Monkey business

I gotto repeat, Uncle Tan's is the place for food. We woke up to the smell of pancakes, fried eggs and toast. Pancakes Malaysian style with condensed milk and pineapple jam with a cup of coffee really hit the spot in the morning before you go see the apes. Our transfer picked us up to go to Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary at 8 am. But in a style common to this part of the world, no one actually has any correct information and the place only opened at 9 am. We hung around the cafeteria with some drinks. I've already tried almost every drink available in this country: grass jelly (which I had before and am a big fan of), lychee, mango, water chestnut (nice), coconut, carbonated ice tea and winter melon, but Kris stuck to something safe, i.e.: Sprite.

Orangutan coming down for a feeding

We were hoarded in to watch a movie about the sanctuary before let in to watch the feeding at 10 am. Sepilok cares for orphaned orangutans, carefully nursing them to adulthood (which in case of orangutans takes 8 to 10 years) and then weening them off human love and releasing into the wild in the sanctuary. Only one orangutan came to be fed, swinging gracefully on lines suspended in the trees. But we were lucky enough to spot a next just above the walkway where a juvenile was taking a nap (apparently he just wasn't hungry). Seeing the crowd of gawking tourists, he decided to step outside for a photo session, yawning, flexing his muscles, then just hanging out, literally and metaphorically. Lovely animals with very intelligent faces and apparently much smarter than chimpanzees. Orangutans in the wild and captivity have been observed to create and use tools, and teach their young how to use them. These smart apes have a learning process very similar to ourselves.

Just hanging around

Yesterday Saidi, the manager of Uncle Tan's, suggested that if we only have one day we could go and see Labouk Bay, which is exactly what we did after the sanctuary. Half an hour transfer deposited us on the outskirts of mangrove forest right next to an oil palm plantation, where the owners saved a bit of the forest in order to preserve the Proboscis monkey. At half past ten we witnessed the first feeding with hordes of floppy nosed monkeys coming down their trees to enjoy a repast of bread, melon skins and Sabah vegetables. There were also some other monkeys around (perhaps someone can help me identify them by commenting below) and some interesting looking bird, which name I can't remember (once again, if you know, post it below). We finally got the chance to see the elusive Proboscis, our last outing ending in failure.

After the feeding came time for lunch. This was a low point of the day, because I came to realize that while in the Philippines we were simply cheated by everyone, here in Malaysia, the cheating is done in a state-sponsored way. For almost every attraction around there are two prices: the local price for Malaysian citizens, and the tourist price: three to five times higher. And I think it only hit me during lunch that paying almost a $100 for half a day trip for two people without lunch is kind of expensive. What upset me a bit more that Sepilok is mostly sponsored by the UK Orangutan Appeal, a charitable organization which collects thousands of pounds in order to support this place. So not only do foreigners sponsor this place and help save these great apes, they are then taken advantage of when visiting. It's sad to see that a Western organization condones this kind of practice. Very sad. For the next hour we just hung out in hammocks while waiting for a film showing about the Proboscis monkey. After the movie, which was done in a BBC-melodrama style (with soppy music while the monkeys were courting each other and making love, sweet love) we went to see the second feeding. The second platform is located much deeper in the forest, which results in a great number of monkeys being present. Not only there are many of them, they are also completely unafraid of the visitors, jumping around and completely ignoring us. Great photo opportunities, although we were a bit slow with Kris to get the “stupid tourist with a monkey” photo. My wife has a fantastic photo with a monkey's ass next to her face instead.

Honey, next time show a little reflex

We were dropped off at Uncle Tan just after lunch to my disappointment. Fortunately, there were still some fried bananas left (I finally got my fried banana!), which I had my fill of. A couple beers and rounds of pool finished off the evening, before we packed up and went to sleep.