Getting Lost in Surabaya Visiting The Zoo and Mini Art Gallery

# Having company while exploring a place is a lot more fun than exploring it solo, don’t you think? Four days ago, my friend came to visit me in my new place from Yogyakarta. She has never explored Surabaya and was taking a 3 hour train ride to stay at my place. We planned on checking out some spots in Surabaya and were quite ambitious wanting to do so many activities but guess what? I’ll let you follow this adventure today\! --- We started our journey as early as 5 AM using the commuter line. It’s a 2 hour train ride and we already had some lists including the zoo, old town area and even the east of Surabaya. We also wanted to travel reasonably by using public transportation but Surabaya is massive and their transportation system will make you give up. Once we reached Surabaya, we had breakfast at this famous local “warungs” just close by the train station. They are known for their local dishes “Rawon” and “Pecel” which were quite delicious. It’s one of those “must try” especially when you’re traveling into the area.  After breakfast, we wanted to try the Surabaya Bus. In the past, you could ride the bus just by paying with a water bottle but these days, you have to pay with e-money. Before getting into the bus shelter, we walked past a submarine monument, an authentic decommissioned submarine and an interactive place to see the inside of this Soviet made submarine. Since our first destination is KBS Zoo, we tried riding the bus but we ended up getting lost in the middle and took the wrong bus. Since we had to actually cross a busy road and it was 38C, we gave up. We dropped just about a 10 minutes drive from the Zoo and took a grab to finally reach our final destination. ## I don’t think you should try this bus experience. Well, unless you have a lot of time to kill and have a little time exploring the area. Otherwise, grab is your new friend in this city. Since Surabaya is sweltering hot, I don’t think anyone could survive walking around town especially at 10 to 12 AM. Now, I learned my lesson 😆 When we arrived at KBS Zoo, we got to see the iconic Shark and Crocodile statue. It’s the landmark and icon of the city in which the name is from Sura \[Shark\] and Baya \[ Crocodile\]. KBS is an affordable destination for a lot of people to see various types of animals and even as a jogging track. In this place, a lot of kindergartners like to visit from across the region in East-Java. They have plenty of collections including a giraffe, hippo and tiger. Unfortunately though, I think this place isn’t so well-maintained despite being a massive and interactive zoo.  This zoo had so many issues until recently where they did quite a bit of renovation and management. However, you can still see some poor conditions of the animals and being inside the place, you’d feel sorry for some of the animals. To think that this condition is still happening in 2025 is a bit outrageous. Though people said that the condition has improved, I think this place has a long way to go for more revitalization and conservation efforts of the animals in the place.  ### Inside the place, they have extensive collections of monkeys that they just know how to pose. Look at these monkeys\!   We also checked out the deer area and they all look so friendly. When I look at them, it’s as if they have eyes that speak. They remind me so much of my cats at home. At the time, they had just finished breakfast, so I didn’t want to bother giving them extra food which we could purchase in front of the enclosure.   There are also two giraffe in this zoo and some african animals which actually make sense to live in this area as it's extremely hot almost all-year round.  ## So, should you visit this place? Not really. Even according to my friend, it’s a one-time- thing only. She didn’t want to visit it again, citing some smells around the bird enclosures and around. To me, this is my first time visiting this place as an adult. I remembered the place used to be pretty okay and clean when I was a kid. It’s a place my family loved to go since it's affordable recreational activities in the city. Would I visit this place again? not really but I still applaud their efforts in revitalizing the place since many children actually visit this place to learn about animals. There are better animal conservation effort like the Safari park but it's not as affordable as this one. --- Once we exited the zoo, we walked around to find the nearest coffee shop. In that heat, I just couldn’t think and I wanted to get something refreshing. We ended up finding a place called VISMA | Coffee, Art & Co. It’s a coffee shop, co-working space and an art gallery. I didn’t know this place and my friend never talked about it but now, this is a place I have to go back again since it was a pleasant experience being there. --- My friend and I had some refreshments there and we looked at some cool pictures around. I didn’t care much about it at the time but that made me have some mental notes that I need to go back there for it. It was a great place to be, especially after walking for an hour in the sweltering heat of Surabaya and especially around the Zoo. --- [//]:# (!worldmappin -7.296194 lat 112.736635 long d3scr)