I love animals, so naturally I love a wildlife park, where I can see loads of them up close.
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Disappointingly though, I’ve been to some questionable ones in my time, particularly in parts of Asia, where I’ve seen monkeys drinking Fanta and snacking on potato chips and crocodiles confined to pens not even long enough for them to stretch their bodies fully out.
It’s sad and makes me regret ‘supporting’ such places.
Although, I then wonder, what would become of the animals if there were no visitors through the gates paying entrance fees that might at least fund their food?
I trust Australian standards, so I have no hesitation visiting any on home soil, but I get nervous when I travel about what I’m going to discover beyond the barriers.
Thankfully these days, we have the advantage of checking websites and social media before we visit.
Even though the former can sometimes be deceiving, the latter often exposes the truth about the quality of the place and its treatment of animals.
The Bali Bird Park kept popping up in my Facebook feed when I was on holiday there with two of my three teens late last year, and looking for something to fill a good chunk of our final day on the island after a 10am checkout from our villa and an 8pm flight home, we decided we would check it out.
So, we grabbed a Grab (Southeast Asia’s answer to Uber ridesharing) and headed to Batubalan, somewhere between Kuta and Ubud.
It cost about a hundred bucks (Australian) for the three of us to get into the bird park, which seemed pretty pricey for Balinese standards at first.
But then we stepped inside.
I was instantly impressed with the immaculate grounds, the abundance of exotic uncaged birds we put eyes on immediately, and the friendly staff who allowed us to store our luggage in the office for the day for no extra charge.
For as crazy, congested and suffocating as Bali’s streets can feel, it forever amazes me how you can move just a few steps away from the hustle and bustle into a garden, a temple, or, in this case, a bird park, and find instant tranquillity.
It was hot when we visited, arriving in the middle of the day during the wet season.
I expected such a popular tourist attraction to be crowded and subsequently irritating after reading that the entire park only covered an area of two hectares.
To give a comparison, Melbourne Zoo is on 22 ha.
Within those 2 ha, there are more than 1300 birds, representing more than 250 species.
During the live shows, however, we weren’t fighting for a clear viewpoint, touching shoulders with anyone else, and there were no lines at exhibits where we had to wait for a stream of people to look through windows or wire before moving on and making space.
We wandered around the grounds, as pretty pink flamingos freely roamed, unbothered, among us.
We hand-fed parrots, who flew to and sat on our outstretched hands to eat the fruit and seed from our palms.
We threw fish to the enthusiastic pelicans.
We even had macaws climb from their sitting perches on to our arms and up to our necks, pecking at our hats and sunglasses.
And, possibly the craziest thing we saw during our visit was a cassowary, who free-roamed while collecting thrown fruit from its keepers during a live demonstration.
It came within arm’s reach of the front row of people — who were mainly children — which made for a few gasps from the Australian members of the crowd.
We, of course, are well aware of the cassowary’s reputation.
Despite the gasping, I don’t think anyone actually felt unsafe.
It was one instance of favouring the more lax conditions of an Asian wildlife park.
Anyone who has seen cassowaries in Australian captivity will note the stark contrast in handling of these potentially dangerous prehistoric creatures, with their fortress-like enclosures built to adhere to strict Australian safety standards keeping an arguably overly cautious distance between humans and beasts.
I trusted the Balinese keepers knew what they were doing.
That sentiment does not apply to all operators in Southeast Asia, I can assure you, but this truly was a quality attraction with professional staff, healthy and seemingly happy well-trained animals.
To top off our visit’s great value, we also escaped the heat for the duration of a free 3D movie experience inside the onsite theatre room and got to see the world’s largest living lizards, Komodo dragons, in their native country (though not their natural environment).
We only had a week in Bali, so we wanted to choose our activities carefully to make the most of it, and I can tell you, Bali Bird Park was absolutely worth spending a day at.