Travel / State Parks & Campgrounds / Not As We Expected...

My husband and I have been a while living in Sumatra, but we never had a chance to visit this park, Way Kambas National Park, which has been famous with the Elephant Training Centre/School. So when my parents came to visit us last July, we wouldn’t waste this good chance. We took them to this park. To our surprise, it took a very long time to get there from the capital city of Lampung, Bandar Lampung, where my parents had stayed a few nights before. Around three hours, we finally made it to the National Park. I should tell that the way to this National Park was not as we expected. It was an unpleasant, tiring journey, because in three hours we should deal with confusing street marks directing us to the place, not to mention the condition of the streets we should go through. When we finally got to the main entrance, we were charged for entrance fees illegally, because there was no legal notice about paying any fees for entering the park (we paid these fees because we didn’t realize this at first, and when we asked other domestic tourists whom we met in the park, they said they didn’t pay any single cent, and this disappointed us very much).

Our first impression about this place is that it was dirty. The provided public toilets were so stinky (I had to hold my pee, preferred to go elsewhere but NOT in that toilet!). The elephants were there all right, but nothing like I expected. They could only take us for a walk on their back, and nothing like the Elephant Show or something, like in Thailand. And the elephant coach even charged us an expensive price for it ($15 per person for 15 minutes)! Although there might be other preserved animals in this National Park (they said they had Sumatran Tigers and Rhinos), since we had been disappointed from the moment we entered this park, we decided not to go for the other preserved animals, and immediately fled instead. For us, this experience would be the ‘once in a lifetime’. I mean, once is more than enough for visiting this park. No more, I said to my hubby and parents, and they agreed. Oh.. I just wish I would have never visited this park...