Orangutan Sanctuary

I've read quite a lot about this place on the internet (come on- faced with uni essays or reading about Borneo, which one would you choose?) and from what I could tell from the whingy Trip Advisor reviews although the sanctuary is doing fantastic work for orangutan conservation, it's not really that great as an attraction and you don't get to see that much apart from people. So my expectations were fairly low. How wrong I was! I paid my 40 ringgit (30, plus a 10 rm fee for taking my camera...) and ventured down to the entrance... where I was met with "Sorry you can't take that water with you."

Eh? So I went back up to reception to leave my water bottle. Went back down again and by now I was on my own. There's a boardwalk that leads through the jungle to the feeding site, so I wandered down, and what fabulous timing. Not far down I noticed trees moving on my right and looked over to see a flash of orange. "YES!" - a sighting. I was happy already, but then I saw that there were two - no, three orangutans hanging round, watching me. I stood very still and took photos without a flash. Evidently I was unthreatening, because they started coming closer, and closer. Swinging through the trees so fast that my camera couldn't catch them without the flash. As the first one got nearer I saw that she had a baby with her!

She swung through and onto the walkway and sat down with a big smile on her face, showing her baby. It was magic! As the others neared I realised they too had babies - so there were six orangutans just coming over to play. Unfortunately a tour group came by then, and shortly the orangutans disappeared into the jungle. We ventured further and watched the feeding which was good, but nothing like what I had already seen. There was another bit of luck though, and a large male came up, posed for the group and went over to harass the females (for the record... they gave him a run for his money).

Check out the grin!