Monkey Rehab

SUNDAY 27 APRIL 2008

Suprisingly, I woke up quite early today. I thought I would be very tired and would want to sleep in for a bit but I must've been looking forward to go to the restaurant and stuff my pie hole in the morning.

Seeing as I splashed out and paid extra to stay in the club rooms, I get to enjoy this view while I was having my first coffee.

I could've had breakky at the club lounge and avoid those noisy children and tour groups but I'm not going to miss out on what the restaurant had to offer downstairs .... the biggest breakfast buffet ever ... LOL (close to it anyway).







New Zealand hotels might want to learn from this breakfast buffet. What we have is ... um ..... I won't bother explaining.

After I stuff my pie hole with food until I could not move, we took a few pics ... suprise suprise and headed off to the airport to catch out Air Asia flight to Sandakan. We've heard interesting stories about this cheap Malaysian no frill airline so I was quite curious on how it would go. We managed to get $0.00 fares for our return trip and only had to pay the taxes so it was great.

Because these cheapy flights are so popular, they had to build another airport to cater for the demand. The airport was nice....

You even get free smells (I didn't know you have to pay for them ...)

The experience with Air Asia was .... um .... rather interesting indeed.
- They do not allocate a seat so when you board the plane, you have to fight your way through everyone to get the seat you want
- Because they do not allocate you a seat, everyone runs to the gate and jump queues so that they can board the plane first when the boarding call is made
- You can also pay RM$20.00 extra if you want to board the plane first. These people can line up with the grannies and noisy children and board the plane first

Well....seeing as I am such a smart person, I saw the shorter queue and have decided to line up there. A few other foreigners also did the same. We later realised that this was for the people who have paid the $20.00 ... whoops! .... I played dumb and pretended I didn't know what was happening. The girl had to let me board because I was holding up the queue. I wasn't the first person to do it. I was only following the other dumb tourists in front of me LOL ...

So....I got on the plane first and I've decided to pick the best seat I could find.... errr ....


This brand new aircraft also had no air conditioning to top it off. It was a plesant flight. NOT! lol

My aunt was kind enough to let us stay with them for the 2 days so after we dropped our bags, we headed off to Sepilok, Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre .... I'm hoping to see an Amy Winehouse monkey .... We were welcomed by this lovely sign

Luckily, the monkeys we saw did not look like that.

The trek into the viewing platform was rather .... um .... fun for me anyway. Because it rained the day before, parts of it was rather muddy. I had the joy of seeing a group of asian women and kids scream, run and falling all over the place because some of them got leaches stuck to them. I also had the joy of having a leach stuck on my shorts except I did not scream or run. One naughty leach did end up under my t-shirt (god knows how they got here) and I only realised it after it was trying to give me a hickey. Again, that made more women and children scream. FOR GOD'S SAKE PEOPLE, its just a little worm that sucks your blood!!! I pulled it off and threw it away on the ground. I should've aimed it at the screaming women and kids LOL

After our little excitement with the leaches, we waited at the platform in scorching heat for the feeding time. You don't really get to see them unless its feeding time because they hide in the trees and does their monkey business when they are not eating.

Check out this dude ....

....and the Orang-utans.... they are pretty cool.


After visiting the monkeys, orang-utan and the whole leach experience, we went to see the crocs. They even put on a wee show for us!!!



I asked how much these guys gets paid for their dare devil work and apparently the get RM$4.00 per show ... thats about NZD$1.60!!! I think I'll keep my job. I recognised one of the guys when I visited this place 4 years ago so I guess these crocs are relatively well trained to not to eat them.