My family and i just got back from Bali and Singapore. Bali is a rapidly growing third word country that has transitioned over the last 30 years from a subsistence farming dominated economy into a tourist economy - it was about 40% US travellers at the big hotels but since the bombing in Kuta, it has become a destination primarily for Japanese, chinese, australians and a few adventurous europeans - we even met a family from North Korea who were determined to get a picture of our family with thiers as they had never met/seen an american!
not too much reptile activity- I tried- but with wife and three kids not so easy-
i spoke with Duncan McRea who owns the Bali Reptile Park, and visited the facility. I also saw some Bali and Java Retics on display at a temple for tourists to get pics with.
Of interest, Duncan sold his reptile breeding facility to a man from Belgium about 3-4 months ago and is getting out of the reptile business into exotic plant exportation.
If you are really bored and want to check out our Blog, my kids did most of the test work- ages 10 and 10 and 14 feel free.
www.themurdochs.blogspot.com
enjoy- more cultural based
BTW, Bali used to be part of the larger island of Java until the last cessation of the ice age about 10,000 years ago and is only separated from Java by about 1/2 mile wide river like divide that is about 60ft deep, so i believe the Bali retics are not that different than the more "mainland" form of Java retics which get full sized. The java and bali retics that i saw were very similar in color pattern and yellow headed.
lastly i toured the singapore reptile park and made some contacts there- i will try to contact them and get more info later.
Winslow
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