It’s horribly archaic.
Lonely Planet guide book describes Ragunan zoo as “a nice place to spend a few hours”. They forgot to mention not to go on a national holiday, particularly the end of Ramadan because every Indonesian is supposed to spend time with their family and since just about everything is closed the only 2 places in the entire country to go with the family are the zoo and Taman Mini Indonesia. (another blog and another day)
Though since I ignored a friend’s warning not to go I don’t think I would have listened to the LP either had they actually told the truth. To start with the traffic was a bit crowded to get to the zoo. (It’s not far off the JORR or Jakarta Outer Ring Road tollway)
The zoo does have some nice open places to have a picnic, play on waterboats, buy some snacks and the Jakarta FreeSpirit sponsor a 10 km fun run through this zoo each year, but the actual animal enclosures are small, dark and poorly vegetated and in the local Indonesian’s bad habit of throwing rubbish everywhere and you have a very depressing place. (expect the primate centre). But what do you expect for a 50cent entry fee?
I think the sign above says “do not throw rubbish at the animals you stupid gits” – but as you can see the Indonesian’s reading skills are not much better than mine!
here’s the crocodile cages…. theres a couple of animals in each pen…. this guy is a big bugger, but clearly unimpressed with the rubbish throwing…
Did I mention crowded ?
Always Restless Feet 
I find it deeply sad that people have so little regard for animals that they use their enclosures for rubbish bins and doubly sad that the keepers do nothing about it