Our last activity in Malaysia was a trip to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center.  I was really excited for this because we had not seen any orangutans in the wild and they are some of my favorite animals.

Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary

We stayed at a pretty good hostel close enough to walk over to the sanctuary, so we were able to get there in the morning for the first feeding of the day.  There are two sessions, morning and afternoon, but if you buy a ticket you can go to both of the sessions in the day.  This is the best chance of seeing the orangutans because the sanctuary covers a huge area of land and you are pretty unlikely to see them unless they are coming to get food.

We arrived about 20 minutes before the feeding and there were already three hanging out and waiting – two adults and a baby.

They were there waiting for their food

While they were waiting to eat turned out to be a great time to get some photos since we were pretty close to them and they were just hanging around.

Great photo opportunities

Acrobatic!

Right on time one of the staff people showed up with a big basket of food and several more orangutans showed up to eat.  They were served their fruits and vegetables on a platform and we had great views of them eating and interacting.

Cute baby!

Very flexible

There were lots of smaller monkeys around as well and those were very cheeky.  They even had a go at harassing the tourists.  It was a wonderful thing to see and we were stoked to come back for the second feeding session in the afternoon.

Beautiful forest with blue sky

This turned out to be somewhat of a flop, however, because as the afternoon approached the sky got darker and darker.  Just as we got back to the feeding area the sky opened up and it started absolutely pouring.  This was some of the most serious rain I have ever seen.  We tried to wait it out, but no animals were showing up and we were completely soaked.

Completely drenched a few hours later

We ran back under cover just in time for some more excitement.  One of the other tourists let out a scream and started clutching at the back of their shorts.  It turned out that they had been bitten by a centipede!  It was quickly squashed and the tourist was ok, but it made me a bit glad that we were on our way out of the jungle.  I was also extra glad that we had been to the morning feeding and were able to have such great views then!

It was still raining and thundering, so we took a taxi back to the hostel and got ready to head out for our next big adventure – Singapore!