Day 6: Cats and Orangutans

Sunday morning we explored the cat city, Kuching, on foot. I learned that Kuching means cat in high Malaysian, which explains the gigantic cat statue in front of our hotel. One of the legends of how the city came to be called Kuching is that when James Brooke, the first English raja  of Sarawak, came he pointed to the city and asked a local what it was called and the local thought he was pointing at a cat and replied "Kuching". I learned some interesting facts about James Brooke as well. When he entered Kuching on the Sarawak river he fired a canon. The local Iban people had never heard or seen a canon and were terrified. They thought the gods were angry with them and didn't even resist Brooke. James Brooke became the self appointed "white raja" or king of Sarawak in 1841. His family continued to rule Sarawak until WWII when the Japanese invaded and the Brookes fled.  After WWII Sarawak wanted to be an independent country but the British colonized it and made it part of peninsula Malaysia. Sarawak gained it's independence from England in 1963, only 51 years ago. From our view of the river we could see the buliding that James Brooke built for his wife Margaret and that the current governor uses called Astana.

We continued to walk the city and visited a beautiful Chinese temple. I couldn't help but think of Mulan as I entered. The temple was full of gold, for prosperity, and red, for good luck. People were brining their paper money in fires to send up to their ancestors. Now a days they make paper money models of just about anything you can think of to send up to their ancestors,from cell phones to Gucci bags. 

 

On our way to lunch we walked by one of the biggest mosques in town, connected by a cemetery of tombstones facing Mecca. 

We are lunch like locals in the open air market and had some delicious desserts and noodles.

We proceeded to drive to the Semmenggoh wildlife preserve in hopes of seeing the endangered orangutans. As we pulled up there was a sign explains that this time of year was hard to see them but we hiked in on faith. After 45 minutes it seemed we weren't going to be lucky. Just as we were about to leave the rangers announced some had been spotted 400 meters farther in to the jungle. I couldn't believe it when I finally saw them. They are amazing creatures that look so graceful yet powerful swinging from the trees. There were three. One is known as the trouble maker and was breaking branches of the trees and throwing them. The other two were a male and female and the male wanted to mate, much to the distress of the female who was making a lot of noise. The rangers were throwing up food to the orangutans who caught it with their toes. It was such an incredible experience getting to walk into the jungle to see them. Although I have never been so thoroughly drenched with sweat or fatigued from walking all day in the sun, seeing those beautiful animals was well worth it!