The Best Way to Spend the Day at Bali Zoo!
Disclaimer: We do not accept or support experiences where animals are treated badly or abused. During both of our animal encounters we witnessed no abuse, we witnessed the love that the keepers/handlers and Mahouts have for the animals they care for.
Plan your trip?
Avoid hidden fees in the exchange rate while withdrawing from millions of ATMs abroad, paying in restaurants and shops, and buying your accommodation and flights using the Wise Card. You can hold up to 40+ currencies at once to spend in in over 150 countries, and convert them in real time with the free Wise app.
Need help planning your trip from start to finish? Check out these helpful links:
- Cheap flights
- Savings on accommodation from hostels to luxury hotels
- Affordable car rental options
- Affordable sightseeing tours and day trips
- Travel Adapter – All in one so you don’t have to carry a bunch around
- Don’t be silly and forget Travel Insurance! Get hurt and you’ll regret it…
This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy. You can also read our content/editorial policy here.
Breakfast with the Orangutans
Why not start your day with a one kind of an experience; breakfast with a few adorable Orangutan in their own little playground.
You can choose to include transfers or make your own way to the zoo. I would highly recommend getting a transfer and try to get to the breakfast as early as possible as the crowds really get large, mid-way through to the end of the breakfast, making it a little difficult to get some food and your time with the orangutans.
Breakfast offers foods such assorted tropical fruits and fruit juice, followed by freshly baked bread, and optional choices of main course that ranged from Fried Rice, Buttermilk pancake, Classic Cereals and more.
Complete your morning with a cup of Balinese coffee or warm English breakfast tea to compote a perfect ending to your breakfast quest.
Your breakfast experience isn’t just with orangutans, guests are also allowed to feed a few cute elephants then get to hold and take a pictures with birds of paradise.
I did find the photo on the website to be a little misleading as it makes it seem you are having breakfast right next to orangutans however you actually have breakfast in the Gayo Restaurant.
The Orangutans come and play on ropes or sit on 1 of 2 platforms where you can go up and view them and take photos but – you are not able to actually touch the animals – this is for their safety and yours. It’s still a very cool experience and I would highly recommend it.
Mud Bath with the Elephants
The new Elephant Mud Fun half-day package offered at the Bali zoo allows guests to get down and dirty with the zoo’s friendly Sumatran elephants along with the experienced mahout handlers.
Your day will start at 9am (or straight after your breakfast), with a coffee and a few snacks while the Mahouts introduce themselves, explain what will happen during the experience and the do’s and don’t’s with the elephants.
Locker keys will then be handed out and you will be put into groups – for us, there were 50 people total for the experience, so we were put into 5 groups of 10. We were told that this was the biggest group they have had and usually only have these numbers during high season.
Next you will be off to get changed. Note: I would recommend changing into the clothes/bathers you want to wear during the mud bath experience, prior to arriving at the zoo as the change rooms are extremely small, making getting changed before and after the experience a little challenging.
Once changed you are led by your groups to cut up some food for the elephants such as carrots, bananas and pumpkin, which everyone gets a chance to feed the elephants a few minutes later.
The groups are then led to meet the elephants that you will be spending the next few hours with. We enjoyed our few hours with Anna, a 35-year-old elephant. We each took turns feeding the elephants the treats we just cut up for them and got to introduce ourselves to the elephant.
We all made our way into the large bathing pool area along with our elephant Anna, where her handler got her to sit down and then we slashed her and got her nice and wet and cool!
Once our Anna was nice and wet, we moved over to the mud pool, here we lathered her in mud (as well as ourselves). The handlers explained that it’s very common to find elephants basking in mud during the summer months because of their high body temperature.
Elephants have no sweat glands to relieve their internal heat, they rely on mud baths to stay cool and protect themselves from the heat of the sun (as well as horse flies). Just because the elephants hide looks tough, they can actually get sunburned.
Anna seemed to enjoy her mud bath and needed to be washed off, we brought her over to the massive rainfall showers where we got to scrub the mud off her skin and give her one last cuddle before she went back to her enclosure for a meal. After the elephants left, we headed back to get changed and enjoy a hard-earned buffet lunch at the Sanctoo resturant!
I would recommend booking the breakfast and mud bath ticket, saving you around $30 per person if you book them individually.
Read more: Is 100 000 a good tip in Bali?
1-hour massage at Sanctoo Spa
There is no better way to end your animal experiences like a relaxing1 hour grapeseed and safflower oil massage at the zoo spa. The spa rooms offer stunning views over a waterfall, the sounds of the forest, birds and waterfall really do add to the relaxation of the massage.
Wander the Zoo
Included in your ticket for the breakfast or mud fun in entrance to the zoo, after your morning of encounters, I’d highly recommend going for a wander around the zoo.
There is a large section of the zoo that is under construction to add more enclosures as well as a hotel which hopefully will be open in 2020.
Travelling King (and guest) were invited by Bali Zoo for this trip but all of the opinions, recommendations, suggestions and terrible “jokes” are our own.
