearby). A bit of a detour took me to the white lion pair in a large tree-filled enclosure, and then I made a bit of a mess of trying to find my way around the paths to the sealions which turned out to be only visible during show-times. Outside of the shows they are kept inside a house with blacked-out windows which I wasn't allowed to see inside of, but the staff kindly brought out one young sealion to do an impromptu show. I don't normally watch animal shows at zoos but I did want to see what sort of sealion they had (I was guessing they would be Californian but they weren't – I found out later via Google that they were four Patagonian sealions imported from the Shanghai Wild Animal Park in 2012).
And that was the end of my visit. I stopped at one of the little restaurants for food, just by the Aquarium, and someone there offered to give me a ride on his motorbike back to the entrance and that was the reason I missed the elephant enclosure. I had been intending to see that on the way out because it would have been interesting to see how well or otherwise they were housed, and also there was the possibility there was a white elephant here, but never mind.