They’re Apes, Not Monkeys

STATS: Day count=141; theft count=0; rip-off count=1; tourist screw-up count=3; Chris’ photo count=1402; Emma’s photo count=51; touch-typing char/min=233; Poi skills mastered since last post: none (well, I have been ill!)

Phase 3 of my ‘India diet’ is complete. It seems that as suspected, I hadn’t really thrown the previous illness in India and it came back with a vengeance last week. This time it was bad enough for me to go to a doctor (eventually) and it turned out I (probably) had an infection in my intestine and a bronchial infection. Lovely. One injection and 7 types of brightly coloured pills later and it seems to  have gone now. Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile I was initially not able, and latterly not allowed, to help out with the gibbons so Emma soldiered on while I either “lazed in bed” or “suffered in my pain”, depending on whose account you believe. Back helping out now for our last week or so (as I write this on the 3rd) here at the sanctuary.

The gibbons are as playful as ever. Just to remind us they are actually wild animals, one of the young ones (Maria) decided to grab a chunk of Emma’s hair as she was cleaning…and held on to it. Painful, apparently. Obviously not painful enough as Emma got a little close to another enclosure a day or two later and David, who only has one arm so was at a disadvantage anyway, also decided he liked the look of Emma’s hair and yanked it again. In her defence, those white-cheeked gibbons do have deceptively long arms! I have escaped injury so far – more through luck than judgement. Or maybe my hair just isn’t  enticing enough.

We share our bedroom with a number of small geckos and a troop (my collective noun, I suspect not the official one) of flying ants that come inside when it gets wet outside. The geckos are cute, the ants annoying, especially when you are trying to read or get to sleep. And the ants round here bite. As do the mosquitoes. Standing on an ants nest when practicing poi is a bad idea. As I discovered to my cost.

We also shared our bedroom with one of the young gibbons, Am, recently. Am didn’t seem too keen on the idea, but didn’t get much choice in the matter and soon settled down to sleep. Luckily she didn’t make too much commotion when she woke up at 5:30am either. This looking after kids business is a piece of cake. Not sure what all those parents have been going on about all these years.

Saw our first wild snake (for this trip) today! (4th June). Emma spotted it as we were having lunch – quite impressive – at least 2m long and in my non-expert opinion, a cobra. Disappeared pretty quickly (under the patio we were sitting on!) never to be seen again. I searched for it – Emma kept as far away as possible. Slight difference in enthusiasm detected!