The Crocodiles Park, Asam Kumbang

I found crocodiles are even creepier than when you see them on Animal Planet channel. In a place called Asam Kumbang, Medan, there’s a family who have so many crocodiles on their backyard. Those crocodiles belong to a Chinese family. They have stayed in that place since 1959 and that property is well-managed until now. Those crocodiles are private properties but we can see them with only pay 15 thousands rupiahs each.


There are approximately ten simple pools made of old stones build in the backyard. That's all. Without any cafes or wide park. Each wall is high enough, to prevent those crocodiles running away. Inside every pool, there’re few crocodiles which have been grouped based on their ages. Right in the entrance way, the first crocodile we find is on a big pool. The sign board says that the crocodiles’s age is 34 years old. 34 years old! It’s so big! I think, a body of an adult can fit enough in its belly.
It seems like it’s the oldest crocodiles there. It’s just lying around there, sometimes peeping at us with its big yellow eyes. This is my first time to see crocodiles directly. So, it’s a bit spooky to see a crocodile as big and as old as that so near to you..

The other pools contain about 10-15 crocodiles each. We came there around 10 o’clock i the morning and those crocodiles were lying overbear one to each other, enjoy the morning sunshine. Some of them are close their eyes, but a few of them are open, watching the visitors with their yellow eyes. They dont need to move to intimidate their victims. What a truly predators.
There is also a little swamp pool there, for a few adult crocodiles. According to a sign board in the tree, one of those crocodiles there is 50 years old! but most of them like to hide in the swamp, so that you can only see their long heads on the water surface, so we can’t actually guess, which one of them is the 50 years one. I’m really sure; it will size bigger then the 34 years old one.

One of the keepers there is cleaning a few young crocodiles in some round buckets using liquid like soap. And those young crocodiles are dirty indeed. While for the big crocodiles, they don’t clean them manually. They just put a big water pipe to let the water flow inside the pools; the new water will push air the dirty water out to the drain.
Unfortunately, we can not see those crocodiles having their ‘meal’. The schedule for that it’s around 16.30 in the evening, while we come there by 9 in the morning. So, we can only see them being cleaned.