Do Not Visit Sydney Taronga Zoo

I like the zoo, but I don’t like the idea of spending a day at the local zoo during my vacation abroad. I want to see the city, the culture, and the people, not the animals.

“You must visit the zoo”, they said. I was still reluctant. “It’s like being in a forest where you can pet animals freely”, a friend of a friend reminisced about her childhood memory of the same zoo. And the last stroke was when my boss, who preferred to stay in the hotel during business travels, told me she had been to this zoo. I agreed to put the zoo in our Sydney itinerary.

When I told the hotel concierge we were going to the zoo; she was overly excited about the fact. So good. After all, I enjoyed going to the zoo in the cities I lived in, and I have a plan to bring back a Koala for my Appa.

We took a ferry from Circular Harbour and reached the zoo entrance ten minutes later.

The first animal I met was a kangaroo. They were accessible in the open area, the outback of Australia; there was no fence between them and me. Yay? No, not yay.

They looked statue-like, and there was no interaction, not even between them. They looked unhappy, which was sad. Maybe because the place was too small, it’s the size of a house’s backyard, and it didn’t look like any forest, as my friend’s friend mentioned.

We then met a platypus or tried to, but no platypus that day. Maybe they were there, but I couldn’t see any, at least nothing that resembled the platypus shown on the TV, which brought me to my biggest disappointment on zoo-ing that day, the Tasmanian devil.

I grew up watching Looney Tunes and loving Tasmanian Devil. I could see the character similarities between the two of us. We ate everything, anything and all the time. We always looked grumpy, and we never combed our hair. So, based on the evolution theory, Taz was my ancestor.

So you can understand my disappointment when I saw the Tasmanian devil. It was a shivering small bear-look-alike creature. This surely couldn’t be my spiritual animal growing up.

At least seeing him reminded me to eat, so off we went for lunch at the food court. To my further frustration, only one food counter was open, and there were like twenty people in front of me, and I ordered the kids’ meal by mistake. So I had to drink from the juice box while my friends enjoyed their soft drinks. And food? It was bland. I wonder, is this why the animals looked miserable here because they also had zoo food?

After lunch, we went to the petting zoo. This place ended up being the highlight of my trip.

I have never seen this kind of chicken before; they are CUTE! Also, this was my first time seeing a real-life pig and sheep.

Finally, it was time for our koala photo session. Oh yes, you only can have an up-close and personal moment with the koala during ten minutes photo session (twenty bucks and two hours wait; well.. at least my parents can showcase it in their living room later), and this still means no touching, just standing close to the koala. So we did, but the koala was sleeping. “They sleep a lot”, the zookeeper said.

I paid 20 bucks to see a sleeping koala!

In the last minutes, the koala woke up. She yawned, pulled the leaves, and chewed them WHILE pooping. The life of sleeping, eating, and pooping; maybe a koala is my spirit animal?

For a split second, I considered putting her inside my bag and making a run for it, but naaah. We can’t have two lazy beings in one household.

We went to the gift shop afterwards. This was the first gift shop I spent less than five minutes in. It was so.. unappealingly sober. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I begged my friends to go back, and we did.

I let out a long, happy sigh when I saw the Sydney city skyline from the cable car ride back to the ferry terminal.

Bye-bye Zoo. Hello Sydney Opera House.

Follow me on Instagram @KultureKween for more recent updates.