Breakfast: tator tots ([shrug]), fruit, rice porridge (minus the chicken = sadness), raisin pancakes, and fruit punch.
We return to the room 'til our anticipated check-out time at noon--at which point the Ek-kwa-tore'll be able to tell us if we can keep the bungalow for another evening. We pass the time by watching Al Jazeera, "Fault Lines" report on U.S. health care reform.
Eric and I have quickly succumbed to a case of lassitude, mostly brought on by illness and the heat and the sprawling, Los Angelen...ian quality of Surabaya--hard to get anywhere, and a feeling that you're still nowhere even when you finally get there.
There's a fractured sense impression I get when I think about my last few days in Surabaya. But maybe that has less to do with the city itself than a bout of Traveler's Ennui, a jadedness born of having seen and done too much, in too little time. Whatever it is, Eric's got more of an excuse than I do, having spent the month prior to Indonesia gallivanting across India.
A stroke of luck grants us another night at the Ek-kwa-tore, and in relief at not having to pack our things yet again and cab across town, as well as partial guilt for having "accomplished" so little in Surabaya thus far, we decide to visit the Surabaya Zoo.
Here, they reject my rupiah equivalent to five bucks (admission is two), and here, we're assaulted with a vision of what looks like...herpetic baboon ass, and a largely miserably existence for the majority of the captive animals. Small concrete cages holding the sole and desolate representative of a species, hippos stewing in dirty water, small herds of antelope/deer-like animals languishing in the dust of their enclosures. Even a tiger compulsively pacing a narrow oval, a wet trail marking his sad little circumambulation.
The Komodo dragons are the only animals that look marginally more content, likely because they're the Tony Montanas of the animal kingdom, stalking greasily across the grass, their snake-tongues tasting the air, you and your molecules; they just don't give a fuck.
(This place'd give PETA a heart-attack. They'd come here, all night-vision goggles and balaclavas, release the animals, get bitten by a rabid monkey, and then turn into frenzied, mindless zomb...wait a second...)
Well, nice to know my two bucks will be used to perpetuate such a quality institution of wildlife conservation.
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