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So here are some pictures of the enchanting river cruises that we went for in Weston. I say "cruises", because we actually went on the motorboat for four times that day - morning, a short one with Nex because he was going to leave early; noon, when we went for a "just for a heck of it" cruise; afternoon when we went to spot the Probiscis Monkeys; and night after dinner when we went to see fireflies. The experience at Weston Wetland was just so homey and personalized that I didn't feel like I was on a tour at all. It was like being hosted by friends.
The sky was so beautiful that day! Just the right amount of clouds and a healthy dose of sun.
Nex's back.We also made an ad-hoc stopover at this place called Weston Probiscis Monkey Sanctuary, which is sorta like Weston Wetland, an eco-tourism attempt, a retreat where you can stay at and be in the middle of a swamp if that's what rocks your boat (hmm... I can't decide... is this counted as a pun?) And this is the manager of the place, who is also the resident monkey expert.
He is such a comical character! He welcomed us warmly by a strike of this gong, and proceeded to show us some of the monkeys behind the sanctuary, speaking in endearing pride of them, like how parents would talk about their children, masked with disapproving tut-tutting. The monkey in the following picture is the rascal of the pack, basically terrorizing the whole area, driving away the Probiscis Monkeys and birds and such. Even got itself hurt by challenging the alpha male.
Then I saw some other monkeys eating some white stringy stuff, and asked The Manager what they were having. "Mee hoon," he said. Later I saw some strands of mee hoon on his work desk and he affirmed my suspicions - "That was supposed to be my lunch," he said plaintively, in evident self pity. I found that, and his droopy eyebrows really comical, I mean I could so picture him chasing the monkeys in a futile attempt to recover his lunch!The noon tour was the coolest I think, we had so much fun! We went through this mangrove tree corridor, through these majestic trees with their roots gleaming where patches of sunlight hit them, and it was so tranquil there, only our boat and its chugging as our guide steered us slowly through. This picture looks like I've been superimposed against the background! And it doesn't do the mangrove trees half the justice they deserve, but this is to give you some idea of what it was.
Then we went through some nipah trees, that's Jia Ling's back going through some low lying branches. The nipahs were nice, but I liked the mangrove trees best.
And there's our guide getting atap chee, the nipah plant's fruit, which you can eat.
And then we tried casting nets -
And guess what we got?? Look!
Haha actually I didn't catch that, a fisherman from another boat caught it and flung it over to our boat =D It was really nice of him.And this crab was another thing that we didn't catch: erm... we actually stole it >.< One thing that me and Jia Ling learnt was that when you see plastic bottles floating on the river, they're actually not litter but they're indicators of traps that the fishermen put out. Hence Jia Ling was ecstatic every time we saw plastic bottles - and we ended up stealing two crabs - which ended up being our dinner.
I drove the motorboat for a bit =D
The impending storm in the afternoon.
Didn't put in any pictures of the Probiscis monkeys because they were too far to be captured. Also too far to be seen clearly, for that matter.At night we went for this magical fireflies cruise, me and Jia Ling and the boatman, and we looked at the hundreds of flickering little green lights. We had some fun trying to capture the fireflies in our hands before they flew off (we could've brought butter to make them stick but that would kill them quite unnecessarily), and normally they did fly off quite speedily. But then there was one which persisted on crawling along my arm and wouldn't fly off, until the boatman's truly sharp eyes saw that there were two, not one firefly, and they were copulating, which was why they didn't fly off.
Look. Look at the love-making fireflies!
It's an amazing feeling to go on a river cruise, in near pitch dark. It's not hundred percent dark, so you can still see the vague outlines of the mangrove trees in the distance, an inky black, bold and scraggly line. It was calm and almost surreal to be gliding on top of the water, on the only moving thing as far as the eye could see, with the chilly wind pulling at your hair and the beautiful contrasts of dark grey and black at the horizon, too subtle to be captured by the manmade camera so you can only drink in the dream-like qualities of the image as much as possible, to be replayed in your memories later.
And then the boatman stiffened and stopped the boat. "Listen," he said.
We listened, tense.
"Can't you hear it?"
We strained our ears some more. "What?"
"The rain is coming!" He exclaimed, revved up the engine, grabbed the shaft and steered the boat to make a U-turn. Sure enough, seconds later, we felt droplets of rain which soon intensified into big juicy drops pelting on our fleeing boat.
I couldn't stop laughing as we bounced along the river in a futile attempt to race out of the storm. It was cold and wet, but so delightful. Some things you remember forever, whether in minute detail or in essence. This night is one of them.
