Day 43: The Semenggoh Orangutan Sanctuary and back to Kuching

So... My run of bad luck continued... This morning I woke up with a severe pain in one of my eyes. I could barely open it and when I did it was streaming. It felt like there was something in my eye, and I usually travel with a bottle of eyewash, but since I had pared down my packing, I had nothing. The pain was similar to what I used to get, thankfully not too often, when I wore hard contacts, It really hurt to move my eye at all.

I somehow managed to get packed up, onto the boat and then collapsed in the back of the van. I was so miserable for the next few hours and wondered if I would have to leave the tour. I forgot to mention something yesterday; the other reason I did not go on the second hike yesterday was that when I was hiking uphill during the noontime hike, my knee started screaming with pain, that is, the knee I had fallen on when on the boat. It had not hurt at all while walking in the first week, but now I worried that I would not be able to keep up with the group; we had some very long hikes in the days ahead!

Our guide came to my rescue. We stopped at a shop and he came back with antibiotic eyedrops; actually they were for use in the ear as well. At first I was disappointed - I had wanted eyewash so that I could try to dislodge whatever object was in my eye - and worried - I did not want to take antibiotics randomly - but I went ahead and tried the drops... They were a miracle; I felt almost immediately better! I did wear my glasses for two days to make sure, but by the next day my eye felt like nothing had happened.

However, the eyedrops were procured after we went to the Semenggoh Orangutan Sanctuary. The sanctuary is only open for a few hours in the morning. I know my photos might look as if I visited a zoo, but these are wild animals. Fruit is put out twice a day but not all the apes take advantage of this. But of course plenty do! This of course is not because there is not enough food for them in the forest; obviously it is to raise money from visitors to keep the sanctuary protected.

Anyway, more than half of my photos were out of focus, partly because my camera was playing up (in the humidity) and partly because I could not see very well when I was manually focusing! Also, the bright morning lighting was very difficult to deal with! Despite my pain and discomfort, it was totally thrilling to be in the company of these distant relatives of ours.

Cirque de Orang...

Note the little head...

This was a newborn, only a couple of weeks old...

Mother love

This one is truly out of focus, but I left it in to show you - albeit blurrily - the beautiful striped squirrels that were scampering up and down the branches. They were very fast; hence it was more difficult than ever to capture them!

We then returned to Kuching. I went out looking for (and found) some more cat statues, and I returned to the Canon store and bought a compact camera, as by now I knew my Olympus had been lost*, and it was doubtful that I would be able to find a charger for my Canon 400D. I stopped using it (the orangutans were the last shots I took with it) and switched to my iPod for the rest of the day.

There was a McDonald's across from the cat statues. Here is a menu item, very Christmas-y! But yeah, they had Big Macs and fries, too.

 That evening our guide took us to this sort of open-air food court for dinner. It was very crowded, with very few tourists, and there were about twenty different outlets to order from. About five minutes after we arrived, the power went out in the whole place. Some outlets were still able to sell food so we ate in the semi-darkness. It was good grub and cheap!

* Now, you may wonder why I went ahead and bought a new small camera and did not go back to the restaurant at which I had left my Olympus two night before this. It wasn't until I flew out of Kuching that I remembered taking photos of the cats during that dinner. At first I thought I had left the camera at my Brisbane hotel, as why hadn't I downloaded my Brisbane photos? Then I thought I must have lost it on the flight to Kuala Lumpur, until I distinctly remembered using the camera at the Air BNB jungle house. (And my lack of many photos on my other cameras confirmed this.) I wrote to my hosts and by the time they confirmed that I had not left anything I remembered the restaurant. It is especially annoying as I had had free time today to have gone by that restaurant, too! Oh well, you live and learn... And I hoped that this was the end of my run of bad luck!