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Hard to believe, but we are in Borneo! It is sooo hot! We arrived on Saturday evening in Kuching the capital of Sarawak. Kuching lies along the river Sarawak a chocolate brown river that snakes through the rainforest to the South China sea. We were surprised to discover that Kuching is very modern, under the usual western influences with shopping malls and fast food chains. However, Kuching has a distinct charm with its sophisticated riverside walkway, its colonial architecture, river cruises and as always with Malaysia its cultural diversity. We spent our first full day walking along the riverfront and discovering some of the different cultural areas running off the main bazaar along the riverside. We explored India street, Chinatown and saw the state Mosque. We took a Sampan (motor driven, but oar steered) boat to the north side of the river and Fort Margherita, built in 1879 by one of Sarawak's British white Rajas, Charles Brooke, to protect Kuching from pirates. Clearly the Malaysians are keen to forget their colonial history, the letters spelling out the fort's name, once seen from the other side of the river are now overgrown. The fort windows are smashed and a family of locals sit outside in their car waiting to charge entry fees to any passing tourists. Today we had a leisurely lie in and breakfast, then visited the tourist information centre, to help plan the rest of our stay. We decided to take the bus in the afternoon to the Semenggoh Wildlife centre. Semenggoh is a nature reserve, home to rehabilitated Orang-utans (people of the forest). Orang-utans orphaned or rescued from captivity are reintroduced into the wild. Many of the extended family now live completely wild, but some still return daily at feeding times to supplement their diet. The bus dropped us off outside the park and we followed the driveway through the park, passing warning signs and guidance about noise and about feeding the animals. With the host of tourists that had gathered we waited by the feeding platform for the 3 o'clock session. We read the illustrated information about the various family members and their family trees, together with a gallery of bite-wounds suffered by tourists. The heat and humidity were intense. A member of the nature reserve team then called us all over to give us guidance about how to keep safe and what to do next, we were directed along a path to another feeding platform. Once there, we waited in silence (as directed) whilst the park staff did the tarzan call to the orang-utans. More tourists started to join us, I had to do 'bad' cop again, shushing the locals who seemed to have absolutely no regard for the verbal and written warnings given about noise - mobile phones going off, loud conversations, calling to their friends 50ms away. After the crowd had "finally" hushed, word came from one of the park staff that a single orang-utan was now feeding back at the platform we had just left. Some of us left to return to it, Paul got lots of shots of this juvenile orang-utan, who had an entire bucket of fruit to himself. We returned to the other area and watched as one by one, from different directions around 5 orang-utans swung in towards the platform. There was one mother and baby and the others were again juveniles. See Paul's beautiful shots, some of which taken from about 30-40m away. Once they had collected their fruit they climbed up into the canopy to eat it, mainly to hide their fruit from each other. After about 30-40 minutes of this spectacle we headed back to catch the last bus back to town....tomorrow it's Sarawak cultural village.
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