and then a million stalks came

OK so I haven't updated this for a while but as one part of my adventure closes tomorrow I will be preparing for the next part and felt the need to summarise. My lack of updates is due to two things. The first is the fact that, as much as I love it, daily work here is repetitive and constantly repeating myself here would be boring. The second is that around two months ago the centre was inundated with many many new arrivals which has kept us all very busy. It all started with 8 arrivals from a government rescue centre requiring us to update many of the enclosures. Since then many babies have arrived and been born including two new baby langurs, one 18 months, one 4 months, four loris, four baby civets (three born at the centre and rejected by their mother) four kittens, two baby macaques, six piglets, a baby flying squirrel, a baby gibbon and a baby serrow (goat/antelope thing). Some of these have needed round the clock care, which put half the centre on baby duty and turned us all a little sleep deprived/retarded.

Pip and Bin my original baby langurs

upside down baby Coco

 Its been great to see the centre grow and many of the new arrivals thrive in their new environment as some where captured and sold as pets. But as is always the way some came in a bad way and didn't make it. Ive had to say goodbye to few others as well and as heartbreaking as it is I think it says a lot for the centre that I still view it as a positive place to be.

Mi Chok hoping for some more corn to appear

Tei da seeing what Im up to

kitten wants camera!

New baby langur Jaja aka lady Jaja

Lucy the vet nurse feeding Sasha and Luke

Bruno, legs of an antelope, face of a goat, ears of a donkey

Piglets!

Ive enjoyed the work here immensely and have made great friends with ever fluctuating volunteers. I will miss the noises of the gibbons and geckos, not so much Ollie the screaming otter, and being surrounded by so much wildlife, except the ants, they all bite. It has become home for the last 6 months and will be strange to leave, however I have a new adventure to start in Vietnam and will get a new set of gibbons to care for. I'm looking forward learning all I can there and seeing the end result of primate rehabilitation, release. I'm also looking forward to a new variation of rice and vegetables.

Will keep you all updated on Nam and what jungle life is like there.    

One of the jobs I will not miss

spot the wild fishing cat

Alien landings and Orangutans

So I may have mentioned before that I have my own room this time round. For the most part this is a blessing, I get my own space, own bathroom-ish (its a toilet and shower in the corner of the room) and I can be anti-social when the mood strikes. All this is very useful when spending 6 months in the centre but every now and then I am suddenly reminded why having other people around is good.
My room is very far away from everyone elses so strange noises and crashes can sometimes freak me out. The strangest of these happened a couple of weeks ago. The dogs were barking into the darkness of the centre which was a little alarming to begin with but as I was walking away from them and towards my room I started to hear some eiree voices coming from that direction. I put this to the back of my mind as I got my book to read in the volunteer house. On the way out of my room the vioces got louder and I saw what looked like a string of fairy lights through the trees. But no one put up fairy lights, and they were a bit big, and they were moving! I freaked, ran to the house and got some other volunteers to look. Their minds immediatly turned to ufo's so we walked through the darkness following the line of lights until we came to the elephant padock where there are far fewer trees. When we could see them properly we managed to figure out that these were floating lanterns, that were somehow traveling in a neat line over the centre and forest and the voices were a broadcasted prayer from the temple. All very simple but somehow not when in the middle of nowhere in the dark, still very beautiful to watch and be part of.

My one year visa requires me to leave every 90 days, I think so they can keep tabs on me, but I used this oppurtunity to revisit Kuching in Borneo and see some orangs again. This was an amazing holiday. Me and fellow volunteer Kayleigh got the sleeper train down to Penang. A day after buying the tickets I opened the newspaper to discover that this train had come off the tracks. I tried to put this out of my mind as we climbed up onto our bunks, with seat belts. Its the first time I've slept with seatbelts. They didnt help much though and everytime the train started bouncing the headline popped back into my mind. The train thankfully stayed on the tracks and after 16 hours and many palm oil plantations we arrived.
We got a flight to Kuching and checked into what has to be the best hostel ever. Our room had a reading deck over the hallway. A ladder to climb up and a firemans poll to come back down. We spent two days relaxing in the hostel bar, shopping and eating. A trip to Semengoh nature reserve was the highlight though as we got to see 7 orangutans including Frankie the large alpha male. It was great to see them swinging through the trees again, or in the case of Frankie bending the trees, and a baby I saw clinging to its mother two years ago was happily playing and swinging around above us. It had to end at some point though and we flew back to Penang. One night is more than enough in Georgetown and we speedily checked out of the love lane inn and got the ferry to our very delayed train ride home. All in all it was a nice break but even after 6 days I missed the calls of the gibbons and was happy to return to them.