Here's a picture of Parrish and our friends' daughter, Nevi, who were playing "let's hold Nevi's dad, Devin, under water for as long as we can".
We would have loved to stay there for longer but needed to get Sabrina down for a nap so it was time to check-in to our room........
Just kidding......it was more like this......
Just after we checked in the rain started to pour, literally!
And it rained some more......
Our plans for a firefly river cruise were canceled but we had a wonderful time visiting with our friends, playing a little Foosball and enjoying a local meal prepared by the staff at the lodge. We had noodles, rice (or course), grilled fish, rice cakes, chicken stay, grilled chicken, grilled fish balls (yummy), baked bean curd (tofu) and some fruit for dessert. There weren't too many guests at this lodge so the kids ran around the dining area playing hide and seek while the rest of the adults finished their meal. I love it when we can get the kids fed and let them go play while we take our time.
The next day four of us adults decided to take a jungle hike. We weren't really sure where any established hikes were, but our friend David spotted a trail he was interested in from a previous trip to Kota Tinggi. The kids and a few other adults stayed behind to play in the pool, yes! this rustic lodge did have a pool, but no lounge chairs so it was "bring your own towel".
I'd have to say it didn't take very long on our hike to lose the trail and wish we had a machete.
Thank goodness our friend Devin brought along his GPS. His name is Devin despite "Doug" printed on his shirt. There's a story in there somewhere.
Something I learned on this hike was that tea tree oil and lavender oil will remove leeches. Every time we stopped on the "trail" for a little bit we did a leech check and usually found one of these little blood suckers. You don't want to pull the leech off, although tempting, because they have mouth parts that can be left behind in your skin, ewe. Plus, they also have an anticoagulant saliva that can leave you bleeding if you're not careful.
The jungle hike had some dangerous elements beside the leeches. You had to be very careful stepping over tree logs. Some logs had huge spikes on them and others were the pathway for an army of ants. "The ants go marching" song rang in my head every time I came across this. They were literally marching in a long line of about 4 rows.
I had heard there were cobras in this part of the world, but it didn't occur to me that on this day we might see one. I was not thinking about snakes at all on our hike.....or I might have easily stayed behind. The cobra you see in the picture was spotted on the way back to the lodge after our hike. We pulled over to watch and realized this snake was actually injured pretty badly and disoriented. Somehow his head was smashed. I never thought I would feel bad for a cobra. There were a few other locals that also stopped to watch the snake. My guess is they were thinking....."food".
We had just enough time to jump into the pool before cleaning up and getting ready to check-out. On our way out of town we stopped at a recommended Chinese restaurant and ate lunch for about $40, 5 adults and 3 kids. Not bad!
Parrish said on our way back to Singapore that she really likes Malaysia because of the talking birds. The lodge had a collection of birds all with funny personalities. One bird was bilingual and greeted us with "g'day" or "ni hao". Another bird hissed and meowed like a cat. We also saw a few sleeping bats in the rafters of one of the shelters over a pathway. Thank goodness for bats. I had less mosquito (mozzie) bites because of them!
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