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.
