I wanna be like you-ooh-ooh

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My first day in Kuching (the 9th) I had met Kelly - an Australian girl travelling for a while before heading to Japan to teach English on the JET program, and later Graeme - an English guy just graduated from Uni. I met Kelly in the tourist information centre and ended up booking a nights accomodation at Bako national park the next day with her and Graeme was my room mate. I tried recruiting them both for the rafting competition (I went on to try and recruit every tourist who had the misfortune to cross my path) and was suprised to find that Graeme having known me for around 15seconds at the time was easily convinced into joining me. Kelly on the other hand was leaving before it was due to start and this turned out to be my biggest problem when trying to recruit people.

The next day Graeme and I headed down to the Semenggok Orangutan rehabilitation centre early in the morning while Kelly stayed behind to get a chest x-ray (for some bizarre reason Japan wanted a chest x-ray, amongst other things, before she could go over). We had caught the first bus there at 7am and this turned out to be the best decision we made all day as later on bus loads of tourists come. Shortly after arriving there was only 5 of us around and we were treated to half an hour of up close and personal antics of a mother with a 6month old baby and the company of her other kid, a 5yr old male.

Since visiting the centre, and after my encounter at singapore zoo, I think Orangutans may be my new favourite animal. They are just the coolest creatures ever. They are always playing, having fun, swinging through the trees and their personalities and facial expressions are all awesome. One in particular made me laugh - A youngish Orangutan who came flying in at first opportunity when food was put out at feeding time using one of the ropes as a zip line down to the platform where all the food is. He crashed into the wall at the end of the rope and jumped onto the platform where he proceeded to stuff his mouth with as much food as possible so he could carry it away with him. Not content with this he then picked up copious quantities of food in his two hands AND his two feet before trying to climb back up another rope (dropping loads of it in the process) so he could eat it in a tree at his own leisure - he later came back for seconds too!

Later that day/night we met up with Kelly and four other girls who she had met while climbing Mt Kinabalu earlier in her trip and who were out here teaching English for a year. Tess, a girl we met at the Orangutan rehabilitation centre was staying at our hostel (as were the others) so we all decided to get together for a little drink and a game of cards later that night. It's a little confusing with all the people I know but the long and the short of it is that we bought 5 litres of Rice wine for the evening and Tess brought along a bottle of Absolut Vodka for good measure. We ended up playing Texas hold-em poker until 5am when the last of us went to bed so all in all a good night.

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Photos

monkey business
Original title don't you think?

big daddy
Not actually the alpha male of the group a huge guy nevertheless

Poker night
Graeme, Clare, Tess, Kelly and me