elephants, peacocks and snakes

this morning joe & christian picked us up and we heading up through the genting highlands to the national elephant conservation centre and after about 90 minutes of driving through the highlands we arrived. we all had lots of fun feeding the baby elephants and then enjoyed a simple lunch in the centres cafe. they told us that they would be taking the elephants for a swim and wash about 2.30 and that we might be able to get in the river and help wash them depending on river conditions.

kai, me, sal & christian

as it was a bit long to hang around waiting we decided to check out a deer farm that we had seen a signpost to, a couple of km’s before the elephantcentre. it actually turned out to be the highlight of the day – the deer were very funny as were some of the people feeding them!

who knew deer loved uncooked potato fries!

as we wandered though the paths in the jungle there were cages with various birds in them and near the end we came across a beautiful peacock who was doing his best to woo a rather disinterested peahen!

none of us had seen a peacock in full display like this before so we were all mesmerised by the show he put on.

the next corner in the path revealed 2 huge fat pythons in an open area and we were able to handle them, i think kai would have stayed the rest of the day if allowed, he just loved the big fat albino burmese python, the beautiful yellow coloured one, he was happy to just sit rubbing his skin and talking to him! the other one was a reticulated python.

for the first time ever i didnt take a shot, which explains the superior quality of the images! Joe is a professional photographer and bought along his superb nikon pro camera and took eleventy billion shots.

we returned to the elephants but the staff had decided the water was unsafe for the public to be in the river, which was a bit disappointing but more than compensated for by the deer park experience. we had another feeding with a heap of paw paws, which i think kai wanted to have some of as well as feeding the elephants!

throwing peanuts into the elephant’s mouth

all in all a magic day with great friends and terrific scenery as well as plenty of entertainment – mainly from the funny people feeding the deer.

today i discovered the sleeper train is booked out for penang, so we will stay another night here beyond our original plan and then hire a car and drive up to penang instead.