Orang Utans
Orang Utans are way cute.
And somewhat vicious according to the people at Semengoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. When an Orang Utan with a baby came out from hiding we were warned to stay out of her way because she has attacked people before, including people who have worked there. So we admired from a distance and watched her climbing a tree, picking fruit and feeding it to the baby and generally causing havoc.
After watching this pair for a while word spread that there were another pair in the trees further down the path so it was nice to see some tumbling through the trees. And no, none of them were called Clyde. Funnily enough, the baby tumbling through the trees was named Sadam because he was born on the day Sadam was captured in Iraq.
We’d split a cab to Semengoh with a Dutch guy from the lodge. We may have been falling asleep on the trip there, but the trip back went in a flash as we talked excitedly about the Orang Utans to the driver. It was just like being 8 again.
Sarawak Cultural Village
This place should really be called “Sarawak Cultural Theme Park”. Silly of us to expect a village. We knew it’d be touristy, but just thought it’d be a shop that had a little performance and some examples of Sarawakian houses to look at. Maybe if we’d actually looked at their website we would’ve known what we were getting ourselves in for – all 14 acres of it.
Anyway, it was hot and sooo painfully touristy that it was almost amusing. I won’t go into detail but most of it made us cringe despite their best intentions. We stayed for the ‘cultural show’ at the end which is how we discovered most of the ‘traditional people’ we met in the houses were actually performing artists who then danced the dance of whatever culture was required.
To end a fine afternoon at the cultural village there’s nothing like a bit of audience participation. Here we were enjoying the air-conditioning and a comfortable seat and Mr ‘I-have-feathers-and-a-silly-costume’ thought I should join him on stage. What do you say to a man wearing that attire and is also able to puncture balloons with spears from a great distance? I did my thing and speared a dangerous balloon before it attacked me. Holly laughed a lot (and too probably too many photos but at least no video) and then we got to leave via the ‘cultural staircase’. More on that later in the web gallery.
Damai beach
We deserved this place after the hard night at Bako. We wished we had stayed here for two nights instead of at Bako, but then we wouldn’t have had the contrast to appreciate this place.
Damai has two Holiday Inn resorts so we were expecting the area to be a bit touristy and possibly over the top. We stayed at a beautiful place called the Permai Rainforest Resort in a tree-top house in the rainforest overlooking the beach. And yes, it was as good as it sounds. We thought there would have to be something wrong with the place and that could be the food (there was no town we could get to so we were forced to eat at the resort), but no, the food was great too. Fresh juice, whole coconuts, exciting Asian soup and all from a cafe in the rainforest overlooking the beach.
We got up early to do a short trail in hope of seeing monkeys. OK, so once again we didn’t see any monkeys but we knew they were there…. big ones. We heard some crashing through the trees so we stayed very still waited for probably half an hour for them to reveal themselves. No such luck but we did see some pretty ferocious looking ants.
The tide at the beach had gone way out so the Asian tourists had even longer to laugh at our swim-wear as we walked out to the shallow water. They mostly liked swimming in jeans and t-shirts so even the most modest swimwear was going to make them roll-around laughing. Catching waves the evening before when the tide was high also made them laugh. What else is one supposed to do when at the beach?
The jungle pool was certainly refreshing after being in the hot water of the ocean. We couldn’t stay at the beach too long so retreated to the jungle pool where cool water collected in a man-made pool at the base of a waterfall.