Lok Kawi Wildlife Park - The "hard" way vs. the "easy" way

After the tour to Mt. Kinabalu, and then my impromptu visit to the islands just offshore, I decided that I would attempt to get to Lok Kawi Wildlife Park on my own.  Everyone had been telling me that the only viable way to get there was to hire a taxi in town and have the driver take me to the park and then wait to bring me back.  Even the people at the Malaysian Tourism Bureau advocated this course.  This was to cost somewhere in the neighbourhood of 120 to 150 Malaysian Ringgit, or 40 to 50 dollars.  If I were traveling with somebody it wouldn't be a great cost.  We share the taxi cost and it isn't so expensive.  Or I could have gone traipsing around to a hostel or two and found someone willing to go and share the cost.  That would have worked as well.  But I'm traveling alone and I really didn't want to take the time to find someone to go along.  It had to be possible to do it another way, a way that wouldn't cost so much.  I saw on the map that it was right near a train line.  Could I take the train?  Well, yes, but it would be rather complicated.  I finally just went to the bus/van depot and asked around.  Yes, there was a van that would go to Lok Kawi, the town.  I could then hire a taxi out to the park, 5 kilometers away.  Or I could walk.  Taking the van was going to cost 2.80 Ringgit, less than a dollar.  Okay, now we were talking.  I got to the town and started wandering aimlessly.  There were some guys just hanging out.  One of them called me over and asked if I wanted to go to the park.  When I asked him how much it would cost, he told me 20 Ringgit, one way.  I took him up on it.  And I went out to the park.  The ride was really nice.  The countryside was lovely with some interesting buildings and such.  And I got there for about a sixth of the cost of doing it the "approved" way.

The park itself was really well done.  It is placed on a converted rubber tree plantation.  It runs up into a valley, at the end of which there is a rather sad little botanical garden.  But the animals were in large enclosures that gave them plenty of space to roam around and live.  Not a typical zoo.  And the most interesting part of it all for me was the animals that I had never seen before.  In fact, there is a game I play on Facebook called Zoo.  There are a lot of animals in my zoo that I had never heard of.  I thought maybe they were made up animals.  But here I was faced with some animals that had the names of my "fictional" zoo animals.  That was cool.

There was the binturong, just hanging out in a tree.  The day was really quite hot.  I kind of wanted to just lie around in a tree, too.










There was a sun bear, sitting to greet his visitors.  They have a white "v" on their chests.  These are the smallest of the 8 kinds of bears in the world.  I was surprised by that.  I thought there would be more kinds of bears than that, particularly when they catalogue umpteen kinds of beetle or thousands of different kinds of horse-like creatures.  But no, only 8 kinds of bear.











There was also a serval, a very well-adapted big cat.  It can swim, climb, and run.  It can hunt in all kinds of ways and is quite powerful, so it is quite successful among the great cats.  But, like most species these days, it seems, under pressure because of the activities of us humans.

There were also the usual assortment of animals one might see in most zoos, and zoo-like places.  There were elephants.  This one was doing a remarkable impression of a submarine.  I was convinced.









There were tigers.















There was also this little guy.  I don't know what he was, exactly, but he had really big eyes.
















There were emus, who could get up close and personal.  (And to my disgust, despite the signs everywhere saying not to feed the animals because it would harm them, people were feeding them candy in order to get them to come close and be right beside them for a photo.  I just waited by the fence and waited for one to come close enough for a look.)











And ostriches as well.


















The star of the show, though, was an orangutan.  His name was Mowgli (yes, after the Jungle Book character), and he had been rescued from an illegal situation where he had been a pet.  He had been badly cared for and was quite sick when he came to Lok Kawi.  He had stomach trouble and it took a long time to rehabilitate him.  Even now, he is not very well, and he is very small for his age.  But was he ever cute.  I wish I could put up the video of him eating the sunflower seeds the handlers gave him.  Unfortunately, the orangutan habitat at the park was undergoing renovations, so we were not able to see more than Mowgli, and we couldn't see him living as an orangutan lives, but it was enough to see him up close and well-cared for.

I had a good visit to the park, and though it took the whole day to accomplish it properly, I did it my way, the "hard" way, but the ever-so-rewarding way.  Tours have their uses, but they have their limitations as well.  I much preferred this trip to the trip up to Mount Kinabalu.  It was a good way to leave Kota Kinabalu.