Day 6 - Elephant Sanctuary, Genting Highlands & the giant floating poo

---

Day 6 - We left at 10 am to avoid the traffic and had a 2.5 hour drive to the Elephant Sanctuary near the Genting Highlands. It was in deep rainforest and was lovely looking out of the air-conditioned car at all the deep shades of green. It wasn't quite so lovely when we arrived and had to get out of the car! We had been expecting slightly colder weather as the Highlands are meant to get a lot colder than K.L. but it was so incredibly hot!
We got there nice and early so we would be sure of a ticket to ride the elephants, as there are only 120 a day. We did get tickets, but we then had to wait several hours until it was time for the rides to start at 2pm.
We had a typical Malaysian lunch at one of the tiny cafes in the small town next to the Sanctuary - steamed rice with fried chicken. They have this weird thing with serving the meat cold too, which we are still trying to adjust to. But we were sitting underneath the only fan in the open-air (and therefore also very hot) cafe, so that made it much more worth it.

At 2pm the elephants were brought out - the baby ones first - they were taken down to the water and had a nice bath, and then came back out so everyone could pat them and feed them peanuts. The baby ones were so cute! They are a lot darker than the adults, and very hairy!
Then they brought the adults out - being up close was incredible! They are huge! They also went down into the water to have a quick bath and cool down and then they went up to this sort of 'stage' area where we could all feed them. Danny was braver than me and put the food straight into the biggest elephants mouth - I just gave it to him to take with his trunk and he fed himself! Apparently it feels really funny when they take the food with their mouths.

Then it was time for the rides! We waited in line and Danny and I got to get on one of the really big ones. I felt guilty being on the poor things back, but considering he probably weighed about 2 tonnes I don't think he would have really minded me and Danny.

After the rides, it was time for the swimming with the elephants! I had been eyeing off the water earlier when the elephants went in to have a swim, and had noticed there were rather large floating poo's through the water wherever the elephants had been. Based on this I volunteered to stay on the platform and take photos while Danny and Peter went in and swam with the elephants.
Danny had a great time swimming and couldn't stop smiling the whole time! I have some photos, and a video of the method they use to enter the water! They pile about 4 or 5 people onto the back of one of the biggest elephants and then he walks out into the water, sits down, and dumps them all in the water!

The trip home was nice - mainly because we were just so grateful to get back into the air-conditioned car. We stopped on the side of the road to take photos of some monkeys, but they quickly ran away. We tried throwing peanuts to lure them, but it didn't work. I'm pretty sure they came out as soon as we drove off and ate my peanuts 😞
But luckily we saw about 15 of them a few hundred metres down the road, so we were more sneaky this time and Danny managed to get a few photos of them. We could see the branches all around where the monkeys were as they jumped through the trees. It was pretty cool. Danny now wants a pet monkey.

We stopped off at the Genting Highlands on the way back to K.L.
It is this massive resort/casino/theme park thing perched on top of a massive mountain. Crazy people! Who would build something like that all the way up there?? We looked around one of the hotel's malls and saw bits of the theme park which came in and out of the mall.
People were screaming around our heads while we ate dinner, and they even had their own Eiffel tower.

We found some really cool paintings, and some really gross food - Burger King sells mozzarella sticks here - it is a fried stick of mozzarella cheese covered in a chicken-ish coating. Quite disgusting.

While we were up there it started to fog over, so the whole mountain was fogged over. It made for an interesting drive down the mountain with fog turning to rain and bus drivers thinking they were F1 drivers.
Nevertheless, we made it back safely and are getting ready to have an early night in preparation for a big day shopping tomorrow. We are going to Kota Raya during the day and then to the China Town markets after they open at 5. Manford and I are very excited.

---

Comments

[anonymous]

Coooooooool
Nice one. I rode an elephant when I was 5, so roughly the same height and weight as you anyways Skye =p

[mum]

Lucky elephants don't live in trees or fly
Imagine one of those poo landing on you! You were wise staying out of the water Skye. I just handed in my assignment so I can go on holidays today in 8 hours to be more precise. I can sleep on the plane. Ron was talking about us seeing elephants in Bali so I will have to get him to read your blog before we go in the morning. I know now not to swim in the water if they offer for us to do that too! Take care looking forward to seeing what you get up to this week. Manford looks like he is having too much fun! love you mum