Thank you to my Aunt Jannah for buying us advance tickets because the hubster and I got a b-a-d feeling when we saw the 1km stretch of illegally parked cars by the road leading to the Zoo. True enough, there must have been at least 120 people in the queue for tickets that mid-morning. Ah well, this isn't the World's Best Rainforest Zoo with 3 Michelin stars (a must-see attraction!!) for nothing ey.
Here we are, living dangerously. Look how ecstatic Arissa was to be back at the Zoo, this is her fourth trip (what! do I take her here on a yearly basis!?) but this time something was different. The impulsive-obsessive clean gene had kicked in so every time we walked past a corral, she would start retching and made a face loudly exclaiming "Mummy!!! Busuk!!!".
By the time we got to to the Estuarine Crocodile (Sungei Buaya) enclosure, these two were soaked through with sweat..
As were we!
Photo courtesy of Hana Arissa. A little brunch at the Snake House (least smelly?) of home-packed nasi lemak and fruits and off we are to the petting zoo, where Arissa insisted on searching for a non-existent cow she claimed she saw the last time she was here with her cousins.
I got her interested in petting a baby goat instead and boy, that took me back to kampung days in Muar where Mum and Dad used to drive us to every school holidays to occupy us. Those were the days of showering from a well and chasing baby chicks all over my aunt's backyard and getting hopelessly bitten by mosquitoes at night. No a/c, no telly but lots of happy times with my cousins.
And then the part they loved best! Sofia was almost asleep at this point from sheer exhaustion and having skipped her morning nap but the moment her eyes set upon the Wet Play, she jumped up from her zombie position on the stroller and started pumping her body excitedly.
It was a watering hole for maybe 200 kids and their parents so you can imagine how murky the water was. I was praying the kids won't catch anything nasty from this episode, and they miraculously did not!
We spent about an hour here before making a slow venture back to the startline, with a couple more stops along the way.
..and a show squeezed in between where Sofia fell asleep from sheer dead boredom. I mean, that sealion show has been the same for the past 10 years- script, tricks and all- I can actually remember all the lines by now. Ok yeah, so maybe training an animal isn't as easy as training a kid to do potty in the toilet, for example, but a decade is a long time and I'm sure the poor sealion needs a bit of new stimulation by now. Surely even if you can't teach an old dog a new trick you can re-format the show a little bit! But, hey, that's my TV mind talking..
So to round off a very tiring day, we made a last pit stop to re-charge at Ben &Jerry's where Arissa finally got to see her cow! All that argument with me pointing at the map going "What cow??? There's no cow!!" and she actually was referring to THIS plastic cow!
Bibik!! Let me up! 
>.<