Kuala Lumpur: Birds, Butterflies and Buildings

Our last few days in Malaysia were spent in Kuala Lumpur. We visited the Bird Park, Butterfly Park, Petronas Towers, the Discovery Center and the cool aquarium. The boys thoroughly enjoyed the really nice playground and park that were just in front of the Petronas Towers. KL is a nice, modern and very clean city that's easy to explore with kids.

Beach time, Kota Kinabalu

As always, we all loved being near the ocean...playing in the sand and splashing in the waves.

 Dorian's first pony ride:

More orangutans...

We left the northeast side of Borneo and flew about forty minutes to Kota Kinabalu, on the northwest side. Here, we stayed at a fantastic hotel on the beach that, in addition to a great pool, tons of activities for the kids and good restaurants, had its own small orangutan nature reserve. On our tour, we learned that it works in conjunction with the Sepilok reserve, taking a small number of orangutans. We saw two climbing around and swinging from the trees who were aged 3 and 4 years old. Then we saw a really young one who was just learning to climb. Dorian was a lucky boy because he got to spend a morning with the park rangers and help prepare food for the orangutans and feed the other animals on the reserve. He was elated!

Orangutans in Sepilok

The main reason we went to Sepilok in Borneo was to be able to visit the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. It is one of four in the world and it is a wonderful chance to see orangutans in their natural environment. You can read about the work the center does in saving orphaned orangutans and readying them for life in the wild here: rehabilitation centre

Monkey Business...

We see our fair share of monkeys in Delhi. They have even been known to sneak onto to Dorian's school campus during recess and steal kids' snacks that are left unattended. But, at the Labuk Bay Sanctuary, we saw the Proboscis monkey. It is native to Borneo and we were lucky to get a close up view of this interesting monkey along with the Silver Lip monkey (if I remember the name correctly) that was hanging around making some mischief.

Proboscis monkey:

 Mischief makers:

 Trying to take Arthur's doudou:

It was really cool to see these two very different monkeys. And, to be able to see the Proboscis in its natural, yet protected, environment was amazing.