Deerland Park @ Lanchang Pahang

If you have come all the way to Kuala Gandah to visit the elephants, then I would suggest that you stop by the Deerland Park too. You will pass the park  on the way to Kuala Gandah Elephant Conservation Centre ( For locations to Kuala Gandah please click here)

Entrance fee is RM5 for adults and RM3 for children, non Mycard holders pay a higher rate. This is the entrance / where you purchase the tickets

And this is the map of the place, although named Deerland, it’s like a mini zoo with other animals too

 

When we were at the deer enclosure, which was quite a large area and I could spot many of them too , a handler was handling out baskets of bread for the visitors to feed the deers ( FOC), so you could get pretty close to them.

 

 I was totally excited seeing the hedgehogs, I couldn’t remember meeting them at the Nasional Zoo, …the handler told us that these were albino hedgehogs..they looked so cute and cuddly..er..i mean spiky

 

I never thought that Ostrich could be so people friendly /camera friendly, I keep on cautioning my niece to be careful just in case she gets a peck from that large beak but Bigbird doesn’t seemed to care, it just want to pose for the camera lah

 

And at a rest area, a handler was draping a python over a ( scared looking) makcik for her photo shoot and not too far away, another handler could be seen with a  parrot in tow and asking the waiting group to stand in line for him to place the colourful parrot on one’s shoulder for ( more) photo shoot. Somebody commented that this was better than Zoo Negara , where you have to must pay a sum take photos with the parrots or the pythons.

 At the sun bear enclosure, it was a surprise that the barriers were so low, couldn’t the bear get over the 3 low metal wires to break free ? anyway, at another location, another bear was on ‘exhibit’ . Mr ( or Ms) bear sitting on a rock with the handler  , and one could sit beside it and scratch it’s back or pet it,  and it was a shock because the handler was feeding it a canned Cincau drink …HUH ? is that a special diet ? after watching this, I start to wonder about are there any proper handling ( nutrition, medication, care etc)  of  the animals in here….anyway, back to the beer, I asked the handler- does the beer has a favourite drink, he said, it doesn’t quite like gassy drinks but does like the cincau drink  for it’s chewable bits and also being non-gassy.

 

I missed the monkey’s enclosure, but my niece came back very excited about it, the handler asked the kids to stand in line and then the monkey jump from shoulder to shoulder. Anyway, I saw these 2 donation boxes at the exit ( also the entrance)

 

I was laughing over the boxes and the ladies at the counter said ‘ ya la, not just the animals need donations, the staff too , this is a private company mahhh’ .

 Overall, the group found it more interesting than the Elephants ! ( I guess it was a too long wait at the Kuala Gandah Elephant Conservation Centre for the interactive  activities to begin ) but I must say that after seeing the sun bear and cincau session , it left a lot of question marks lah …hmmm…

 

Deerland Park opens daily ( except Fridays)

Opening hours 10.30 am – 5.30 pm.

 Tel : 092797249

Elephants @ Kuala Gandah Elephant Conservation Centre

If you are interested to get up close and personal with the elephants and do not mind to drive ~1.5 hours from KL , then Kuala Gandah Elephant Conservation Centre ( KGECC) might be a suitable place for you.

Suggest that before you go

 1. for those that want to go on the elephant rides – Call up KGECC ( tel 09: 2790391) for reservation a few days before your trip ( especially if it’s a  public holidays or school holidays) , KGECC gives out special yellow stickers for this, ( there is a limitation to the number of yellow sticker given out per day), for the regular red stickers it’s ‘lawatan sahaja, tidak dibenarkan mengikut aktiviti menunggang dan mandi bersama gajah’ – visitation only, not allowed to participate in riding and bathing activities with the elephants

2. Pack your meals if you are fussy about food because the choices are limited. There are some warongs at the sanctuary serving roti and some simple meals, drinks, air kelapa muda are available.

3. Prepare the necessary change of clothes if you plan to bath with the elephants ( yellow sticker holder only)

 We packed food at Restaurant Pelita Bangsar before beginning our journey, we left KL at around 11am, we took a slow leisurely drive ( including water-breaks) and arrived at KGECC at ~ 1pm, I didn’t know that elephants were  so popular, the place was very crowded ( it was a long weekend/ public holiday) , we were quite concerned about availability of the parking space inside, so we opted to park our car a bit further and had to walk ~20 minutes to the Office.

It was a surprise  for me when I told the lady at the counter that I called up earlier to reserve the passes, and the lady immediately mentioned my name..oh ah..i think probably not that many people call them up for reservation guarr ( or she has a memory like an elephant ?)  , but I am glad I did , for I see many families were denied the yellow stickers as the quota for the day had been filled.

We had our tarpau ( packed)  lunch sitting on the grass under the hot sun due to the limitation in rest areas  (there were some areas rounded up with zinc sheets apparently under renovation, which might have been rest areas (?).

After a hurried lunch, we walked back  to the office area for the video presentation , the small viewing room was full ( standing area was full as well), so we walked to the area where the activities  will take place later.

The crowed was loitering around waiting for something to happen, but not knowing when they are suppose to happen, and where the activities will happen ,

Anyway, after standing around for sometime, there were some excitement in the air and some elephants were led to the river by the handlers, the crowd rushed to the river banks, to catch the sight.

 

The highlight of the activities would be the elephant rides, dozens were queuing up for the rights. The mahout will be handling the elephants, and there are no ’saddle’, you get to ride ‘bare back’, The expressions of the passengers were very entertaining : timid kids brawling and refusing to go on, but force by parents to do so, elderly makciks  that held on so very tight to the mahouts that I am sure their husbands would have been jealous if they see that, lithe maidens with extended smiles for the cameras, good looking mat salleh couples in raybans flashing million dollar smiles, not so good looking mat sallehs,  And yet, the elephants plod on, their big heads nodding, their tails swishing and the occasional wail ( objection) when their ears were pulled by the mahout.

 

And while the rides were going on, 2 young elephants were led around that area, and extended curious hands pet the gentle-looking creature, baby elephants look so cute ler..and they are smart too !After the handler handed it a sugar cane, which was a bit too long to be chewed..this was what it did..

 

 

And I also found  out later that it’s not just the  ladies that crosses their legs , this little fella does that  too.. ada gaya horr…

 

 

After the ‘dry’ rides, the crowd were told to get ready for the ‘wet’ rides, where you get to bath with the elephants.

 

KGECC  was set up by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks back in 1989 and located within the Krau Game Reserve. Entrance is free, so please donate generously to support the cause of this sanctuary .

 For more details of KGECC including timetable, please click here :

 For directions , please click here  

Much as I applaud the cause of KGECC, and being the one suggesting  the choice of this destination to spend our holiday, it was pretty hard to defend the ‘wisdom’ of driving 2 hours to Kuala Gandah and to convince my group of 17 pax that this was time well spent.

 NB: Personally, it was a disappointment.  a lot of improvement can be done on the management of this lah if this was to be a tourist spot promoted by the Ministry of Tourism,

there is really a very noticeable lack of information – which could have been solved with a simple B&W leaftlet with details of : the timetable , a map of where the activities are to happen, the cause of KGECC (a plead for donation can be included) some facts about elephants etc would have been nice to take home (unless the strategy is just a laid back, no-we-do-not-want-to-many-tourist to know-about-this-place, then it’s a different story lorr).

One flew over the swiftlet’s nest

When enjoying a sweet nutritious bowl of bird nest (燕窝) soup, images of dark caves, a person hoisted up midair, probably with a long bamboo, harvesting bird nest…well, that image might need some re-adjustment, the birdnest that you are enjoying might not come from a cave, but the insides of a building in a town somewhere.

 Swiflet farming is getting to be a pretty lucrative business. This is where special  buildings are built or existing buildings are converted into bird houses, and the ‘farmer’ harvest the birdnest periodically. These bird house are specially made, i.e. wooden planks will be put up at the ceilings, to maintain the humidity, water fountains might be set up inside the houses, these houses would also be equipped with ‘bird calls’ to attract the swiflets to ‘enter’ and make their nests. But before that, make sure that swiflets are available at that location la..they are normally present at areas near the seasides- e.g Setiawan is a popular place for swiflet farming.

Swiflets being migratory birds is not affected by bird-flu. And one of the ethic of the farmers is that they only harvest nests that are empty ( i.e. those that the eggs had hatched and the little birdies that no longer needs to be in a nest).

 I had a chance to visit a friend who had about 1.5 years ago started on this bird nest business, and just recently able to harvest his first lot of ‘nest’.  This birdhouse was a 2 storey shoplot, from the outside, it looks like a regular building.  And inside, it’s a different ball game….it’s pitch dark inside, and your ears would be echoing  with the sound of birdcalls (from CDs not the real call) , it can be quite dusty and smelly due to the birds guano.

Example of a birdhouse

 Below is a typical nest ( note the timber planks)

 

A closer look

 

Not a very clear picture as I can’t get the camera to focus- but that dark blob at the nest is a baby bird. And if u look closely at the left , you can see the ‘leftover’  of a nest that was harvested. The nests are harvested using a scraper ( like the paint scrapers) 

 

Bird guano, this is a fairly new birdhouse so there are not much of guano, older / more populated houses might have pretty thick collection of guano.

 

The enemies include : cats – including musang  ( which come in and eat the birds), cockroaches that eats the nest ( these should  be the strong contenders for the Miss Cockroach crown as they should have lovely complexion).

There are ‘middleman’ that goes around to buy the birdnest and the prices can be ~ RM4,000 / kg for  nest are relatively clean ( less feathers and other stuff in them) and  whole and as low as RM800/kg for ‘dirty nest’ with lots of feathers, broken pieces, etc.

 

An average sized nest  can weight around 8 – 12g / nest , so the nest below might be able to fetch a price of  ~ RM 32 ( when I look around the medicinal halls, the ‘cleaned’ nest – i.e what is sold in the nicely packed boxes are nests that had been cleaned of the feathers and other stuff and ‘re-built’ into the shape of a nest is sold around RM7000-8000/ kg) .

 

 Extracted some info from www.answers.com

The most heavily harvested nests are from the edible-nest swiftlet (Aerodramus fuciphagus) and the black nest swiftlet (Aerodramus maximus). The white nests and the “red blood” nests are supposedly rich in nutrients which are traditionally believed to provide health benefits, such as aiding digestion, raising libido,  improving the voice, alleviating asthma, increasing concentration, and an overall benefit to the immune system.

The nests are composed of interwoven strands of salivary laminae cement. Both nests have high levels of calcium, iron, potassium, and magnesium.

Some believe that taking all the nests provides some degree of benefit to the swiftlets because the female will not lay her eggs in an old nest. Old nests line the cave walls where new nests could be built.

Extract from http://www.koreabridge.com/writings/nonfiction/tpark_birdsnestsoup.shtml on the history of birdnest trade. Looks like Laksamana Cheng Ho had a hand in introducing birdnest into China

According to Yun-Cheung Kong, professor of biochemistry in the Chinese University in Hong-Kong, the trade of swiftlets’ nests began in China during the T’ang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) Some time during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), an admiral named Cheng He introduced foreign nests to the Imperial court of China. He traveled throughout Southeast Asia one year and brought back samples of many different kinds of nests and presented them to the Imperial Court. Dr. Kong believes that the supply in China had been exhausted before foreign nests were imported. In the late 17th century, four million nests (125,000 pounds) passed through the port of Batavia, now Jakarta.

Found this interesting blog on swiftlet farming http://swiftletfarming.blogspot.com/