Below is an introductory paragraph about the rescue station from the website (link above):
"The Cu Chi Wildlife Rescue Station rescues animals that are confiscated from the illegal animal trade in Ho Chi Minh City or other surrounding provinces. This is the fist multi-species rescue station in the South of Vietnam that can take care of many endangered wild species. After the animals have recovered and have been rehabilitated, they are returned back to the wild."
Adults are charged $5 USD each but all students are able to visit free of charge... they want to encourage visitors and raise public awareness about protecting Vietnam's wildlife - I think that's great!
Bus #4 was the place to be! :P
Arriving at the rescue center.
Ms. Elizabeth and I with some of the girls. :)
Here, our group is standing by the sun bear cages. There were two sun bears and both seemed to have gone pretty much crazy couped up in the too-small cages for too long. One continually paced and the other rocked back and forth the entire time. The whole thing was incredibly sad BUT good to know that these bears (and all the other animals at the rescue) are better of now than wherever they had been before.
Giant lizard.
This big guy was awesome.
This is Annie. She's pretty cute! She stayed at the front of her cage checking out all of us the entire time we were standing there... and then began swinging around her cage and playing.
Ngoc is the baby monkey! She basically stole all of our hearts... especially one of our student's... whose name is also Ngoc!
Ms. Elizabeth cooing to baby Ngoc. :)
A snake that had apparently JUST shed its skin!
The otters were hilarious. I never knew they made so much NOISE! ...Like a shrieking noise.
The baby otters were in another section and all went for a swim...
Double hornbills! (Like the ones I saw in Malaysia... except those were still in the wild.)
Many students bought WAR bracelets... "Wildlife At Risk"
AIS 8th grade students!
Ms. Elizabeth and her COOL hat!
Before heading back to school we went to a beautiful restaurant for lunch...
Love this one of Annie and Tina :)
Everyone at lunch
This restaurant's coconuts were oddly... tall?!
Our family-style Vietnamese lunch :)
The bowl towards the bottom of the picture... well, we're not sure what it was... some kind of meat on some kind of animal's joint?!
Beautiful lotus. :)
And then we got on the bus to head back to school!
This was a great field trip. I think it was good for the students to see the different animals and learn about Vietnam's wildlife. Many of the students were fearful of just walking past the bears' cage at first. They do not come into contact with many animals.
Elizabeth made a good point when she said how great it was for the students to witness our reactions to the animals... loving these animals and being excited!... mixed with feelings of sadness and disgust at how animals are treated. Some of the students were talking about how bears' bile is sold and used to heal bruises... you just rub some of the bile onto a bruise and the bruise will disappear. These superstitions are engrained in this culture... which I want to respect, but at the same time feel the unfair treatment to animals here can be difficult to be understanding of.
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