Orang-utans

Deciding there was a need to see some of the local wildlife myself and three other international exchange students (an aussie, german and swede), headed off to Matang Wildlife Centre. Asking a taxi driver to take us there, we ended up at Semmengoh Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. Crazy taxi driver he was too. It was probably for the best that we ended up at the wrong place.

The centre is in the middle of a huge jungle. The centre is not much of a centre really. A couple of buildings, and a couple of cages to keep rescued crocodiles (crocodiles can’t be released into the wild because other crocodiles will eat them, or they will eat people). The stars of the show are the orang-utans which are now completely wild and roam free around the jungle. For tourist purposes only (I think) there are two feeding times during the day where rangers put fruit out to lure orang-utans towards the centre.

We got to the park a few hours before feeding time, so we went on a guided trek through the jungle. Thinking it would just be a leisurely stroll I was a little under prepared. Never have I sweated so much while we climbed through some quite dense jungle. One of the group was bitten by leaches. During the hike (which lasted a couple of hours) we saw a large variety of oversized insects, butterflies which were the size of small birds, pitcher plants (which are able to eat animals), wild boar tracks and lots of jungle.

It was after the hike that the orang-utans turned up though. They are a mix between human and monkey – having the tree climbing agility of monkeys, while still maintaining some human mannerisms. They are able to move with surprising speed through the tree tops while carrying food with their feet.

After seeing the orang-utans getting home proved to be a small story in itself. Our pre-arranged driver back to the city never turned up, so we were stuck waiting out the front of the park. The friendly rangers waited near by for a while, but I think they were waiting for us to leave so they could close the park. One offered to drive us to the main road to a bus stop which was to take us back to the city. Having no better option, we jumped in his car (I have never a seen a car so close to falling apart) and he drove up about 3kms through back streets to a bus stop.

We had no idea where we were by this stage but waited at the bus stop for a while with a local (who couldn’t speak English). After a while the local got up and left, which made me a little nervous, because night was approaching and it didn’t look like this bus would turn up. Eventually we were able to stop a passing taxi, but the driver told us he was going home and the city was too far away for him to drive us. He told us to call a phone number he suggested. After a short argument where I pointed out that we couldn’t order a taxi because we didn’t know where the hell we were, he agreed to order a taxi for us. After another wait, a taxi eventually pulled up and took us back to civilisation – to Top Spot Food Court in fact, where I had one of my best meals since being in Malaysia.