The next morning we got up early to head North to the Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary. Earlier in the week we were looking up various things to do online and came across this place just out of the city which is a non-profit elephant rescue and relocation operation located in the Krau Game Reserve. They specialize in caring for injured elephants as well as trapping and relocating elephants that are in danger of some kind of negative human interaction (local tribes hunting them or ones that get too close to villages and cause damage and threaten humans). As part of their efforts to raise awareness and gather donations, they offer free tours of the sanctuary and the opportunity to interact with the elephants and their caretakers.So we hired a driver through the hotel and headed out to the sanctuary. Upon arrival, we first watched a video presentation on what the organization does and their mission. It was a story of a relocation effort to capture a family of elephants that had invaded a palm plantation and were damaging crops. It's quite the process to find and capture an elephant but what's really amazing is how they are able to transport it. They first tranquilize it just enough so that it can still walk and they load it on a truck then transport it to a boat which takes it into the game reserve. It's really dangerous and difficult for people to move an elephant around so what they do is they take the older elephants that have been in the sanctuary for a while and they train them to help in the process. They have their trained elephants walk along side the captured one both to aid in the moving and lifting process but also to "talk" to it and calm it down during the move. Apparently elephants are very touchy-feely animals and they constantly touch each other with their trunks to show affection and comfort each other.
After the video we went out to watch and participate in some of the elephants' daily routines. Each day they have a very consistent schedule of feeding, training, bathing, and play time and they open a couple hours of the day to allow tourists to take part. First they brought out a baby elephant who was probably about 5 feet tall or so and we were able to pet him and feed him some fruit. He was very sweet and also very animated and kept swaying back and forth just waiting for someone to give him something to eat.We fed him some bananas and mangoes while we waited for some of the larger ones to come out for their lunch and bath time. While we were waiting, I took a number of photos of the baby elephant and tried to get down lower and take some head on shots which resulted in one of the greatest photos I have ever taken. Every time you put your hand out, the elephant would
stretch out his trunk to see if you had any food for him. When I squatted down to take a picture, I held out the camera in front of me and he apparently thought it was food so he stretched out his trunk right at the camera to check out what I had. I was apparently the perfect distance away so he couldn't quite reach me and I was able to get the shot off with perfect timing to get a picture of his trunk right in my face. I turned out to be an awesome picture, especially since you can see his head and eyes in the background as well. It always makes me laugh every time I look at it.After a few minutes the adults came out and they brought a couple of them out for people to pet and feed. What was strange was that we were pretty alone with the baby elephant but all of a sudden there was this new crowd of people that showed up including a ton of photographers and video cameras. From where we were standing we just saw this giant mob of cameras filming these elephants and interviewing some of the staff and it was all pretty confusing why this was going on. Then we noticed a group of guys all decked out in matching jackets and hats with advertisements all over them. We asked around and quickly figured out that this was a group of four Formula 1 racers that were in KL for a big tournament and had come out to visit the sanctuary. This got
really annoying really fast though as we had now shifted to a peaceful, fun time with the elephants into a paparazzi mob complete with news crews, managers, staff people, and sexy ladies whose sole purpose was to stand next to the racers during interviews. So of course these four guys got to do all the activities first and their hordes of camera people followed them everywhere and got in the way of everything. Ugh. But we were still able to do everything and have a great time, ignoring them as much as possible.After the craziness died down a little bit, they brought the rest of the elephants over to the
river for a bath. The staff members just rode them straight into the river and sat on top of them while they scrubbed them down and rinsed off. Then it was our chance to feed them some more so they brought out giant buckets full of huge pieces of melon and other fruit. These elephants were all trained and well mannered so there were a couple of ways we could feed them. We could just hold out the food in front of us and they would grab it with their trunk, or we could lift it up above our heads and they would open their mouths and we could put it right in. We got to do this a few times and ended up with elephant slobber all over our hands...yummy.
Then it was time for the climax of the day, the elephant rides and "play time". So they do little rides around a circle which is fun just to say you've done it but really not too exciting. At the end though, they march one of the elephants into the water while you're on it! This was pretty fun. A group of people would hop on and the elephant would just take a couple steps and splash into the river. We had someone take a video of us which turned out really well (it's included in the You Tube montage if you haven't seen it yet). It was then time to say goodbye, dry off and change then head back to KL.After another trip to TGI Fridays for our last beef fix before leaving Malaysia, we headed back to the hotel for our early flight to Singapore. We got up Thursday morning around 4am to grab a taxi to the airport. The hotel booked one for us but we ended up with some guy whose cab was seconds away from breaking down and was making awful noises for the entire hour to the airport. We were a little concerned that we might not make it and end up stranded in the middle of nowhere, but luckily his little car made it the whole way. We got all checked in for our flight and landed in Singapore around 9am. We hopped on the much more efficient subway system and headed over to our hotel.
Singapore is a really great city. It's got all the convenience and organization of a US city, it's super easy to get around, everything is spotless, efficient, and well maintained plus it's got a ton of stuff to do and a lot of very diverse parts of town. We started off by going to Orchard Road which is the main shopping area and center of downtown. We had some really great food and did some exploring around the area.
We of course stopped in the national library which was HUGE! and really incredible. Elizabeth was super excited and it was a great example of what a utopian library should be. We also stopped in at the world's largest book store which was also ridiculously huge (although still only had a math section comparable to Borders....boo).We also stopped by the Raffles Hotel which is this really fancy and pretentious colonial hotel named after the founder of Singapore Sir Stamford Raffles. They have a large portion of it open to tourists but also have a fully functioning hotel as well which we were not allowed into. It's an amazing building and was really beautifully designed with fountains and ballrooms and patios and such. Very nice.
The next day we started by heading up to Arab Street and visiting the mosque and Middle Eastern part of town. Then it was off to the waterfront by the river to check out the old colonial buildings and historic sites from the early days of Singapore and Mr. Raffles. We then headed over to China Town and did some shop browsing. We decided to buy a fancy new SLR camera so we were doing some price comparisons here and there as we walked around town. One cool stop in China Town was this Buddhist temple that was beautiful and ornate and surprisingly enough, had a service going on inside while we were there. This was a bizarre experience. First of all, we've never actually seen a Buddhist temple being used before and second it was odd that they just let everyone in to take pictures and watch while they sang and worshiped. It was cool to see such a combination of ancient culture and modern culture at the same time.We then headed over to hawker stands nearby to have some Chinese food then back to the hotel to get ready for our night activity. Singapore has a pretty large zoo in the center of the island and they do these kinda-cheezy-but-kinda-cool night safaris where you hop on a little tram and they drive through the zoo and show you the animals. When we went, it was a week before Halloween so they had the whole zoo decked out in Halloween decor and had a special "Horror Tram" that was running along side the normal night safari. We just went on the regular one but it was fun to see what a huge event this was and how many kids and teenagers came to do it...quite a neat and elaborate program.
So our little safari was fun. You can't take any pictures because, first of all, it's totally dark, and second because you might scare the animals. What was amazing about the "safari" was how close the animals were to the road. We were literally 3 feet from some tapirs and no more than 15 yards from a huge rhino with no fences or cages or anything around. Kinda scary, but really cool. So we drove around and saw a number of different animals and a lot of it was totally touristy and cheezy but we like a lot of that stuff and it turned out to be pretty neat. They also have a group of fire eater/blower/dancers that did a little show afterward that was kinda fun as well.
On our last day, we didn't fly out until the late afternoon so we spent the morning going down to Sentosa which is a little island connected to the bottom of Singapore that has an aquarium and a bunch of theme park/Disney-type things for families and kids. They also have a few nice beaches down there but unfortunately we didn't find time to get any beach days in. So we went down to the aquarium which was pretty cool but not as good as KL's. It's quite a bit smaller and has less to it. It is also connected to another bird park and butterfly park just like in KL (both of which were not as cool as the first ones). We did get to pet some stingrays and play with some giant bugs (a scorpion and a giant millipede) which was a good way to round out our week of animal adventures. 
We then headed back to the city to have some lunch and finish running errands and get all our last minute shopping needs taken care of (aka, get some art, buy a camera, and hit up a grocery store) before heading to the airport.All in all it was a really fun week and Malaysia and Singapore left us wanting to go back and explore some more. These are both definitely places that will be on our radar for future travels and future jobs. So for the final total for our Malaysian Wildlife Adventure:
Birds, Butterflies, Lizards, Monkeys, Sea Creatures, Fireflies, Foot Fish, Elephants, Night-Time Zoo Critters, More Birds, More Butterflies, More Sea Creatures, Insects, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.
Wait....no partridges actually. I meant parrot. A parrot in a mango tree.
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