Advertisement
Lok Kawi Wildlife Park
An orang - utan just hanging around The above video is a video we made on the camera whilst at the wildlife park. It was great being able to watch the organ-utans just playing around. This is the first time I've been able to put a video on the blog (as the internet speed has to be quite decent in order for it to be successful). Press the play button in the centre of the picture and hopefully it should start playing. If anyone has any problems playing the video, please let me know and I'll see if I can sort it. Thanks!
Hi all,
Just a short update as to what we've been upto since our last blog. We left Johor Bahru on 27th May, on another good Air Asia flight, to Kota Kinabalu the capital of Sabah in Borneo.
After doing a lot of research on Sabah, we'd heard some negative comments about Kota Kinabalu (KK) and many people advised us to simply use KK as a stopover for the rest of Borneo. However, when we arrived we found it to be a really modern and vibrant city. After settling in and finding our way around, we soon started to feel
Lok Kawi Wildlife Park
An exotic bird munching on some fruit at home and got used to the comfortable atmosphere of the city. At the time of writing we've been here 5 days but are planning to tear ourselves away and head off tomorrow morning to visit the Organ Utan Rehabilitation Centre further South in Sepilok.
Whilst we've been in Malaysia we've not been enjoying the local food as much as Thailand, but we've found some great eateries in KK. None more impressive than the Little Italy, which as the name suggests, serves delicious pasta dishes which we've really been appreciating after all the rice dishes.
Yesterday, 30th May, we made a trip out of the city and did a typically touristic visit of the zoo, at Lok Kawi Wildlife Park, 20km North of KK. Newly constructed in 2007, the wildlife park houses many endangered Asian animals, as well as the traditional zebras, deer and bulls. Michelle's favourite animals were the organ-utans (which she hopes to be able to see in the wild in Sepilok). It was great watching them as they were really playful and reminded us so much of humans. Stu's favourite were the lemurs, they look really cute with their big yellow eyes and for anyone
The elephants
They love the water and will duck their heads under frequently who's ever seen the animated movie "Madagascar" - they really did look like they "like to move it, move it!"
It was really strange watching the elephants and tigers from a different perspective after previously interacting with them really closely in Thailand. However, the elephants looked like they enjoyed their enclosure and constantly submerged themselves in the water and squirted themselves. We were very envious as it was a very hot day!
Seeing the Sun Bears and Malaysian Tigers enclosed made us think about how fair it was for these wild animals to be kept at a zoo. It would be great to see these proud animals out in the wild because they looked quite bored and hot in their enclosures. But if they were to be in the wild it would be likely that they would be poached, especially the tigers for their skins (for fashion accessories) and their bones which they use in "natural" medicines over here even though there is no proof that they contain any healing substances. It would also be likely that the bears would be caught and kept by locals as a means of making money off tourists by walking them around
the big, hot and dangerous cities and mistreating them. Or even killing them for their fur! It's a very difficult and complicated matter to favour a certain side, but it certainly does make you fear for the future of these beautiful but endangered creatures.
On the more lighthearted side of it, watching the other animals having fun was a pure delight and there were a few funny moments, like when 2 baby otters chased away a huge organutan and when a Gibbon (a rare monkey) mooned Michelle :-)
Overall we had a great day at the park and it was clear to see that most of the animals were also having fun. We're looking forward to what the rest of Borneo has to offer us and hopefully seeing some of these animals in the wild.
We hope that you're all okay and enjoying holidays for all of you who are either sunning themselves in Turkey or travelling around Scotland!
Hope to hear from you soon, love Michelle & Stu xxx
P.S Thanks Anne for finding out the name of the Eagle for us from our last blog! :-)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.051s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0317s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb