lol i was on a major baby hippo pilgrimage today, i flew out at 7am!! and then drove an hour to see homdaeng (this was before i went to ubon for palo and kaki). 

i did get to meet the keeper here (with some low key stalking behind the enclosures 😬) and told him how popular homdaeng is!! he was also nice enough to coax them out of the water for me to take some photos before they went back in (it was super hot, i totally understood them wanting to stay submerged) and he also said i could feed them (from outside) if i had food. unfortunately i didn't get to in the end, because the only "snacks" were back at the entrance, by the time i made it back to the enclosure they were too comfy in the water and sleepy to care about grass 😂 i ended up feeding another hippo (Lukhin) all the grass i bought lol. next time i will buy corn ahead of time and see if that would motivate them more...

and a review: sisaket zoo is very serene - it's small and set in a nature park. sadly the hippos are not in a nature environment but they obviously love their animals a lot and they really take care in maintaining and decorating the space, thai zoos are just another level with their deco 💯 

the only thing besides the hippos being in a mostly concrete enclosure is that despite all the homdaeng promotion they are not used to international tourists at ALL lol. i mean i dont blame them because they're very out of the way for even the locals i think, but they were completely unprepared for a foreigner showing up (especially one going "please, homdaeng. i need to see the baby"😂). not to sound mean in any way! like i said i don't blame them, but there were no directions or map, so it was a lot of me walking one way then back then taking another path until i figured out it was overall a circle 🫠 and when i wanted to leave a donation they were very confused and had no protocol for what to do if a visitor wants to give money 😭 so they should definitely work on that part 😂 but it is a very big nature reserve type area surrounding them, i would love if the hippos got to go into the river some time lol

homdaeng!!