Field Trip to Phuket Zoo
For their second field trip of the term, on Thursday the students of Primary 3 at my school visited the Phuket Zoo. Instead of spending much time viewing the animals in their cages and other enclosure, most of our day out involved sitting through the various shows (crocodile, elephant, and monkey) in which the handlers subject the animals to what I consider to be humiliating acts for the benefit of the tourists. Most of the animals are obviously drugged and some just look sad. But the kids enjoyed it, particularly since Teacher Mark let them take photos with his camera (resulting in relatively few unusable photos).
Aside from the staged shows, we also checked out the small but thankfully air-conditioned aquarium (entered through the jaws of a concrete crocodile) and fed bananas to the elephants. Between shows, the students purchased an endless variety of snacks from the many food stalls (and yet they still clamored to go on their final snack break upon returning to school). A group of girls from my class took turns holding onto my hands as they dragged me from placed to place (I seemed to be the popular teacher of the day).
These girls all wanted to try their hands at using my camera and this resulting in some really interesting photos (a couple really have a good eye; one girl, in particular, would spend quite a while composing her shots and using the zoom quite effectively). This was difficult for me at first as I like to have my camera in-hand at all times so when I spy a photo I’d like I can snap it off quickly. I insisted that they use the wrist strap so they wouldn’t drop the camera and wished I’d purchased protector sheets to keep little fingerprints off of the large view screen but I was glad I gave them the opportunity. I decided that I wouldn’t delete any of the kids’ photos and, combined with the 30 or so that my Thai teacher shot with the school’s camera, we have almost 200 pictures in our file for this field trip.
The students were somewhat disappointed that they didn’t bring enough money to have their pictures taken with the tiger or orangutan (200 baht per photo) or to buy many souvenirs in the shop (”Teacher Mark, why is everything so expensive at the zoo?” many kids asked me). On my last visit, I had thought the zoo was one of the worst I’d ever visited with unkempt cages, murky water in the ponds and aquarium (you couldn’t even see the fish!), and cobwebs everywhere. It seems to have been cleaned up somewhat since that time (over a year ago) but is still a bit rundown and depressing. My only real regret, however, was that we weren’t able to visit the orchid garden (next time…).
After a boxed lunch of rice and vegetables (eaten near the billy goat pen which was very, shall we say, aromatic) we boarded the fleet of minibuses for the short trip back to school. The students then had to fill out their “field trip report” booklets which include such questions as “write about and draw your favorite thing about the trip” and “what did you learn today?” I was touched that several kids’ favorite thing was “using Teacher Mark’s camera.” The majority wrote that they learned animals shouldn’t be kept in cages, that it was better for them to be left in their natural habitats.
The day left the teachers exhausted (but the kids seemed to have even more energy when we returned to school — I can never understand why they rarely seem to get tired) but I did enjoy it and look forward to the next field trip.
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