Orang Utan Island

Another gorgeous sunrise for us this morning as we made our way to Orang Utan Island. I even saw dolphins leaping in the sun’s reflection in the water!

What’s great about this wildlife reserve is that the humans are in cages and the animals roam free. Visitors stroll along a caged pathway.

Despite the cage, we still had to be careful. At one point, while angling my phone through the fence to get a photo of an orangutan, a Rhesus monkey hopped down from the trees and nearly swiped by sunglasses.

The employees here shared the backstory for each of the rescued orangutans. Some of them can be released into the wild, but others cannot.

The Queen, for instance, was once a house pet. Not only did she live in an apartment with her owner, but she wore a house dress and was addicted to cigarettes!

She gets quite jealous of other females, even human females. When women would approach to take her photo, she’d spit at us.

It was heartwarming to see that the employees clearly love all the animals here.

Oh, before I forget: the cicadas there sounded high pitched metal machinery. I actually asked them what machines I was hearing were.Read more