Better, Not Older - 31 Things I Did While I Was 31

 Better late than never, little Dear.

1. After many years and a few hiatuses, I completed my Honours BA in Communication - finally- with a 4.0 GPA and a minor in Dialogue.

2. I wrote a lot, and I was published in the Tyee, xoJane, the Under 35 Project, Huffington Post, The Vancouver Courier, Whistler Traveler and Vancouver is Awesome.

3. I was hired as a pro-bono Ethical Tourism Advisor by Next Generation Nepal after I read a book called Little Princes and it inspired me to do something about child trafficking in Nepal.

4. I told a story at Rain City Chronicles (the Vancouver version of the Moth) about accidentally moving into a crack house. (You can listen here - I'm the first storyteller of "Under the Influence.")

Oh, how I wish this was ironic. BUT IT REALLY ISN'T.

5. I saw Neil Diamond in concert with my mum and her pals - we're the "Oh, Neil!" girls. I am a Diamond Head - I love Neil, like, an unhealthy amount, and the concert nearly had me in tears.

6. I hosted couchsurfers - 6 in Vancouver and 5 in Kathmandu - and I feel more and more dialed into its international community of vagabonds, travelers and engaged citizens.

Interestingly, also what I do with men.

7. I marched in the Gay Pride Parade with the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association (VOKRA) for whom I have fostered kittens in the past. We won the People's Choice Award for best float, and only about half of the attendees thought we were furries. 

8. I spent one perfect day in Singapore visiting my friends Tanya and Peter. I took a Chinatown Walking Tour, ate some amazing chicken rice, visited a hawker centre for frogs legs, char kway teow and wontons, drank fresh beers and won a pub quiz at a huge brewery pub at Clarke Quay. Whew!

9. I spent the next (perfect) day in Kuala Lumpur, taking a food tour, going to see the Petronas Towers and spending an evening alone on a verandah in a thunder storm, listening to music, writing and drinking Tiger Beer.

10. I stored my belongings, said some difficult goodbyes, made some hard choices about my beloved cats and moved to Kathmandu for 7 months.

11. I took the one-month Introduction to Buddhism course at Kopan Monastery, followed by the one week silent Lam Rim retreat.

Me and Ani Drolma moments after my refuge ceremony. I became "Thubten Tsultrim."

12. I formally took refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and officially became a Buddhist.

13. I applied to University College of London and York, and was accepted to both! I accepted UCL's offer to do my MA in Cultural Heritage Studies.

14. I consumed entrails on the streets of Bangkok on Christmas morning with my girl Jess and spent Christmas Dinner in Columbo eating gluttonous amounts of crab with my Mum and Tim.

15. I took a cooking class and learned to make rice n' curry, pol sambol and egg hoppers in Galle, Sri Lanka.

16. I spent New Year's Eve 2013 on a stunning beach in Tangalla, Sri Lanka with my Mum, Tim, Jess and a bartender who looked like Bruno Mars.

17. I began volunteering at the Kopan Dog Rescue and fell deeply, madly in love with the dogs there. 

The next hill over is called  Pubic Mound.

18. I trekked through the Annapurnas in a snow storm with my pal Vilija. Our Poon Hill trek was stunningly beautiful - and incredibly treacherous due to a freak storm that meant we had to descend the steep mountain trails by sliding on our bums/crawling on our hands and knees. 

19. I began Nepali lessons and learned how to speak ali ali (a little bit) of Nepali. Ramro!

20. I purchased my first sari and wore it to a glamourous birthday event.

21. I booked a 9 day vacation to Thailand with my gal Jess (again - she's my soul mate) and learned how to dive on Koh Tao. I am now officially SSI certified to scuba dive anywhere in the world.

Two of the many good friends I made this year, Cass and Jess.

22. I added over 100 new friends on Facebook, which means I met over 100 awesome new people who have added richness, humour, art, compassion, wisdom and sass to my life.

23. I discovered (much) younger men and realized that age really doesn't matter when two people have a lot in common. I also heard, "you look so good for your age!" quite often this year, to which I replied, "hunty, this is what 31 looks like!"

24. I had a blast getting covered in coloured powder on Holi -  and then had less of a blast when a gang of teenaged boys surrounded me and a friend and groped us. This is common in Nepal, and made me feel vulnerable and ashamed. It was my first sexual assault, and it made me have even more compassion for victims of sexual violence.

25. I learned to love dal bhat, the Nepali national dish that consists of a mountain of rice, lentil soup, vegetable curry and spicy pickle. A bad dal bhat is bland, mushy and boring, but a good one is yummy comfort food. (But to be honest, I ate more pho than anything.)

26. I fell into a giant open sewer hole and was rescued by the Nepali army.

I'm saying, "have you ever tried to help, but accidentally made things a whole lot worse?"

27. I wrote and gave a Pecha Kucha presentation on my research into orphanage voluntourism in Nepal at the 9th Kathmandu Pecha Kucha Night, and I hope to give a similar presentation in London and Vancouver.

28. I co-wrote and presented a pub quiz (that benefits the Umbrella Foundation) at Pub Maya in Thamel. My rounds included questions on Lynch, Bowie, Joy Division, Rocky Horror, Voodoo, Wayne's World, Edith Piaf and Tom Waits.

29. I got a tattoo of a Matryoshka doll in honour of my grandmother. Thar's right: I got a tattoo of a Ukrainian stacking doll by a Swiss artist in Nepal. 

30. I learned to open a beer with any available implement. Physics confuses me, but I finally met a boy who taught me the basic principles of levers, so look out science! You're my bitch now.

31. Finally, on my last day of 31 I learned to ride a motorcycle at Hearts and Tears Motorcycle Club in Pokhara. I was surrounded by great teachers, fun friends and a boy who is riding his bike from here back to the UK. At long last, I'll actually be able to put the word "biker" before "babe"(or "bitch").

That's all, pals. Now to get started on a list of 32 equally amazing things for this coming year: bungy jumping, getting back on my skateboard, surf lessons, Greek island sailing, warehouse parties, finding a flat in Brixton and a lot of writing.

xoxoVioletDear

Hey. 32. Bring it. This goth bitch is going to OWN you.

An Ode to Looking Up - The Petronas Towers

  My first glimpse.

"There is nothing more poetic and terrible than the skyscrapers' battle with the heavens that cover them. Snow, rain, and mist highlight, drench, or conceal the vast towers, but those towers, hostile to mystery and blind to any sort of play, shear off the rain's tresses and shine their three thousand swords through the soft swan of the fog." - Federico Garcia Lorca, A Poet in New York


I love buildings. 

Buildings make me feel intense rushes of passion; I form weird attachments to them. In Vancouver I have special buildings that I go out of my way to 'visit' - a few 19th century houses in Strathcona, crumbling art nouveau facades in the Downtown Eastside, a forgotten art deco temple on West 10th, a mid-century modern car dealership along Kingsway. Simply being near these buildings satisfies some kind of childlike yearning that I have for fantasy and a fascination with the past.

I tend to form attachments to unlikely structures - I prefer them battered, beaten up and clinging to life. While I love to see a building revitalized and given a new purpose (and of course, as a heritage activist, that is always the goal) there is a part of me that prefers my architectural crushes to be ravaged old beauties; hulking Grey Gardenseque tragedies on the brink of madness and decay. (No comparison to yours truly needed, kthx.) 

 I'm committed to my hobbies. I'm getting a boarding pass tramp stamp next.

The 1930 Marine Building in Vancouver is a perfect example of this fuckery, a whimsical old art deco brute that I love so much I have its stained glass and facade tattooed on my forearm. I'm a bit of a fatalistic, impulsive creature, but I don't regret my choice one bit.

I remember the first time I saw a picture of the Battersea Power Station in a Lonely Planet guide to London. It was like seeing an old friend, or more accurately, like my old and slightly menacing landlady who lived in an apartment stuffed with taxidermy and broken mirrors. She was comforting, yet unsettling.

I took the tube far out of my way to go and see the power station in person. The neighbourhood was eerily empty for the middle of a weekday, and I had to walk through a series of housing projects to get to the river, across which was the huge brick structure. I knew that I was drawing closer, but row houses impeded my view and I remember my pulse quickening as I grew closer. I looked up, and there it was. It felt like my vision rippled a little bit, and I found myself kind of scared -  unnerved by this yawing, monolithic monster. A David Lynch soundtrack played in my head and I wanted to just look up and  stare and stare and stare.

I told you. I love buildings.

By now, with the way I just waxed rhapsodic about early twentieth century industrial structures, you probably think that, like many heritage nerds, I abhor modern architecture. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love the brutalism of the the '70s, I love the idealistic pomposity of the '80s and I love post modern skyscrapers, the kind that dot the skies of the newly monied Asian capitals: Beijing, Singapore, Bangkok, Shanghai. The beauty and twisted grace of a tall slab of concrete fills me with delight, and after growing up in a city with a near-universal 40 story limit when I have the opportunity to crane my neck upwards I eagerly take advantage.

Yet after many trips to the low cost airport in Kuala Lumpur, I had never managed to make it to the city itself and to see one of its most tantalizing attractions - the Petronas Twin Towers.

Now I will be honest - I don't particularly love the towers, the tallest buildings in the world from 1996 to 2004 (until they were usurped by Taipei 101) but there is something about their sheer scale that makes my knees a bit weak. As an dedicated 20th century architecture nerd, I wanted to just be near them and look up. Looking up when I am in a city is such a simple action, an action that makes my life so fucking rich and interesting, but it is one that so, so many people forget to do.

                                                The Marine Building in the '50s. It's now surrounded by tall towers.

I have up to 30 visitors with me when I guide tours through the bustling downtown core of Vancouver, and we all stop and stare up - and then something amazing happens. Locals - businessmen in their professional-guy drag, gaggles of office ladies sneaking clandestine cigarettes, food truck avowees waiting for their tacos - they all stop too and curiously point their gaze to match mine. And then I hear them recite my battlecry: "I never noticed that before!" I have had seasoned downtown office workers tell me that they had never actually seen the details on the Marine Building until they saw me nudging a group to love its form as much as I do.

That's the magic of a weird building. A strange, unexpected design forces people to look up, drags their attention from their antfarm day to day paths and reminds them that there is something beautiful and special and bizarre in their lives. That someone had magic in their brain, they put it on drafting paper and then they conducted an orchestra of details to produce something so organic yet so very alien in the centre of a city.

The last time I was in Kuala Lumpur I made sure to go and see the Towers. As I wandered through the gridlock of traffic and tropical heat my pulse quickened, and when I saw the geometric skyscrapers a giddy smile spread across my face. While they do seem a little dated and I am not the biggest fan of their design, their power and their grace was undeniable.

Art. Skyscrapers are art. To quote my favourite poet, Lorca they are "poetic and terrible."

My favourite combination. 

Nerding out like a building groupie.

Sudah Makan?: A Food Tour Through Kuala Lumpur

A perfect spoonful of prawn noodles

A few weeks ago I had 24 hours in Kuala Lumpur, and by god, I was going to eat. I've flown into the Low Cost Terminal (LCCT) in KL five times and spent the night at the Tune hotel by the airport three times, but I had never actually taken the one hour journey into the city. Until now. When booking my trip to Kathmandu I discovered that it was significantly cheaper to connect through Singapore and KL (God Bless Air Asia!) and so I decided to spend some time in each and finally get to see - and eat - what the capital of Malaysia has to offer. 

After some googling and tripadvisor-ing, I booked a tasting tour with Food Tour Malaysia and literally rushed from the airport to Taman Paramount LRT station to meet my guide Farrah and the other guests, who turned out to be three jovial Aussie kids.

Now, the first thing you need to know about Malaysia is that the country is made up of three main ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese and Indian. Malays are the indigenous local people who have inhabited this land for millennia, and they make up about 55% of the population. Next up are the ethnically Chinese folks who arrived in three main waves of immigration, dating from the 15th century until the 1990s. They make up about 25% of the population, but to refer to them as"Chinese" is misleadingly simple - there are Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese, Teo Chew, Min Bei and Mandarin populations, each with attendant food cultures that are as unique to them as the different European countries are from each other. Finally, about 8% of the population is ethnically Indian (mainly Tamil),  brought here by their colonial masters at the end of the 19th century when "Malaya" was the largest rubber producer in the world and one of the jewels in the British Empire's crown. 

Whether you're Malay, Chinese or Indian, food is serious business in this country. In fact, instead of saying, "hey, how are you?" people instead greet one another with the phrase, "Sudah makan?" which literally means, "Have you eaten yet?"  

Stop 1 - An Indian Muslim Mamak
-->

A majority of the ethnically Indian population of Malaysia hearkens from the South and from Sri Lanka, and therefore it is much more likely to see idlis, vadai and dosas than it is to see a properly cooked aloo gobi. Our first stop was at that most beloved Malaysian institutions – a Tamil Muslim Mamak. This is a place where you can kick back, watch some footie and order from either a steam tray of prepared curries or a fresh roti or dosa, made to order.

My favourite breakfast on the planet.

Farrah started us with a roti and it was fresh, hot and buttery. We dipped it in a little bit of lentils and a fish curry, and she explained that Malaysians like their roti liberally doused with curry – this translated to soaked, much more than I would normally use – and it was delicious. 

Hello giant Indian nalesniki. I love you.

 Next up was a dosa – this one a little different than what I am used to, made with rice flour (instead of lentil flour) and laced with egg yolks and dipped in a rich coconut chutney. Divine. 

Farrah then brought over a plate of and rice that looked like a dog's breakfast. See?

This reminds me of what I do with Christmas dinner - I make a holiday stew on my plate.

 Despite its messy appearance, this slurpy mix of squid curry, beef curry and mutton curry slopped on top of rice and cabbage salad was freaking delicious. As she mixed it all together into a big slurry, Farrah reiterated that Malaysians like A LOT of sauce on their rice and roti. I'm sold. I'm still dreaming about that chicken leg. 

I'm the best helper!

Last but not least, I got to help make dessert! This is an extra thin roti called "Tissue Roti" and it is served almost like a huge cookie on the table, covered with lashings of butter and crunchy carmelized sugar. We ate this accompanied by strong pulled chai. Dreamy, like a Christmas cookie.

Stop 2 - Chinese Hawker Centre

You're cute, and you have delicious lime drinks. Wanna date?

Hawker centres are uniquely Malaysian/Singapore institutions, similar to a food court but all of the food is actually amazing. This part of the world takes their food mighty seriously, and they demand delicious, fresh meals and snacks for cheap prices - and hawker centres make this possible. It's not uncommon to see people dressed to the nines dining on one dollar popiah (kind of like a spring roll) while seated on plastic chairs. The stalls usually specialize in one dish, and if they do not do it well - like, really really well -  they soon go out of business. This competition to survive creates a food culture that makes my heart flutter. Jesus, have I been reading Ayn Rand?

Pork bits are the best bits.

First up - pork and yam flavoured with 5 spice and then rolled in crispy beancurd skin and deep fried. Sorry, what? I couldn't hear you because I was cramming all of this in my face. While laughing. And crying with joy.

I will eat ALL the things.

The infamous Char Kway Teo! I tried to eat this for supper in Singapore a few nights ago, but the hawker centre we ate at was more well known for its wonton noodles, stir-fried frogs and satay. So I ate those things instead, which is a totally Singaporean way to behave. Sigh. I think I am meant to be from this part of the world.  

Char Kway Teo is one of the most beloved hawker stall dishes, a combination of soft flat rice noodles, chinese sausage, prawns and bean sprouts - kind of like pad thai, but much more flavourful. This was the Aussies' favourite dish of the day. My favourite of the day was the spicy, savoury, fishy bowl of broth and noodles featured at the top of this page - prawn noodles.

Dish sponge? Rice pudding?

Another dessert! And doesn't it look terrible? One of the girls looked at it and asked, "Is that a sponge?" Turns out it is delicious. It's a patty of sweet sticky rice covered in a layer of coconut jam, and tastes like the most wonderful bowl of rice pudding ever. I want this with tea every morning.

Stop 3 - Mini Stop at a Food Truck 
This was really one of the strangest food experiences of my life.

Seems safe.

 In this converted truck, this woman makes popular local snacks that are usually only available at special holidays. Farrah explained how this really jazzes people who live nearby, so I imagine it to be like being able to get Christmas goodies in July.

A Malaysian Double Down.

The treat consists of a slab of a brown sugar and coconut caramel sandwiched between a piece of yam and a piece of sweet potato, battered and deep fried. I'm not going to say I loved it, but somehow the mix of hot caramel, mash-y potatoes and grease was not at all bad. It was actually kind of good. I would eat this again, and I feel weird about that.

Stop 4 - Malay Warung

While not the most flattering, this photo illustrates my horror at the prospect of more food.

By the end of the Chinese Hawker stop, the four of us guests were already painfully stuffed - like, I felt like I was about to cry. I have no idea how I kept going - I felt like a circus act.

Don't make the mistake of calling Malay food "Malaysian food." Farrah quickly corrected me and said, "Indian, Chinese, Malay - this is all Malaysian food!" Touche, Farrah. Touche.

I'm a little catfish.

 I have quite a bit of experience with Malay food, as I spent 2 weeks in Malaysian Borneo and 6 weeks in Indonesia a few years back, and my biggest impression at the time was how.... lukewarm everything always was. Farrah confirmed that yes, Malay food is meant to be served at room temperature. Everything. Even fish. And yet it never makes me sick. In fact, this catfish was one of my favourite dishes of the day, despite my near-hallucinatory state of fullness.

IT'S SHAPED LIKE A HEART BECAUSE I LOVED IT.

 A final desert! A green spongy crepe (it reminded me of sweet injera bread) stuffed with carmelized sugar and shredded coconut. This was ridiculously good. Seriously, Malaysians have the right idea when it comes to desserts. Except maybe the mashed potato caramel combo....

A city is best experienced through its food, and I feel like I got to know the hell out of KL in just four hours. So go. Eat. "Sudah Makan?"

A Stormy Evening in Kuala Lumpur

Hi! Sorry about the chronological messiness - this was written at the beginning of November, before I checked into Kopan.

Step into my office.

Things you should know about this picture:

1) There is a literal monsoon outside this covered verandah. I was lucky enough to have a beautiful, bright, sunny (sometimes too sunny) day for my KL food tour but at 6pm the sky opened and trapped me in my hotel. The sound of thunder and lightning is deafening, but I actually love this tropical stormy weather as it gives me an excuse to sit right here and....

2) I'm wearing a little floral onesie in November and I am outside. I am Canadian - you have to understand how novel that still is for me.

3) I love smoking. I don't do it very often, but when I do I always want it to be Marlborough Lights because they taste like Asia and freedom and traveling and a little bit like bad decisions. Good bad decisions. I love those.

4) And while I love smoking, I hate lager. But - I will drink a Tiger Beer or two, on occasion. Especially when that occasion is me doing my best Hemingway impression and drinking and writing in a tropical storm. I am giddy with the fact that I am tipsy and it is only 8:30 pm - and the only thing I have to do tonight is go to bed. Bliss.

5) As soon as it got dark I began to get attacked by mosquitoes. But I refused to move inside because, soon? Nepal. And no more onesies.

6) Earlier I was listening to Bob Marley's "Legend" and then to Patty Smith's "Horses", but now I have moved on to George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass." They're all so perfect for tonight that I can hardly stand it, but I still have no idea what "Apple Scruffs" is about.

7) I'm smoking again. *giddy*

8) I am relishing this alone time so, so much. This is the first evening where I have been completely alone in weeks, and I needed it badly.

9) My little phone is out because I am posting things to instagram - on which you should follow me! Violetdear. (Surprise).

10) Holy fuck I move to Nepal tomorrow (which will be last week by the time you read this, because right now I am in the Kopan Monastery thinking back fondly to this tipple). And so maybe I need another Tiger beer.....

XOXOVD

Monkeyin' Around Part 2 - Nosey Beasts

Of course this schnozz is impressive.....

Malaysian Borneo is package tour hell. For an independent traveler such as myself who is used to chartering boats and arranging trips by myself Borneo has been a rude awakening – everything here must be arranged far in advance, through a travel agency and paid way too much for.

And just my luck – I have headed from the lowest of the low season in Southern Thailand to the peak of high season in Sabah. That means that every single thing that we want to do is not just only possible with a package, it is also sold the fuck out. Full. “Finish” as the locals say. We can't just stroll over to the famous turtle hatching island near Sandakhan and try to hire a local boat to visit it – under Malaysian law it can only be visited with a tour. And that tour is 200 Canadian dollars. A DAY. It's also booked until October, consarnnit.

I am used to hiring my own guide, grabbing a share sawngthaew (pick up truck taxi with benches in the bed) and doing things independently and on the cheap. But that's just not possible in Malaysian Borneo, not if you want to catch a glimpse of the abundant wildlife for which Sabah is famous. That is how we found ourselves in a lodge surrounded by middle aged European package tourists, drinking expensive beers and eating bland buffet food.

When I think “3 Day Jungle Trek” images of small villages, local dishes cooked over an open flame (see how my brain goes right to the viddles?) and water splashed over my layers of sweat from a hand pumped well. Not so in sanitized Malaysia. Our trek consisted of 2 nights in a comfortable dorm, 4 boat trips and 3 small treks.

But, despite my irritation at being nannied while I traveled – it was really good.

Kinabatangan is located in the centre of Sabah and is home to a huge area of protected jungle. While a few of the elusive Orang Utans still roam in the wild here, the main attraction are the Proboscis Monkeys – strange furry primates with huge fleshy noses and thick unibrows. We declined a visit to the Proboscis Sanctuary near Sepilok due to its high entry fee (nothing can be done on your own here!) and were worried that we has missed out.

Umm...yeah. You guys kinda got me at a bad time....yeah.

We needn't have worried. Every one of those 4 boat trips (2 in the evening, 2 at dawn) was packed with Proboscis sightings. This strange monkey is endemic to Borneo and is endangered (surprise!) due to poaching and loss of habitat.

Thorough grooming? Anyone? Anyone?

We also saw a lot of long tailed macaques and silver leaf monkeys - they didn't seem to understand that they were not the stars of this show...

Let's just hug.

The Proboscis males are more impressive to spot, as they have the long flappy noses - but seeing a mummy and baby animal is always cute. I like how these guys are hugging.

Rough, ready and booted up.

Two of the three jungle walks were held at night when the animals and insects are more active but for some reason on the nights that we walked the wildlife was a bit underwhelming. We did get to wear rubber boots though, and as a homesick Vancouverite this was pleasant...

Artax, you're sinking! Come on, turn around, you have to! Come on! Artax! Fight against the sadness, Artax!

The boots, it turned out, were not just evening apparel. The mud that we slogged through during the day was almost over the top of them. The streaks of mud all the way to my waist and the leech socks (we passed many, but avoided getting sucked on) made for a lovely fashion statement.

The spider man is having me for dinner tonight.

The day trek was a lot more eventful than the night treks - we saw this guy right out of the gate.

I really do not care what breakfast cereal you eat.

Normally I do not get excited about birdwatching, and I find it strange when people do. (Birding? Why is that a thing?) But a Rhinocerous Hornbill is a different matter - this guy reminds me of exciting tropical Toucan Sam.

I'm just gonna relax here and watch TV.....

Despite the other animal sightings, the Proboscis monkeys were really the most fascinating guys on the trip. I love their big pooched out bellies (a result of gas, believe it or not) and huge feet - when they sit there up in the tree I think they look like dudes home from work, relaxin on the couch. They just need little pants.

Please stop poaching me.

Seeing all of these rare monkeys in the wild was a great experience, and even though it was expensive it was completely worth it.

While I relish the chance to get into a country, roll up my sleeves and get dirty, Sabah has been interesting. What the Kinabatangan trek lacked in small tribal villages and strange foods it made up for in nature sightings, friendly guides and a relaxed lodge. If I have to do a package, this was a good one.

I think the monkeys liked it, too.

Monkeyin' Around Part 1 - The Jungle Men

Better than Disneyland, but just as touristy....

When our friend Brandon started planning his trip to Malaysian Borneo and Indonesia to meet us, I asked him what his priority was – what did he want to get out of this trip? Was it culinary tourism? Culture and architecture? Ruins and beaches? “Monkeys” was his answer. “Lots of monkeys.” We decided to visit two wildlife reserves in order to see as many different kinds as we could.

Brandon joins our crew - them's be Orang Utans back thar.

After a few days in Kota Kinabalu we headed to Sepilok, home of one of the five Orang Utan rehabilitation centres in the world. The centre is a located on a large chunk of protected jungle and is home to over 20 of the lovable red guys who have been abused, injured or rescued from bad zoos and irresponsible owners.

The Centre is famous for its feeding times – at 10 am and 3pm hundreds of people crowd onto raised wooden platforms to watch the handlers dole out bananas. We arrived to the platform half an hour early to watch the daring long tailed macaques lunge and steal handfuls of the fruit, growing in numbers from one brave monkey to over a dozen.

Hey - whatcha got there?

One of the handlers approached the feeding station and held up a small sign that read “Silence.” Within moments a collective gasp escaped from the crowd - my own lungs included. An Orang Utan, hairy and muscled with long arms, big round head and long jointy arms swung into sight and snatched a bunch of the bananas. With big sad human eyes and and a sweet demeanour he ambled over in his strange Frankenstein way to crouch next to the blue bucket, surrounded by grabby macaques.

Room for one more?

Over the next thirty minutes four more “Jungle Men” (the Bahasa translation) came into view to collect bananas, including one mother and baby. She tried to teach her funny little babe how to swing on the rope using just his arms, but he seemed to be afraid and insisted on using his feet to help his balance.

Overseeing the learning process. If only there were training wheels for this....

Mummy and baby.

It was an amazing experience to sit and watch the bizarre mythic primates just hang out, play and nosh, knowing that unlike a zoo, they were free to leave and go back to their business (ha! Monkey business!) at any time.

Hee hee - he looks like he's wearing a toupee!

My awe and magical feelings dissipated only for a short time, when one of the big boys decided to swing his way over to the viewing platform right next to all of us tourists and our unrelenting cameras. Despite stern warnings from the British handler, her calls of “No Flash. Do Not Crowd. No Flash!” were ignored as moronic photo-hungry families surged forward and shoved flashing bulbs in the Orang Utan's face.

That's right, crowd around.

That moment made me scared. Are we all just heading toward a planet of these small conservation pockets, places that seem like a good idea to visit until you get there and realize that all of these other people with poor intentions are also there? People so desperate for a snap of the perfect vacation memory that they think that using flash photography in an animal sanctuary is okay?

Hey - I'm just a poster. Feel free to ignore me.

My greatest fears in fourth grade, when I wrote a little speech about the destruction of the rain forest, have been realized. We have so few of the big fascinating mammals left that even when they are ostensibly in the 'wild' we still crowd around them, desperate to get our moment with them before they are all gone, killed off by poaching and slowly starved by deforestation. And the desperation, the crazed attitude that they are first and foremost a tourist attraction and secondarily creatures with as much right to this land as we have (alright, I'll stop just shy of an “Oh Gaia Mother Earth” hippie sentiment because as we all know – I hate hippies) drives people to do stupid things.

I'm comin to get ya!

When I was in Nepal's Chitwan National Park, I witnessed a group of tourists feeding a baby elephant Oreos, waving the cookies around to lure him closer in order to take photos with him. The mahout's (elephant dude) back was turned, and I caught his attention and tattled on the group (I had already asked them to stop but they looked at me blankly and kept flinging treats) The mahout repeated the sentiment, watching them with a hairy eyeball, but the moment his back was turned they resumed feeding him Oreos, and also some Lay's potato chips, snapping away with flash the whole time.

Me, with said baby elephant, in Nepal.

While this made me seethe, this ignorant behaviour pales in comparison when I think about animal poaching. While I understand the economic factors that drive people to murder endangered species, this understanding does nothing to diminish the near violent rage I feel when I think about the people responsible for a) driving the market with demand (“ooooh, honey look! Rhino Horn tea! I know that there are only 200 left in Borneo, but my wang-o sure is lacklustre lately!”) and b) doing the hunting. My little fists ball up and I my face heats up and I wanna go out there and find the monsters myself.

Yes, it is a few steps from feeding elephants cookies and flashing cameras in monkey's faces to poaching – but there seems to be the same sort of disassociation between right and wrong and the same desperate urge to exploit the animal for your own selfish reasons.

I was naïve and thought that no one would kill threatened animals in this day and age– no one would dare even think about harming an elephant, a monkey, a sun bear. As a child (and even up to a few years ago) a poacher to me was a nameless, faceless monster who lurked only in news stories and my imagination. But now I have been to too many places affected by rampant killing to try to see the good in people and earnestly believe that it will stop.

Wheee!

Orang Utans are being poached to snag the babies to keep as pets, and to fill the market for so called 'bush meat' – the consumption of large primates and other endangered species. I have seen them up close. They look like us, and I'm just gonna put this out there: if you eat the great primates (gorillas, chimps, baboons) you are a bad person. I'm not even putting in a qualifier like “unless you are starving.” Nope.

As long as poachers exist, sanctuaries like the one at Sepilok are necessary and the people that keep them running are practically saints. But.... while the Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre was amazing and interesting and a really good cause, maybe they could enforce a mandatory sitting-only policy? A no-camera policy? They could sell video and stills from the feeding time that you attended and make even more moolah for the centre.... They could also employ me (and let me hug the Orangs all I want to) to stand and look disapprovingly at the crowd.

I have a very effective stern look......

Just let me at the poachers with it.

Please don't eat me. Or put cameras in my face. Thx.