Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Absence makes my heart grows fonder

When I was in Kuching couple of months ago (gee, it seems so long ago), I spent a lot of time with mum and dad. We went out to different places on few occassions walk here walk there (sight seeing).

As a lot of people would agree with me, it is different when talking to the one you love on the phone and actually being with them.

It was a wet and humid day and our destination was Crocodile Farm but half way thru the journey we stumbled across this place:



This is something we can't find here in beautiful Aoteroa, pitcher plant. IT IS A CARNIVOUROUS PLANT!!! Which simply means it consumes animals or insects to survive.









Then we headed to Jong's Crocodile Farm which situated at 18 miles Kuching Serian Highway. It is the only crocodile breeding farm in Malaysia and believe me, there were lots and lots of them.







The keepers put on this show where they fed the crocs by hanging a bit of meat on a string and lured these ancient reptiles to jump up, gulp down their delicious meal.













Apart from crocodiles, there are lots of other rare species of animals which found only in Borneo Island such as hornbills, bearcats, barking deers, fruit bats, monitor lizards, python, wild boars, cassowary etc...


Wild boars, well used to be, not wild anymore after they 've been caught...


Oh my God. It peed in front of us. How rude~~


Cassowary


Sunbear


Sarawak Hornbill, our national bird. Love the vibrant colours on the horn and beak!

There is a huge and deep concrete ponds in the middle of the farm as well. It has the largest freshwater fish in the world, Arapaima Gigas, living in there.


That's the fish!!

The pond is covered with water lillies and lotuses. The combination colours of pink and white petals makes the pond look stunning!!







The next day we went to a famous Buddhist temple called Ching San Yen which situated on a hill at 120ft above sea level at the left bank of the estuary of Sarawak River. It is about 30km away from Kuching city centre in Kampung Muara Tebas, a Malay fishing village.


Saw this monk like person at the temple, posing for us...


The overall view of the temple.






Ancient doorbell...


Three Buddha (from left): Shakyamuni, Amitabha, Buddha of Medicine


They called this Wisdom Spring. Don't ask me why. I have no idea...

Next day mum was busy so dad and I went to Serikin market. Serikin is a small township on the boarder of Sarawak and Indonesia. Surprisingly, the market was really busy, absolutely flooded with people who gathered around at different stalls tried to pick up some bargains. It is pretty much like our Sunday Market but with a lot more crafts, electrical goods, branded fragrances (lelong one), food, drink and all sorts. Unfortunately I didn't use my camera because the risk of losing it was pretty high when there were so many people. Furthermore it was hard to stop and take a snap shot when people behind kept pushing us forward. But I managed to quickly take a photo from this side (Sarawak) looking over to the otherside (Indonesia).


The sign says: STOP! In the name of love.. Nah joking. It says: STOP! Polis check.

Anyway after we left the market, we found this isolated zoo called Turn Red mini zoo (very very weird name but it's true). So out of curiousity, we went in. To our astonishment, there were quite a few species of animals in there!


One of the poisonous snake. Nice to watch, lethal to touch. Pssst~


My favourite, Iguana!!


Whatcha looking at?!






Python, largest snake.




Monitor lizard.


'I'll shoot if you come any closer!' the Porcupine thought.




Look at the vibrant colours!!





And this was probably one of the highlight of the day. We found these little monkeys helping each other out with their fleas...



And next minute this happened.



I can still remember how dad's expression was like when I yelled at him: 'Look dad!'. Priceless!!

There was a cave in the zoo which is used to display wood fossils.


Sorry, I was trying to hold it up.


Believe it or not. These were the roots of a tree.




This was how the inside of the cave looks like.


Wood fossil, hard as a rock.

We also went to Wind Cave in Bau.



We paid about RM3.00 to hire a torch from the information centre then to find out those batteries of the torch were half way dead. So we couldn't go anywhere further into the cave, sad... It was completely dark inside. Chinese proverb: Raise hand cannot see five fingers. Yup exactly like that.


Huge entrance into the cave. Photo taken with long exposure from my camera.

Overall it was absolutely fantastic to be able to spend time with both mum and dad these few days.

And I realised how much I missed them.

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