Honeymoon in Thailand & Malaysia
We stayed at the Sepilok Jungle Lodge before heading off into the jungle.
The grounds of the lodge were lushly landscaped with many tropical plants. We liked this fan palm.
On the way back from breakfast we saw these baby birds in a nest perched precariously over the water.
We walked over to the Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Center. While waiting for it to open we took this picture of the dense surrounding jungle.
The highlight of the Rehabilitation Center are the daily feedings. Once the rehabilitated orang utans are released into the wild, some of them return to these platforms for a while until they are ready to venture deeper into the jungle.
Every morning at 10am, workers from the Center bring bananas and milk.
The platforms are connected to trees via a network of ropes. First we saw the ropes shaking, then the orang utans began swinging into view. Some of them preferred to get their food to go.
This orang utan looks like he is hogging all the bananas, but there were enough for everyone.
The feeding platform was less than 40 ft from the viewing area.
Orang utans have very long arms. Adult males can be up to 4 ft tall, with a 6.5 ft armspan.
Orang utans have opposable thumbs on their feet, which effectively gives them four hands. They seemed comfortable eating while hanging in the air.
In the wild orang utans are solitary, but the feeding platform attracted a crowd.
This one carefully peeled each banana before eating it. Others were less delicate eaters and dropped more than one bunch onto the forest floor.
Despite the facial expression, they seemed quite happy to hang in this position for a while.
After they were finished eating, several of them hung out in the trees near the platform for another half hour.
Orang utan means "man of the forest" in Malay.
Once the orang utans had left, this pig-tailed macaque showed up to snag the leftovers.
Is a tree full of apes as much fun as a barrel of monkeys?
Back at the Jungle Lodge, we noticed that the bushes were full of butterflies.
This palm tree had a striking red trunk.
