Kuala Gandah - The Elephant Sanctuary

The more I learn about Malaysia, the more it continues to surprise me. It is such a small country and KL is so densely populated that I tend to think the whole country is that way. In fact much of the country is still virgin jungle: rainforest. The Indo-Malayan rainforests are the oldest in the world, making those in Africa and South America seem adolescent in comparison. Historically elephants were found in large numbers throughout the densely forested Malay Peninsula. However over the past 100 years the forests have steadily given way to agriculture for both food and cash crops, mostly palm plantations. Initially forest clearance paid no heed to the need for elephant corridors to allow for trans migration and this gave rise, as expected, to a considerable human-elephant conflict. With approx. 1300-1400 wild elephants estimated to live within peninsular Malaysia, the Malay authorities’ response was to set up the Elephant Management Unit in 1974 under the authority of the Department of Wildlife and National Parks. This unit has established the world renowned Kuala Gandah Elephant Conservation Centre. The unit has become highly specialized in elephant translocation in response to human elephant conflict, moving elephants to the eastern Malaysian states of Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang where there is still a large amount of forest, some of which is protected as part of the vast Taman Negara National Park.


About 90 minutes drive from KL, the Taman Negara is spread out over 4,343 sq. km. (nearly 1700 sq. miles) of rainforest. Last week we had the awesome opportunity to spend a day in a portion of the reserve, at the Kuala Gandah sanctuary and meet the elephants.

The experience begins with a video documentary highlighting the plight of the elephants in Malaysia and the efforts of the Elephant Relocation team. While waiting for the day’s activities to start, we chatted with one of the workers who explained to us that they have trained a number of the elephants to assist with the relocation by acting basically as ambassadors for the relocation team. When a wild elephant is captured for relocation, the trained (“job” elephants, as they are called at the sanctuary) are brought in to help calm the confused animal in preparation for its travel. They work in pairs and the video footage of the team moving to stand on either side of the frightened evacuee, using their trunks to stroke and calm the poor thing is both amazing and heartbreaking. (Those of you who know me know it brought tears to my eyes.)

The elephants that actually reside at the sanctuary are mostly orphans. (The team does try to relocate families, or pods, as much as possible.) Some of them have very sad stories, as you can imagine: one is missing a foot due to a conflict with humans, one is a survivor of a tiger attack, but they seem to be well cared for and well-loved by the staff. While on the grounds we had the opportunity to feed the elphants:
grass to the smallest,

(click this link to see video of fearless Conrad feeding this cutie: http://www.shutterfly.com/video/myVideos.sfly?fid=3235dd89c50098c0cf4ab00f16ca9e1e)

peanuts to some of the medium sized ones,

and fruit to the biggest ones

(Conrad was trying to feed him the watermelon seeds too!)

I can't remember this one's name but she is 69 years old; elephants can live to be 80 years old

Conrad and Mommy went for a ride

I don't remember this little cutie's story but she was definitely the youngest at the sanctuary

The day ended with a swim in the river with the residents

(click this link for a video of this little adventure: http://www.shutterfly.com/video/myVideos.sfly?fid=f353044cf18ce42e5b2f2841c4d4a52e)

There is no entry fee to visit the sanctuary but a donation is requested. Per their website: "Although the Sanctuary receives funding from the Malaysian government via the Department of Wildlife & National Parks or DWNP, additional fundings from externally generated sources are always welcomed with open........trunks?" You can imagine the government funding doesn't cover all of their needs so should any of you feel inclined to help them out you can access them through the website : www.myelephants.org/donation.html

More Chinese (Lunar) New Year fun

We were in the mall on Chinese New Year's Day (2/14) and happened to catch this performance (see link to video, below). Each lion was a team of 2: one person was the head and front legs, the other was the body and hind legs. Their acrobatics on these 10 foot poles was really quite amazing, the video really doesn't do it justice, but hopefully it will be fun for you to watch anyway. Some of you have already seen this video on Facebook but for those of you for whom it's new, enjoy!

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The retail celebration of Lunar New Year has continued to entertain me. There are many vendors that seem to set up in the shopping centers specifically to sell traditional New Year's fare. It always makes me think of Hickory Farms because they seem to be the ones that most recognizably only appear in the malls at Christmas but instead of the petit fors and summer sausage, the Malaysian kiosks have a lot of things I don't recognize: dried fruits and jerkies,  crispy potato and rice treats - always in clear plastic jars with red tops as red is the color of luck: it symbolizes fire which drives away bad luck; and some that I do: pineapple tarts that we sampled in Melacca and they were quite yummy, and Chinese Love letter cookies: sweet butter-sugar cookies. Doubly yummy!

Pineapple tarts

Chinese Love Letter cookies, sometimes folded, sometimes rolled

These items were found in almost every vendor's set up but there was another item that I saw everywhere and it really made me laugh: the ever popular, traditional Chinese Famous Amos chocloate chip cookies! It seemed to always be the biggest display. Or maybe it just stuck out more to me because, other than the Mandarin oranges (of course!) it was the only item not packaged in clear plastic with a red top!

The Lunar New Year usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice and the celebration lasts for 2 weeks. I was unable to find an explanation for the 2 week duration but feel free to celebrate until the end of February, if you wish. There are so many traditions and practices associated with it that it makes my head spin and I can't even begin to share them with you: foods you are supposed to eat or not eat, things you are supposed to say or not say, gifts you are supposed to give or not give, but one thing I am sad to say I did not learn about in time: on Lunar New Year's Day you are not to clean/sweep the house as it is believed that you risk sweeping away the luck that has accumulated, apparently on your floors and tv set? I never thought of dustbunnies and dried blueberry yogurt as lucky, and I kicked Heinz and the kids out of the house Sunday morning so that I could scrub my floors in peace! If only I had known, I could have put my feet up and ignored it all for one more day!

Gong Xi Fa Cai, y'all!

Dinner is served...maybe

We have a rice cooker. It came with the place; this is Asia after all. People I know who have rice cookers swear by them but it is one gadget I have not felt a burning need to have. Quick cook rice has never let me down so far but since we have the cooker, I thought I would give it a try. Besides, I have yet to find boxed rice in the stores. They sell 40 pound bags of rice, as big as my 3 year old, but no quick cook in boxes. So I pull the box out of the cupboard to find that the cooker is still brand new, never been taken out of the packaging. I guess the previous tenants didn't cook much either (they were Asian, we found a cd of pictures from a trip they took to Cambodia. Great temples, made me want to visit. Plus we still get his mail indicating that he owes the cable company a lot of money....) Anyway, I pull out the box and am heartened to see that it is covered in English. Until I see the first amenity listed: "1.2mm Thickness inner pot, prolong the economy's natural life." In college we had this professor who was from South Africa. Brilliant man. His lectures were naturally in English but they were so misearble to sit through because I could never understand a word the man said. This is starting to feel like that. So the next amenity listed on the box is: "Glass top cover, the more pressure, the more rice savory."  Chuckling to myself now I open the box and take out the instruction manual to find the directive "Be sure to keep the space between the kettle and the heater plate clean from wet, dust (etc.), to avoid the unit work mulfunction or from damaged." Would it really have been so hard to have someone proofread this thing before you put it on the shelves? Some of the English we find here is so poor, both the grammar and the spelling. It makes me think of the probability of finding the minimum one spelling/grammar mistake on the Chinese take-out menus left on door handles and windshields in the states. Surely I'm not the only one who plays that game? But the other day I saw an ad for a local pre-school offering "Let us teach your childs English". Umm, no thanks, I'll pass. And it leaves me to wonder: are those the people who understand the box and the instruction manual for my rice cooker?

So we went grocery shopping Tuesday night and rice for the cooker was on my list. I did find where they have the small bags (merchandising in Malaysian stores would probably remain a mystery to me even if we lived here for 6 years, not just 6 months) but the new challenge became to find one that had any English on it at all. And I know you're probably thinking "Jack, it's rice, how complicated can it be? Do you really need a bag in English?" But remember I've never made rice in a cooker before, how much rice to how much water? Bottom line, I couldn't find a bag in English that told me so good old Wikipedia hooked me up. I clean the cooker, I wash the rice, which Wikipedia recommended I do and, after all, this is a foreign country (does that make me weird?) put it all in the cooker, and realize that I have not got a single electrical outlet on the kitchen counter. Not one. Maybe this is why the previous tenants never used the damn thing either. Behind the refrigerator there are 2 outlets. So the cooker is plugged in and sitting on top of the fridge because the cord would not reach to put it on the nearest counter.  It's turned on, the red light is glowing and if the outcome is anything other than uneventful, I will let you know.  Maybe I'll love it so much that I will have to get one for the house when we get back to the states.
Maybe not.
And regarding electrical outlets, we do not have one, not a single one, in any of the bathrooms. Can't use a shaver, can't use a blowdryer. Think of how many outlets you have in the room you are in right now. I think the American standard is 1 every 4 feet? We have one per wall. I guess that's one way to reduce consumption!

Malaysian fun fact #15: The Malaysian numbers superstition, like the American aversion to the number 13, involves the number 4. Apparently the word for the number 4 sounds too much like the word for death, so they avoid using it whenever possible. In our building, above the 13th floor comes floor 13A. On each floor there are 8 units: 1, 2, 3, 3A, 5, 6, etc. Heinz and I had to laugh because Conrad has taken a liking to the number 4 for some reason, and the other night at the Chinese wedding dinner we attended he kept pointing it out to us in one of the books we had brought to keep him occupied. We were horrified that somehow we were going to be considered rude guests or jinx the bride and groom!
Malaysian fun fact #16: The Canadian finish all of their sentences with "eh?"
The Malaysians finish all of their sentences with "la", as in "I have to finish this post, la". It takes a little while to get used to it but I find I hardly even notice it anymore!

Well, naptime is over and I have to go check the rice. Wish me luck!

Punishing Adultery, Malaysian style

Malaysian court imposes fine of farm animals

The Malaysia Sun

Monday 1st February, 2010

The Malaysian press has reported an adulterous couple were fined four buffaloes and a pig after being found guilty of an extra-marital affair. The report said the pair were convicted by the Native Court in Penampang, Borneo, after the man's wife lodged a complaint last year. The court heard from the man's wife who claimed she found the couple only partially dressed in sarongs and shorts. The court rejected a claim from the adulterous couple that they were simply friends, and imposed the animal fine, worth around US$1,900.

The pair were convicted under customary local laws.

Gong Xi Fa Chi - Happy Chinese New Year!

At Christmas time in the States, the malls fill with Santa Clause. In Malaysia, for Chinese New Year the malls fill with...

Lucky Money Cat! Wearing a jade necklace with beads as big as your head!  This is a photo of the main courtyard at one of the malls nearby, and as we walked through this weekend they had a number of forms of entertainment on the stage: martial arts demonstrations, groups of people singing Chinese songs, children playing games and at one point as we walked by this main stage I heard a group singing and realized that although the words were in Chinese,  the tune was Jingle Bells. Toto...The Mall has advertised this event as "The Celebration of Paws-perity". In some of the side corridors of the mall are smaller versions of Lucky Money Cat and almost every one had someone standing in front of him, having their picture taken. And they were locals.

Chinese New Year actually begins on February 14th this year, with the celebration lasting 15 days so as time goes by I hope to learn more about it and perhaps have our own celebration. I will keep you posted. In the meantime our crazy neighbors down the street have already started in with the fireworks. It could be a long three weeks!

Last night we went to the wedding reception for one of Heinz's co-workers. It is apparently a universal custom in this day and age to have professional portraits of the happy couple done to accompany the engagement announcement and Heinz shared with me the one that was circulated at their office. One expects there to be a scenic background or location but we just had to chuckle over the choice in this one. Appreantly, he had admitted to Heinz, the couple like sheep so they had a number of them photoshopped into the background, which was a green field. And I have to say it looked like they had used the same sheep over and over, just reversed in some cases.

Another of Heinz's coworkers had explained some of the customs and had shared with him the story of a friend of his who had had to pay the "bride price", which is often based on the salary of the groom. Apparently the father of his fiance had done a calculation of all the money he had spent on his daughter up to that point and presented the groom with the bill. Apparently the friend had great earning potential so the father had no qualms about presenting quite a hefty bill as the Bride price. My understanding is that the groom paid. No word on how the marriage is doing today.

Regarding the actual wedding, the groom and his new bride have apparently followed the traditional process with the elaborate rituals of the tea ceremonies, where they must serve tea to both sets of parents in turn, followed by visitations to many of the relatives on both sides of the family. According to Heinz this coworker has had to take a lot of time off from work to live up to all of these obligations, but that is the norm. Naturally, as these are family oriented ceremonies we were not included but it was very nice of them to extend the invitation to the whole family to attend the main celebration dinner.  We weren't sure what to expect but in many ways the reception was much like any that you might attend in the States, except for the karaoke and the food. The dinner was held in a restaurant to the north of downtown and was quite elaborate, nine courses with the most interesting points naturally being those dishes that arrived at our table with the entire body of the item intact: the 18 inch fish, the duck - placed on the table with the head looking right at me, and less dramatically the prawns. The duck was cut up into pieces but for the fish, everyone simply dug in with their chopsticks. And I have to say that it was actually quite tasty, as long as I could get past the part that my dinner was looking at me. I can hold my own with chopsticks but apparently the waiters felt the need to deliver a knife and fork to the table for me. I'm still not quite sure why my very non-Asian looking husband was not offered the same; perhaps they had watched me juggling Conrad on my lap at one point and Vivi on my lap at another and just decided to have mercy on the poor white woman with the noisy kids.

Throughout the course of the dinner the bride and groom made the rounds of the tables with a bottle of Chivas, making a very boisterous toast with each group.

The toast at the table next to ours.

The bride and a very drunk groom visit our table. Thank goodness I didn't have to drink the Chivas~!

The whitest people at the party

Baby Vivienne in her beautiful silk Chinese dress. And no adventure would be complete without...

the random strangers who wanted their pictures taken with Vivienne. All in all, it was a fun evening.

All I want for Christmas is to go halfway around the world

We’ve been back in KL about a week now and have been plagued by connectivity issues so by the time I get this posted it’s going to seem way out of date, but my computer died again right after my last post and we decided just to take it back to the states and figure out what to do with it there. In the end it made more sense simply to replace it so one of my Christmas presents was a beautiful new laptop! Being the techno-idiot that I am, it is taking me a long time to learn how to maneuver my way around: it has Windows 7. So between that and just the general distractions of being home for the holidays I am now really, really far behind on my blogs! So here I go, trying to catch up…

When we left here in December I was so excited to be heading home, to see Barney, to sleep in my own bed, to see my friends and swim with the team that I wasn’t really even daunted by the prospect of the trip.

6 hours to Seoul were uneventful enough. It’s a beautiful new airport, complete with Subway so we started our assimilation back into American culture with Chicken Bacon Ranch sandwiches and root beer! 14 hours to DC were about what one might expect from a flight of that length, (i.e. miserable) and I will continue to be mystified by how my son seems to get more energetic, the less sleep he has had. How I wish we could trade that quality. One thing I was not prepared for was how completely dehydrated we all got on the flight. My fingertips were cracked and bleeding by the time we made it home and poor Conrad cried about how his lips hurt every time he took a drink of something. Needless to say I will not get on a plane again without an arsenal of hand cream and lip moisturizers!

It’s very interesting to me to see the differences on the same airline between the meals served on flights depending on where they originate. On the flight out of Chicago we had very westernized meals and the infant meal included jars of baby food and bottles of formula. On the flight out of Seoul, the infant meal was hot cereal and fruit juice and each of the 3 meals served to the adults included octopus in some form, mostly on a cold salad. I think the sight of the actual suction cups is the most disturbing for me. The color doesn’t do too much for me either and I am left to wonder: In America they add that red color to those imitation crab legs to make them look like real crab meat; in Asia do they add that purple color into the octopus? I’m not sure which would be more troublesome for me, that the color is real or that the color is fake?

 

We landed in DC to the first real snow storm on the East coast. I kept thinking as I looked at the map, We’re flying close enough to Indiana, can you just open the door and toss us out and save us 5-6 hours of flight time? But we landed in snow and as we waited to board, our layover went from one hour to 2 hours to 3 hours. Finally they announced “Let’s board quickly; small plane, gate check as many items as you can and we’ll get out of here while we’ve got a window for departure.” And this is where the 33 hours of travel and very little sleep caught up with me. “15 minutes to departure” turned into “We’re 6th in line to be de-iced” and then 3 hours on the runway…. And I had gate checked the diaper/food bag. Thank God for small favors that, after bouncing off the walls for the last few hours of the previous flight and in the terminal, Conrad crashed and Vivi, who had boarded with a full belly and a clean diaper, also slept but the longer we sat there I knew it would just be a matter of time before she needed a new diaper and her next bottle. The Attendant was really very sweet about it. She gave me a plastic trash bag and when the time came for a new diaper I tore holes in the corners and stuck Viv’s legs through, lining it with paper towels to try and absorb whatever might need to be absorbed. Just call me MacGuyver. She never did get hungry but in case she did the Attendant had given me some oatmeal that they kept around for the Captain. It was thankfully enough to get us into the Terminal in Indy, and reunited with our bags. If I had not been a. so angry with myself for dropping the ball and putting my poor daughter in that position, and b. so bone-weary tired and desperate to get home and to a bed, I could have seen the humor in it and taken a picture so that we could all get a good laugh about it. And quite honestly I’m still not really laughing about it, wasn’t even sure I could own up to being such a thoughtless traveler in a blog but hey, as the list says “Bad decisions make for good stories”. And maybe our experience will help someone else to remember: no matter how tired you are, no matter how “small” the plane is or how desperate you are to get away quickly, never, ever, EVER check the diaper bag. I mean, come on, what was I THINKING???

But we made it home, 36 hours door to door, and found the house and Barney in better condition than I have kept them these last few years since the kids arrived (maybe Heinz’s Aunt and Uncle would move in with us for good). And Bethli had prepared a wonderful meal for us so I breathed a big sigh: my wish had come true, halfway around the world, I was home for Christmas.

Melacca: Lime Juice and Pig's Organ Porridge

Now that my computer is back and up and running I can try to catch up some on what we've been up to and where we've gone lately. A few weeks ago we loaded up the car and headed down to the Straits to visit the town of Melacca on the recommendation of one of Heinz's coworkers. A UNESCO world heritage site, it's a very interesting city, not very big but very ecclectic as over the centuries it has been subjected to the rule of the Dutch, the British, the Portugese, the Chinese and of course the Malay. (A further idiosyncracy of Malaysian life: many words/names are spelled numerous different ways depending on usage of the English name, the Malaysian name, the phonetic name; it's silly. We tried to count the number of different ways we saw Melacca spelled -Melaka, Malaca, Malaqa- but we lost count.) We didn't have very good weather and as travelling with 2 little ones can really be a challenge, we didn't get to see as much as we might have liked but we did have some interesting experiences. Our hotel, a recommendation from the same coworker, was beautiful and the service was excellent. Our room was really neat: a 2-story suite. The traditional houses of the city are built very narrow and very deep so they use lightwells and courtyards to bring light into the interior parts of the buildings. The courtyards in the hotel were beautifully landscaped with palm trees, plants, beautiful places to sit and lots of little ponds and pots full of koi fish. Conrad loved looking for all the fish. There was a "History Room" in the hotel with pictures and artifacts from both the restoration of the hotel and the history of the city. In it was a section dedicated to the second world war, outlining how Malaysia fell to Japanese troops. I know it was certainly no laughing matter at the time but the way in which the irony of it was presented struck us as toungue in cheek and we found it comical. I included pictures of it in our trip photos:

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We spent some time walking through the Jonker Street market. It was raining, crowded and very humid so we decided to stop into a nearby coffee house to get a drink. I decided to try something on the menu (there were not many choices for cold drinks) called "Lime juice". Sounds simple enough, right? It came in the bottle and was nice and cold but it was a dark purplish color, which I found strange for something made of lime, and upon reading the label I discovered it was "lime juice with licorice". Now we Tortorelli girls love our licorice, no family gathering is complete without a nice supply of Good and Plenties, but this strange combination was beyond even my licorice-loving abilities. It was very thick and had something like tea leaves floating in it and I couldn't get past the smell. Meanwhile my husband was loving his white coffee. The historic downtown area isn't very big but as it was raining we decided to do some sightseeing by trishaw. It's naturally not an uncommon mode of transport in that part of the country but it is so funny how they trick out their carriages with flowers, flashing lights and flags and music systems. One is gaudier than the next! But it was certainly a fun way to get around and a nice way to quickly see some of the sights on a rainy evening. The next day was dry so we headed out to the Eye of Malaysia so that Conrad could get his "Ferris wheel" ride. He was thrilled. We drove around a bit after that and ended up getting stuck in traffic, caught in a newer part of town with modern shopping malls and hotels. It seemed that everyone was out for shopping on a Sunday. We did find a "food court", the outdoor eateries where the locals set up their stalls. We had to park at the nearby mall and walk over which I thought was ironic. The stalls were set up with menu boards behind them and I panicked initially because the first ones that we saw were all in Chinese characters with pictures but I don't really trust the pictures. Eventually we did find a few with english translations, which included a vendor selling something called "Pigs' Organ Porridge" complete with a picture of a bowl of what looked to me like gruel with pigs' intestines on top. We settled for beef noodle bowls and as we sat there eating it occurred to me that it looked like all the visitors (western-looking people) were here sampling the local fare while all the locals were inside the air-conditioned mall probably eating at KFC and McDonald's!  

We didn't get to see the Fort or the Stadthuys, and we missed out on a few historic churches that I would have liked to have seen but all in all it was a nice trip and I would definitely recommend the city as a destination trip.